87% of 12,971 recipients report receiving an emergency notification, with 70% of these receiving message in first 5 minutes. 
Princeton, New Jersey --[Emergency Notification News]-- October 22, 2007. Princeton conducted a campus-wide test of its emergency notification system on Friday, Oct. 19, and was encouraged that 12,971 contacts with registered personal information in the system, or 87 percent, received a test message via live phone delivery or answering machine. Seventy percent of the calls were successfully received within the first 5 minutes of the test.
The test of PTENS acquired from the vendor NTI Connect-ED, reflected improvements made to the Princeton Telephone and E-mail Notification System since its initial purchase in April 2007. During the PTENS test initiated at 1 p.m., the University sent simultaneous alerts to faculty, staff and students through landline phones, cell phones, e-mail and text messages, as could happen in a real emergency situation.
When the first test of the notification system was conducted in May, almost 2,500 individuals -- many of whom were graduate students -- were not included in the system. The number of individuals without at least one valid phone number in the system now has dropped to just over 1,000.
Also noteworthy was the increase in the number of people who provided text message information. At the time of the May test, 1,011 individuals had supplied SMS text message addresses, while more than 5,000 additional people opted-in to receive text messages as of Oct. 19.
The test reached the vast majority of University members in student and employee databases through 18,634 phone calls, 17,280 e-mails and 6,604 text messages. Live phone delivery of the test message was received by 50 percent of all contacts in the system, while 37 percent of contacts in the system received the message by voice-mail. The notification system can access up to six phone numbers per person, in addition to two e-mail addresses and a separate text messaging address.
Faculty, staff and students were asked to update their phone, e-mail and text messaging information through the appropriate University self-service websites in order to be notified during the PTENS test. 64 percent of undergraduate students had put their cell phone information in the system as of Oct. 19. In August, the number of undergraduates who had put cell phone information in the system stood at 42 percent. The number of faculty and staff who had registered cell phone information in the HR database also increased, from 27 percent in August to 55 percent as of the Oct. 19 test.
Princeton test results of Connect-ED® Emergency Notification System reflect Increased Participation
