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School District Learns Value of a Reliable Auto Dial Solution

TMCnews Featured Article


October 12, 2015

School District Learns Value of a Reliable Auto Dial Solution

By Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor


Auto dialers are useful for announcements and notifications of all kinds, but having a quality system in place matters a lot. The Anamosa Community School District near Cedar Rapids, Iowa, recently found this out the hard way.

Last week the school system’s auto dialer system goofed and failed to send alerts to parents in a timely manner that all school buildings would be in lockdown.

Students and staff ‘sheltered-in-place,’ meaning daily activities carried on as normal inside the building, but outdoor activities were discontinued, according to school officials. But many parents didn’t get the message.

“A driver behind the issue is believed to have been related to the texting component of the system and the length of the message,” said Anamosa Community School District superintendent Lisa Beames in a statement.

The announcement was intended to be sent out around 2:30 p.m. Oct. 6 following an incident involving a former Anamosa State Penitentiary guard. Unfortunately, some parents didn’t get the message.

“Obviously, our auto dialer system did not work as it should and we are in contact with the vendor to assess the problem,” noted a statement by the district. “Our main concern always is and continues to be the safety of the students.”


The value of auto dialers is obvious in such situations; manually calling parents in an emergency closing is prohibitively time-consuming, and an auto dialer coupled with an automated message can quickly get out the word.

The trick with auto dialers, however, like any automation technology, is reliability. If a system cannot reliably perform, it is of little practical use. And apparently Anamosa Community School District’s auto dialer was not up to snuff.

They might want to look at more robust options such as Spitfire’s hosted auto dialer solution. As a cloud-based auto dialer, maker OPC Marketing (News - Alert) takes care of the backend and ensures there are no hiccups such as that which befell the Anamosa Community School District.

Thankfully, the malfunction only ruffled feathers for the school district. But it could have been worse.




Edited by Rory J. Thompson







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