Watchdog changes service providers
The University of Indianapolis has switched service providers for its emergency alert system, Watchdog.
A small committee consisting of staff in the offices of Student Affairs, Communications, Information Systems and Campus Police selected Rave Communications to become the new service provider after the university’s contract with the previous service provider, Blackboard Connect, ended.
According to Kory Vitangeli, associate vice president for student affairs and dean of students, the committee looked at a few different service provider options before deciding on Rave Communications.
The committee chose Rave Communications for the multiple benefits it believed Rave could bring.
“Rave is a service provider for over 600 colleges and universities, so it had the most experience,” Vitangeli said. “It has all the capabilities that we were looking for, and it is easy to manage.”
According to Vitangeli, Rave, in addition to providing e-mails and phone calls like the previous service provider, also includes text messaging.
Rave allows students and faculty to subscribe and unsubscribe themselves for messages. According to Vitangeli, some students had trouble unsubscribing themselves from the old service, so even after students graduated they would sometimes receive alerts.
One request Executive Director of Communications and Marketing Mary Atteberry had for a new service provider was efficiency.
“The messages we were sending were not going out quickly enough, and a lot of people weren’t getting them,” Atteberry said.
These issues, combined with a complicated message-sending process, delayed the messages. All of these went against the purpose of Watchdog, which is to send alerts in cases of emergency.
Even if students were registered for alerts last year, personal phone numbers and addresses are not in the database for the new service provider.
The university is going to send out a test alert on Sept. 9 to determine how well the new system works, so Vitangeli stressed it is important to sign up by then so potential problems can be detected and fixed before any potential campus emergencies.
Students can sign up for Watchdog alerts by going to the My UIndy Watchdog channel at www.my.uindy.edu and clicking on the “Edit My Watchdog Profile” button.
