ShoreTel E911 Notification Application Overview:

The ShoreTel E911 Notification Application provides crucial communications and safety benefits through automated alerting and real-time internal notification of 911 calls. The application’s built-in messaging helps your organization to mobilize internal resources and coordinate response to assist safety personnel, giving you greater control over 911 emergency situations.

The E911 Notification Application integrates seamlessly into ShoreTel® Pure IP telephony solutions, expanding their native E911 support. Its capabilities are ideally suited to campus environments such as schools and universities, medical clinics, and retirement communities, and to virtually all business and manufacturing facilities.

Emergency notification to enhance response
Once a 911 call is detected on the ShoreTel IP telephony system, pre-configured clients send desktop alerts and/or phone calls to key personnel, who are prompted to acknowledge the alert immediately. Alerts include critical information such as the name of the person assigned to the phone and the location of the 911 caller.

Based on the alerts, in-house recipients can mobilize on-premise resources or meet the public safety responders to guide them to the exact location of the emergency, access locked locations, or provide other assistance that may be required.

Real-time communication during emergencies
In addition, the E911 Notification Application allows all local site personnel who have installed E911 clients to communicate in real-time via a built-in messaging system. Users can broadcast text messages directly from their client windows to all other connected client users, facilitating instantaneous communications during emergency situations

Enhanced oversight and security
Organizations also use the application to alert their security personnel of 911 calls that may have been made inadvertently. Security personnel can inform authorities of the error, thus avoiding fines for false alarms.

Comprehensive activity log
The server maintains a time-stamped integrated log of important events such as connected 911 calls, disconnects, acknowledgements and failures to respond. This log can be used for subsequent safety training, legal reference, public relations activities and policy management.

Benefits:

• Generates audible and detailed desktop alerts and phone calls when a 911 call is detected
• Alerts include name and extension of the party who called 911, their physical location and the system site details
• Allows designated clients to communicate in real-time
• Creates an integrated call log of 911 related activities, going beyond standard 911 compliance to provide an enhanced solution

ShoreTel E911 server software functionality description:

The server monitors all trunk lines for outbound 911 calls. When the server detects a new 911 call it initiates a series of events:

1. Logs the specifics of the 911 call to a dedicated log file. Note that the ShoreTel IP telephony system also natively logs 911 events to the Windows Event log.
2. Notifies any connected clients. The clients respond by displaying audible pop-up windows, requiring user acknowledgement. The server logs each client notification and subsequent acknowledgement.
3. Simultaneously places an outbound call from a route point assigned to the server. Calls are sent to each configured client and logged.
4. For external party notifications where the outgoing trunk is configured to pass outbound Caller ID, the Caller ID will be as specified in the configuration of the route point. When outbound calls connect the IVR will run and notify each user up to three times or until acknowledged or disconnected.

Customers can optionally modify the default .wav file, which for the example pictured in Figure 1 would say, “This is the ShoreTel automated 911 alert system calling. A 911 call was placed from extension 211 in room number 8479. Please press 1 on your phone to acknowledge this call.”

Important considerations:

The ShoreTel E911 Notification Application provides alerts containing the name and extension of a ShoreTel user who places a call to 911, as well as the physical location and ShoreTel site associated with the telephone from which the user placed the call. It is the customer’s responsibility to maintain the accuracy of this data on an ongoing basis.

The ShoreTel E911 Notification Application offers seamless compatibility with the Office Anywhere feature in the ShoreTel IP telephony system. If a ShoreTel user reassigns his extension to a telephone and subsequently places a call to 911, the alerts provided by E911 application will include this person’s name and extension (e.g., the user who is currently assigned to the phone) while site and location information will reflect the phone from which the user called 911.

Users of the ShorePhone SoftPhone feature should not call 911 using their soft phones. Rather, they should use their own facilities phones to place 911 calls.

Application licensing:

The ShoreTel E911 Notification Application requires a license key to allow announcement calls to be made and client machines to connect to the E911 Notification Server. The key is provided during the final stages of the installation process. Limited testing is possible prior to receiving the key.

Recommendations:

Consult the product documentation for guidelines about how to configure your system for optimal 911 call handling and also to thoroughly understand limitations related to SoftPhone and other features with regard to 911 calling behavior.

Screenshots:

Documentation:

Shoretel E911 Notification Application Datasheet (PDF).