Syracuse University Enhances Campus Safety Through “Seamless Integration” with the Rave Platform

Campus Safety and Emergency Management Services actively used Orange Alert, its branded Rave Alert mass notification system, this academic year to notify and stay engaged with the Syracuse campus community during the coronavirus pandemic.

“It makes life a lot easier for our team,” Weber said. “We have templates set up, so when an incident happens, it ́s just a matter of plugging in the who, what, where, and when. They literally update the text [of the template], push the button, and send it out. It ́s a one-stop shop that is super simple.”

Rave Alert features a customizable interface that can be accessed from any Internet- connected device. Messages can be sent out simultaneously through text, email, voice calls, social media, IPAWs, digital signage and desktop alerts — all through a single launch point. Text, voice calls and emails can be automatically translated into about 60 languages. Campus members can receive messages in the modes and languages they prefer.

Visitors and others can register for these messages through Rave Alert’s text to opt-in feature, which allows them to sign up for alerts by texting a unique keyword to a short code.

Rave Alert is backed by a public safety grade infrastructure of multiple carriers, carrier networks and aggregators, as well as geo-redundant data centers.

“It automatically aligns with a lot of our database systems,” Hernon said. “It’s really seamless for our users to have their information in our systems and, in the event that we needed to, we would be use it to notify them on anything.”

He said Orange Alert, Syracuse’s branded Rave Alert system, is often used during severe weather and alerts include campus closings or class cancelations. Notifications are also sent out for “high-risk events,” including police chases, according to Hernon.

During the recent academic year, administrators expanded their use of Orange Alert to help the campus community manage COVID-19.

“If we needed the students to comply with a testing requirement for COVID or show up to a spot for a COVID-related issue, we were able to utilize our database and Rave to notify those students about that activity or requirement,” Hernon said. “We were able to notify them the night before via a text to make sure they have done XYZ or they couldn’t come to campus.”

“We always thought of [Orange Alert] as a crisis notification tool, but we really got into using it more of it as a typical mass communication tool,” he continued. “We could send a particular message to a large group of people or inform a particular group of people routinely in a template format to both text and email. So we used it very heavily with isolation and quarantine notifications on campus.”

Orange Alert helped to inform, update and bolster collaboration between the university’s public safety, health, housing and facility services, and other teams that supported Syracuse University’s COVID operations. For example, these teams would be notified if a student was in isolation following a positive test or was quarantining after being potentially exposed to the disease.

“We used the tool to notify the food services team that there’s a new person in that [quarantine] space and they need to provide them with food,” Hernon said. “It was very, very helpful for us as a mass notification tool throughout COVID.”