Panic/lockdown alert

[fiza]

I know panic buttons have been discussed on Edugeek before but they always seem to be aimed at teachers in classrooms sending messages to SLT or whoever that there is trouble in the classroom. I have been asked to see if there is a way to send an alert out to all logged in staff if there is an emergency ie a lockdown scenario or evacuation required. With the recent threats to schools in birmingham and wimbledon, even though they were hoaxes, it seems to have ignited debate here. The alert needs to take over the screen so that it cant be missed or ignored.

 

Any ideas?

[BKGarry]

SIMS with InTouch can do it all via email

 

It is in Tools > Setup > emergency Alert

 

May not be exactly what you are looking for, but i may help

[fiza]

SIMS with InTouch can do it all via email

 

It is in Tools > Setup > emergency Alert

 

May not be exactly what you are looking for, but i may help

 

Dont really want to invest in Intouch - also emailing staff is not what Im after. I need an instant alert on the screen if there is an incident.

[psydii]

often fire alarm systems can sound different tones to indicate different events.

[Grey-gear]

If you have impero (or something like) you could have something that starts playing a sound or locks the computer with the message you want to get across.

[IrritableTech]

Do you have a tannoy or a telephone broadcast system?

 

We have a procedure in place for this, but we're having a meeting next week to review it.

[fiza]

Do you have a tannoy or a telephone broadcast system?

 

We have a procedure in place for this, but we're having a meeting next week to review it.

 

No and no. School bell and alarm system are the only school wide alert systems we have.

[fiza]

If you have impero (or something like) you could have something that starts playing a sound or locks the computer with the message you want to get across.

 

Dont have Impero. We have Netsupport for classroom management.

[Grey-gear]

Before we got a tan noy system the school had the bell going off and then on constantly which was the lock down bell. Maybe you could do that.

[IrritableTech]

No and no. School bell and alarm system are the only school wide alert systems we have.

 

Shame - we were advised not to use alarms as this could cause someone causing a lockdown to escalate the situation when it was heard. I'm not sure I fully agree with this advice though.

[L3OUGH]

NetSupport Notify - Multi platform alerting solution

 

Great little tool, we use it for alerting staff to internet outages etc. It is intrusive and they have to acknowledge the notification before having their screen back. You can see who has acknowledged it from the sending PC too i.e one of your servers.

Edited January 28, 2016 by L3OUGH

[Boredguy]

Previously we looked at replacing our current fire alarm lesson change notification for a proper melody based on, but we didn't have the £8k we needed for all minimum number of speakers we would need.

 

Recently we had a "security consultant" group in to review our procedures and they also wanted something that would flash up on users screen and take over the display but as we could not ensure that frozen projectors would display it, it was a non starter

[Jonesminor]

Our solution is quite convoluted but works well and is part of school policy for managing behaviour.

 

Using PHP we pull out the timetable from SIMS and present this on a webpage to staff as a bit of a class toolkit. One of the tools, next to each students name is an 'On Call' button. Clicking this does various things, one is send several emails, another is pass arguments to, and execute a batch file.

 

Using PHP, after much trial and error we settled on psexec to run the batch file.

In PHP

$command = "psexec -accepteula -d oncall.bat $staff $room $student";
exec($command);

 

 

In batch file..

 

set student=%3
set room=%2
set room=%room:_= %
set student=%student:_= %

msg /time:600 /server:admin-13 * "OnCall Request: Incident involving %student% in %room%. Request by %1 (%date% %time%)"
sleep 4
msg /time:600 /server:admin-13 * "OnCall Request: Incident involving %student% in %room%. Request by %1 (%date% %time%)"
echo %1 %2 %3 %date% %time%>>log.txt

 

This pops up a message on pc 13 with name of child, staff and room involved and repeats just in case. In our case we actually send the message to 6 PCs and fire off an email too. The admin staff use radios to contact the designated on-call SLT bod. Only problems we have are staff who 'forget' radios and un-official room changes so on-call bod is directed to the wrong room.

 

To get the msg command to work, on the target workstation,n we had to add a value, AllowRemoteRPC as REG_DWORD, value 1 to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server

 

--

[strawberry]

we could not ensure that frozen projectors would display it, it was a non starter

And people with screens off, on Their own devices, in the playground, without a computer etc etc. I just don't see this as a computer problem.

[fiza]

NetSupport Notify - Multi platform alerting solution

 

Great little tool, we use it for alerting staff to internet outages etc. It is intrusive and they have to acknowledge the notification before having their screen back. You can see who has acknowledged it from the sending PC too i.e one of your servers.

 

We are trialing Notify next week.

[fiza]

Previously we looked at replacing our current fire alarm lesson change notification for a proper melody based on, but we didn't have the £8k we needed for all minimum number of speakers we would need.

 

Recently we had a "security consultant" group in to review our procedures and they also wanted something that would flash up on users screen and take over the display but as we could not ensure that frozen projectors would display it, it was a non starter

 

What we would want is something that displays on the computer and emits an audible tone. So even if the projector was frozen the sound would alert the staff member that there was a message on the screen.

[Edu-IT]

An internal IM server?

[L3OUGH]

We are trialing Notify next week.

 

As I said, from our experience it's a great tool. We don't use it to quite the extent your looking to use it for, however, I can't see why it wouldn't work to alert staff to evacuate. Let us know how you get on trailing, don't hesitate to PM if you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer.

[NewFormz]

The free version of Meraki system manager lets you send a pop up message to computers on your network. It also has lots of other handy tools as well.

[Tom_NetSupport]

Please feel free to PM for more info, but just to give you an idea NetSupport Notify is available for as little as £1 a licence.

[fiza]

Please feel free to PM for more info, but just to give you an idea NetSupport Notify is available for as little as £1 a licence.

 

Thanks Tom, already been in touch with our account manager at Netsupport and have a quote.

[Garacesh]

Bit of a bump..

 

One of our members of staff has expressed that she sometimes feels concerned as her 'office' doubles as a second reception and there have been incidents in the past. Unfortunately the school is also used outside of term time for events (dance classes, etcetera) and as such, a "pop up a message on peoples' screens" solution wouldn't really achieve what we're trying to do. Ideally what we're looking for is a button that causes the walkie-talkies carried by SMT and Site Team blare out an alert noise (site team are always in during holidays) that basically means "I need some physical presence!". I know that's not going to be something trivial to implement, just wondered if anyone had any ideas of where to start.

Edited September 16, 2016 by Garacesh

[pantscat]

I think those sorts of things are fairly common for security companies that use 2-way radios - they're referred to as panic buttons or man down buttons I think.

 

Not quite sure where to start, but perhaps the company that provided your walkie-talkies might be able to help?