With Emergency Alerts, your staff can send a notification or email to your staff who are on call.
Permissions
- School: Emergency Alert: Setup - Set up, edit and switch on Emergency Alerts
- School: Emergency Alert: Administer My - Send emergency alerts and edit or resolve alerts you've sent or that have been assigned to you
- School: Emergency Alert: Administer All - Send emergency alerts and edit or resolve all alerts
- School: Emergency Alert: View All - See all emergency alerts
- School: Emergency Alert: View My - See emergency alerts that have been assigned to you
If you don't have the permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.
Setting up Emergency Alerts
Go to School > Emergency Alerts and you'll be taken to the Emergency Alert Report page which will be blank as you've not sent any alerts yet.
Go to the Emergency Alerts Setup page from the left-hand menu.
Top Tip: We recommend following the steps in the order outlined below. If you switch on emergency alerts without defining who is on call, emergency alerts will all be sent to the fallback staff or fallback email address.
Setting up emergency alert types enables you to report on the alerts that have been sent. For example, you may want to set up an alert for medication, or for someone to come and remove a student.
Click +Add to add a new type. In the slide over, add the name then click Save Type.
To edit a type, click on it. You can choose to:
- Change the name
- Delete it - this will remove this type from all emergency alerts created in the past
- Archive it - this won't remove the type from past emergency alerts, but you won't be able to use it moving forward
Please note that you cannot view which types have been archived or deleted. If you delete or archive them by mistake, you'll need to add them again.
Setting up an On Call Rota means that during the selected timetable slot, emergency alerts will be sent to the staff assigned rather than the fallback staff. Click +Add to add a rota session.
Select whether to add a on-off, or repeating sessions.
For example, I've selected a recurring event.
- Ticking the Requires cover box means that when a staff member is absent, the event will flag as needing cover - you can see more details here: Set events as cover required or not required
- Participants is which staff are on call during this time
- Choose what day of the week they are on call for, and the times.
You can then see the timetable slots, and a list of the timetable dates that the staff are on call for.
The final step is to set up any fallback settings and switch Emergency Alerts. Click into the top section of the page.
- Method of alerting - select whether alerts should be sent by email, in Arbor or both.
- Fallback staff - select a staff member to send them an email/notification if there are no staff on call or if no email is found for the staff member on call.
- Fallback email address - enter an email address that should be alerted if no on call rota is set up or if no email is found for the staff member on call.
Finally tick the Emergency alert switched on? box, and click Save changes. All staff will see the Emergency Alert button and will be able to use it when this box is ticked, so make sure you have everything set up before you switch it on.
Using the Emergency alerts
Sending an alert
Once you've switched the feature on, all your staff will see the Emergency Alert button next to the search box. On small screens, you can click the bell icon.
A pop up with appear with a 5 second timer counting down. You'll see you're automatically assigned as the person making the alert, and if you're timetabled to be in a certain location or event we'll include those details with the alert.
- If you don't take any action, the alert will automatically be sent once the timer reaches 0.
- Click Cancel alert to not send anything.
- Click Edit or add information to pause the timer and edit your location, event etc.
When you click Edit or add information, you can:
- select a location or event so the staff on call knows where to go
- Select an Emergency alert type if these have been set up
- Select students the alert is involving - if you need a student to be removed, you can select this student. The registration form is included next to the student's name so you can tell them apart.
- Add further notes in the Comments box
You can then cancel the alert or send it using the Send alert button.
Once the alert has been sent, you'll get this notification. Click on the link to be taken to the alert overview.
The Arbor Notification will be sent immediately, but the email can take up to a couple of minutes to send, as the email is sent by our email provider.
Staff sent an alert
Staff scheduled to be on call in the On Call Rota, or if there is nobody currently on the rota then the fallback staff, will receive an email, in-Arbor notification or both (depending on your school's settings).
You can click on the link in the email or on the notification to be taken to the alert overview.
Top Tip: This email is sent from your school's email address on the School details page, or from no-reply@arbor-education.com if there's no email address logged.
Seeing and resolving an alert
Reporting on alerts or finding past alerts
Go to School > Emergency Alerts > Emergency Alerts Report. This report is set to show today’s alerts by default, to help people on call see relevant alerts assigned to them to action.
You can download the report, or click into the filters to change the settings from today as the default.
You can change the dates, and filter your report by student, person, location and status.
Editing or resolving an alert
You can access the alert overview (depending on your permissions) by:
- click the notification or the link in the email
- going to School > Emergency Alerts > Emergency Alerts Report and selecting the alert
On the emergency alert overview, you can:
- Click any of the details with an arrow > to amend it
- Add notes using the Add note button
- Delete the alert if it was added incorrectly using the Delete button
- Mark the alert as resolved using the Resolve button
When marking an alert as resolved, the status will be changed on the Emergency Alerts Report page.
You can mark it as unresolved again using the orange button.
On student profiles
In the Emergency Alerts section from the left-hand menu of a student's profile, you can see any Emergency Alerts logged for them. Please note that the alert is not clickable from here.
FAQ
The Emergency Alert button will only show once you've switched on emergency alerts. If you don't see the button, please follow the steps above to switch this on.
There isn't a way to recall an alert if it's been sent accidentally. The email and notification will still be there if you resolve or delete the alert.
We recommend adding a note to explain the mistake then marking it as resolved. This means those who were notified can read this. If you delete it, staff can still click the link in the email and may receive an error message since the alert overview no longer exists.
You can import an On Call Rota when importing Non-teaching Activities from TimeTabler. If you don't use TimeTabler, there is no other way to import them in bulk, such as via spreadsheet.
If a student has to be removed from a classroom because an alert has been sent, you'll want to log where they have been taken. You can:
- add a note into the alert
- add an Ad Hoc Intervention to create a calendar event for the student and for the member of staff added to the Intervention. You can see how to set these up and use them here: Ad Hoc Interventions
When you click on the timetabled slot, you can see the staff assigned, but you cannot edit the staff. To change the staff on call you'll either need to:
- click Edit to delete the timetable slot, then add it again with all the staff
- add additional slots for new staff members
Go to School > Emergency Alerts > Emergency Alerts Setup and click into the top section. Untick the Emergency Alert switched on? box and click Save changes.
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