Over-alerting: How much is too much and what to do about it?
Striking a balance between keeping the public informed in the case of an emergency and inundating them with alerts is a significant challenge.
A common concern heard about emergency alerting is that the message may be late at night when people have their phones silenced.
A common concern we’ve heard about emergency alerting solutions that call phones with a recorded message, send a text or send an email is that the message may be late at night when people have their phones silenced. People don’t hear the call, text or email and only discover that there was an emergency hours later when they wake up. We’ve also heard the same concern when people are in meetings, at an event or doing some other activity where they purposefully silence their phone.
There’s a feature in the Alertable app that we’re very excited about that tackles this problem. It’s a setting called Override Silent Mode.
When enabled, you will hear the distinctive Canadian Alerting Attention Signal sound for critical alerts regardless of whether your phone is silenced, muted, in do-not-disturb mode or simply on low volume. And it’s loud!
Be mindful of that when turning this setting on. If you positively do not wish to be disturbed, don’t forget to turn this setting off before your activity (whether that’s sleeping, going into a meeting, going into a theatre, etc.).
The Override Silent Mode setting only takes effect for critical, life-threatening alerts. If your phone is silenced or in focus mode, you will not hear a sound for advisory, information or system alerts, even if you have the Override Silent Mode setting on.
Take care. Be prepared.
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