It’s time for an emergency Rave

HPU has rolled out a cam­pus emer­gency noti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem that will notify stu­dents and employ­ees by email and text mes­sage. The sys­tem was announced on Pipeline on 25 Sep­tem­ber. I dis­cussed sim­i­lar sys­tems on 17 April, and USA Today dis­cussed Rave in an arti­cle on 25 Octo­ber 2006.

HPU stu­dents and staff can enroll online with Rave at https://www.getrave.com/login/hpu/

The ser­vice is free, and the enroll­ment process requires a Pipeline ID and password.

I did notice that the tele­phone num­ber fields will not sup­port inter­na­tional call­ing codes. Most stu­dents on Oahu would use a North Amer­i­can phone num­ber, but there might be dis­tance edu­ca­tion stu­dents who would want emer­gency noti­fi­ca­tion mes­sages. The Rave sys­tem could be used to announce unsched­uled WebCT and Pipeline outages.

Sub­scribers can get their Rave noti­fi­ca­tions by email, which is a good alter­na­tive for users of push email sys­tems like the iPhone, Black­ber­rys, Side­kicks and some Win­dows Mobile devices.

Also, the enroll­ment form appears to val­i­date entries as they are typed. Many web forms include pro­gram­ming code to catch data entry errors in the web browser, before the sub­mit but­ton is pressed. Client-side val­i­da­tion can reduce net­work traf­fic and server load, if the val­i­da­tion scripts are well-written and care­fully tested.

To test the form, I entered some incor­rect data. Then I tried to edit the data. I had to click and hold with my track­pad while retyp­ing the numeric fields.

It’s not the most obvi­ous solu­tion – I tried delet­ing and backspac­ing over the bad data, but the cur­sor kept jump­ing to another field. The val­i­da­tion script assumed that I’d entered the data cor­rectly the first time.

The Rave sys­tem does send a con­fir­ma­tion mes­sage to the mobile phone num­ber that was entered on the enroll­ment screen. The user get on a web browser and enter a 4-digit code from the text mes­sage to acti­vate their account.

The email side of the sys­tem does not send an acti­va­tion or con­for­ma­tion code, which I found curi­ous. I entered my Gmail email address.

There’s been a surge in noti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem deploy­ments since April, as uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges look for bet­ter ways to notify stake­hold­ers of impor­tant events.

Some uni­ver­si­ties have found these sys­tems use­ful when the weather gets bad. At other schools, these sys­tems are also used to notify stu­dents when classes are can­celed or events are rescheduled.

An emer­gency noti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem is also an impor­tant part of dis­as­ter recov­ery plan­ning (DRP) for any large orga­ni­za­tion. CIOs and their staff must have a rea­son­able, well-tested action plan to resolve issues that threaten the organization’s employ­ees, staff and infor­ma­tion sys­tems. Rave’s sys­tem can improve a DRP imple­men­ta­tion by ask­ing peo­ple to staff off-campus dur­ing an emergency.

Of course, the Rave sys­tem works best when many users are reg­is­tered with their cor­rect infor­ma­tion. Stu­dents tend to change email addresses and phone num­bers often, and there’s noth­ing that com­pels stu­dents to use the system.

Another issue involves mar­ket­ing. An emer­gency noti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem should not be used to send adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing mes­sages to users. There are some ser­vices that allow these mes­sages. How­ever, the last thing I expect from an emer­gency noti­fi­ca­tion ser­vice is spam and ads.

Tagged as: Apple, CIO, DRP, Hawaii, HPU, iPhone, mobile, privacy, security, Sidekick, spam, student, usability, Windows