Omnilert's 'SMS Inbox' Manages Ongoing Dialog with Emergency Alert Recipients

Feb. 5, 2013
New feature organizes incoming responses to emergency alerts thatt help administrators gain better situational awareness

LEESBURG, Va., Feb. 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Omnilert, LLC today announced the release of a major breakthrough in interactive mass communications. "SMS Inbox" is a revolutionary new feature that organizes incoming responses to emergency alerts in a way that helps administrators gain better situational awareness to manage an incident. Additionally, system administrators can respond back to individual recipients via SMS text messages from the SMS Inbox cloud-based interface. The new feature is available to all e2Campus and Amerilert accounts at no additional cost.

Gerald Volpe, Operations Manager for Student Development at Colby-Sawyer College said, "This is a fantastic addition to e2Campus, and one I can see lots of benefit to. It gives us a way to make it more interactive and gather information when we're using the system for an emergency. This is a real value added feature to an already valuable service. e2Campus gives us the perfect tool to keep everyone informed."

For the first time, students, citizens, first responders, employees and others can reply to text messages alerts and engage in an ongoing dialogue with emergency response administrators to provide information that may affect the response to an emergency, or make requests for assistance during an emergency – all via native text messages. During major incidents when communication systems become overwhelmed, text messaging often proves to be the most effective way, and sometimes only way, to communicate.

SMS Inbox enables alert recipients to respond to text messages directly or respond using their organization's keyword at the beginning of the reply. Within seconds, these text alert replies are then viewable in the administrator's SMS Inbox. Additionally, system administrators can then respond directly back to a recipient's reply via SMS text message from the SMS Inbox interface.

The cloud-based SMS Inbox feature is live and operational for all e2Campus and Amerilert clients that currently have the SMS Reply feature active. If clients do not currently have SMS Reply active, or would like to activate SMS Inbox, they may contact their dedicated Account Manager about adding this free feature.