UI emergency alert test goes smoothly
URBANA — Tuesday's test of the new emergency alert system at the University of Illinois appears to have resolved problems that previously delayed sending some messages to email users, according to UI spokeswoman Robin Kaler.
The Illini-Alert system sends email and text messages in the event of a campus emergency.
When the UI tested the system earlier this summer, it took some email accounts 90 minutes to receive a test alert, largely because the messages were caught in spam filters.
When another test was completed on Tuesday afternoon, Kaler said nearly all the test emails reached their destination within 15 minutes.
Overall, a total of 99,261 out of 101,580 emails sent had been successfully delivered as of 3:45 p.m. Tuesday.
Kaler said many of the emails that were not delivered were sent to people who had left the university and whose email addresses had not yet expired.
"And some people got their text alerts as early as a few seconds," Kaler said. "I got my text within a few seconds and my email within a few minutes. It was much more speedy."
Kaler credited increasing the number of servers handling the alert system for the faster delivery.
"Previously we were only using two of our servers instead of the 10 servers available," Kaler said.
Text messages proved to be faster than the email alerts, with 95 percent of the people who had registered for Illini-Alerts getting the test message in just over five minutes.
"The goal obviously is to get as many messages out in as many formats as possible as quickly as possible," Kaler said. "It was a success by all measures."
UI police Lt. Todd Short said that between 22,000 and 25,000 people should have received a text message on their cellphones.
In addition to email and text messages, the message alert test was sent to campus websites, to the Illini-Alert Facebook account and to the Illini-Alert Twitter account.
Kaler said the next focus will be getting people who have not already done so to register for Illini-Alerts. She said people can sign up for the program by logging onto https://emergency.illinois.edu/
"We plan to contact as many students, faculty, staff and parents as possible to register as soon as we confirm we don't need any more testing," Kaler said.
My email Illini Alerts are getting "better" but my text/SMS messages have failed since the system has gone "private."
Zorba's Fire (March 23): Text received 9:58am, email at 8:26am.
Test (July 21): Test email received at 2:40pm; shows email timed 2:01pm. No text/SMS received from Test 1 or 2.
Test (Aug 16): Test email received at 1:44pm; shows email timed 1:34pm. No text/SMS received.
I hope the University strongly considers allowing the general public (e.g. residents, family members of students, etc.) to sign up. Campus and Campustown safety involves a lot of residents, merchants, etc. that cannot receive Illini Alerts at this time.
Of course a Champaign-Urbana or Champaign Co. wide system is the future. Baby steps.
Comments
News-Gazette.com embraces discussion of both community and world issues. We welcome you to contribute your ideas, opinions and comments, but we ask that you avoid personal attacks, vulgarity and hate speech. We reserve the right to remove any comment at our discretion, and we will block repeat offenders' accounts. To post comments, you must first be a registered user, and your username will appear with any comment you post. Happy posting.