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Emergency Mass Notification Service: Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is Emergency Mass Notification Service (EMNS)?
   EMNS enables campus authorities to record one message to send to all faculty, staff, and students in the event of a threat to campus health and safety. The EMNS rapidly delivers messages to one or more communications devices, thus increasing the chance of successful notifications.

2. Why do we need an EMNS?
   Tragic events on college campuses across the country this past year point to the need for mass notifications to secure life and property in the event of a natural (severe weather, earthquake), technological (power, computing, and/or communications facilities failure), or human (terrorism, criminal activity, hacking) event.

3. How is EMNS different from the mass e-mail we have today?
   E-mail is an extremely effective mass notification tool. But what if e-mail was temporarily down as the result of a disaster? The EMNS can bypass e-mail and deliver a message to a cell phone or other communications device. Additionally, we are frequently on the move and thus not logged into e-mail (unless you use a Blackberry or other e-mail-push smartphone). A cell phone — with or without text messaging — provides an excellent message delivery tool for highly mobile users. In fact, the Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology 2007 shows that 82.6% of MU respondents carry a simple cell phone and 13% have a smartphone.

4. What is the sequence of message delivery?
   MU's default sequence is cell phone, text message, e-mail, home phone (only for after-hours emergencies), pager, and business phone.

5. How does it know to contact me?
   We already know your campus e-mail address, but we'll need your cell phone number and/or text message address, which is usually the same as your cell phone number. You should visit the MU Alert site to find out how to input your contact data.

6. I don't use text messaging on my cell phone. What do I do?
   Just leave the text messaging data entry field empty. The Emergency Mass Notification Service will just skip over text messaging to deliver a message to your e-mail box — assuming you didn't answer your cell phone.

7. I don't have a cell phone? What do I do?
   You will continue to receive e-mail notifications.

8. Is there a charge?
   No, EMNS is free to you. However, some cell phone carriers do charge for text message delivery. Check with your cell phone carrier to be sure.

9. What happens if I can't answer my cell phone?
   The EMNS leaves you a voice mail message and goes to the next communications device in the sequence. Note that the voice mail message may be an electronic, or text-to-speech, voice.

10. If I get the message, then what do I do?
    If you answer a voice call, EMNS will instruct you to press a keypad number to confirm delivery. If you receive a text message, you'll reply to confirm. For an e-mail, there will be a confirmation hyperlink. Once you confirm, the notification sequence stops.

11. What happens if I don't confirm any of the messages?
    We may feel the message is important enough to try again by programming a second or third cycle. In any case, you will have a voice mail, a text message, or an e-mail waiting for you whether confirmed or not.

12. Will the EMNS be used to notify me of non-emergency campus events?
    Campuswide notifications are for emergencies only. The EMNS is, however, available for departmental use to message staff for routine operations. For example, the Division of IT might use the EMNS to call in staff after hours to resolve an immediate maintenance issue.

13. Will my contact data be safe?
    Obviously, we share your contact information with our vendor, who maintains a strict privacy policy. Under the terms of our contract, the vendor will not share your information with anyone.

14. What if I leave the university?
    We will remove your contact information from the vendor's database.

15. If I am a student, can my parents be notified?
    Only if you enter their phone number in your contact data. We recommend you do not do this, because you are here where the emergency is occurring. You can have your parents check the MU Alert website for emergency updates.