ENHANCED PANIC BUTTON
CAPABILITY

Alerting Hub

Integrating a flexible, enhanced panic button
with Alerting Hub’s API

In some emergency situations, where no advanced warning is given, response teams across schools, businesses and communities are reliant on individuals raising the alarm. This must be a quick and simple process. Any system in place that is used to facilitate a swift response can, therefore, greatly benefit from integrating a flexible, programmable panic button. And with Alerting Hub you effectively have just that – an enhanced panic button API, with many configurable options. Not only can individuals raise the alarm, but they can also trigger predefined events – place school leadership team into a group call or send notifications to all nominated responders.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to use our enhanced panic button capability – part of the SendAlert API – to trigger any combination of voice calls, group calls, SMS messages and emails.

What is an enhanced panic button?

Panic buttons come in all shapes and sizes – hardware and software-based. Their purpose is to enable a fast, discreet and convenient way for an individual to signal for help. But that is just one side of the story. Just as important is the response triggered when the button has been pressed.

A number of solutions have greatly aided a range of organisations to better plan and effectively respond to serious, ‘danger to life’ events. Ensuring the right plan is activated depending on what or who has triggered the alarm is vital. There has therefore been an increasing need for enhanced panic button capabilities that are seamlessly integrated into the wider notification system in place – allowing the response to be automated.

Enhanced panic button features

A programmable option available within the SendAlert API
Triggers can come from clicking on a short web link;
use of keyword or phrase in an sms; use of
keyword or phrase in an email subject line
Enable different alerts to be issued and recipients to be notified
Trigger a set of predefined recipients to be placed in a group call
Launch multiple omnichannel alerts, to different recipients for a single panic button activation

What are the use cases?

The need for a ‘panic button’ type capability is common across many different scenarios. Whilst the response actions may differ greatly the ability to trigger them, in a timely, robust and simple manner; is a universal requirement. This is where Alerting Hub can help.

Education

Teachers and on-premise staff can trigger an alarm call being sent to the senior leadership team.

Crisis

Member of the community can tigger a mass notification when an incident occurs. Ensuring everyone gets the message in time.

Business

In a live emergency situation an employee can trigger an alarm placing company directors into a group call.

Logistics

Enable conferenced communications between disparate teams at the ‘press of a button’.

Deployment scenarios for an enhanced panic button feature

Enhanced panic button to trigger group call

When an emergency strikes it is essential that senior management teams and ‘on call’ first responders are notified immediately. In addition, it is vital that they provide a coordinated response. Alerting Hub’s enhanced panic button capability makes this possible. An alarm call can trigger the placing of all designated parties into a conference call to discuss the plan of action.

Enhanced panic button to send omnichannel alerts on single activation

Not all alerts can be triggered from the comfort of a desk. The enhanced panic button feature is ideal for when alerts need to be triggered remotely. And that’s mass alerts! Hundreds of notifications sent simultaneously via, voice, SMS and email – just from the single ‘push’ of the panic button.

Enhanced panic button as a 2-way radio

Radio systems are always live – which makes them ideal devices for first responders or crisis teams to use to manage complex response situations. Sometimes however you need to create an ad-hoc first response team from staff who may not officially be on duty. Alerting Hub allows you to use standard mobile phones as effectively a 2-way radio system, enabling conferenced communications between disparate teams at the ‘press of a button’.

Building an enhanced panic button – an example

In the following example, we’ll use the Alerting Hub batchsend API to create a deferred group call which can then be triggered by clicking on a unique short web link at some point later. The short web link that Alerting Hub generates will be sent immediately in an SMS so that the recipients have an easy to keep copy like this:

When that group call is needed all that would be needed is for one person to click on the link in their SMS and Alerting Hub will do the rest: the recipients specified in the group call will be called and placed into a conference like environment where everyone can talk and hear everyone else.

What to send to the batchsend API

The following snippet shows the JSON formatted data that could be sent to initiate the example alert. As you can see, it’s pretty straight forward given the number of different features it encapsulates. You could issue two separate sendalert API calls to achieve the same result but the batchsend API allows you to send them both at the same time. Also note that you could do a lot more with each of the alerts show below; for instance you could also send SMS and emails at the same time as making the group call, useful when you want a larger set of people to be aware of a situation but need to get the a specific set of key players talking together. To do this you’d just need to add the appropriate extra alert entries in the deferred alert item.

{
  "version": "latest",
  "apiKey": "12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012",
  "common": { "clientRef": "aReference" },
  "alerts": [
    {
      "tag": "Defer the actual group call alert",
      "deferral": {
        "defer": true,
        "storeName": "deferredGroupCall"
      },
      "alert": [
        {
          "alertType": "call",
          "recipientList": "+447976100000,+447976100001",
          "tag": "t1",
          "content": "This is a group call setup for alerting hub, please confirm your pin number ",
          "contentEncoding": "utf8",
          "voiceFormat": "tts",
          "tts": { "language": "en-GB", "gender": "FEMALE", "enhancedTts": false },
          "ivrControl": { "ivrType": "group" },
          "additionalContent": [
            {
              "content": "Thank you, you are now being place into the group call",
              "contentEncoding": "utf8",
              "contentTag" : "enter",
              "voiceFormat": "tts",
              "tts": { "language": "en-GB", "gender": "FEMALE", "enhancedTts": false },
            },
            {
              "content": "Sorry that pin was not recognised",
              "contentEncoding": "utf8",
              "contentTag" : "badpin",
              "voiceFormat": "tts",
              "tts": { "language": "en-GB", "gender": "FEMALE", "enhancedTts": false },
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "tag": "Setup triggers and send confirmation sms with shortlink",
      "trigger": {
        "storeDetails": { "storeName": "deferredGroupCall" },
        "triggers": [
          { "keyword": "", "type": "shortlink", "tag": "sl1" }
        ]
      },
      "alert": [
        {
          "alertType": "sms",
          "tag": "t1",
          "content": "To activate your group call simply click on this link {trigger_sl1_keyword}",
          "contentEncoding": "utf8",
          "sender": "AlertingHub",
          "lookups": { "performLookups": true },
          "recipientList": "+447976100000"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

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ENHANCED PANIC BUTTONCAPABILITY

Integrating a flexible, enhanced panic buttonwith Alerting Hub’s API