Technology

Calling All Tenants...
New system allows facility and housekeeping managers to instantly alert building occupants

A new software application promises new avenues for facility managers and housekeeping executives when communicating with tenants. Techradium Inc.’s Immediate Response Alert System (IRAS) uses basic Internet connections to send alerts to tenant computers based on a system of priority levels.

Emergency alerts will pop up over any application the computer user is viewing, while less serious alerts will bring up an icon at the edge of the user’s screen. The program offers a basic three-tiered priority system using red, yellow and green icons for different levels of alerts, or a five-tiered system mirroring the new U.S. Homeland Security system of emergency warnings.

IRAS can send an all-tenant message or it can isolate computers in certain areas of a facility down to individual floors, in case managers have area-specific alerts or other project-related messages. It also can send notices to multiple facilities.

The program not only can send an alert to any computer with an Internet connection, but it also can track which computers received the message and which users acknowledged the message, says Brad Bowman, vice president of sales for the Houston-based technology company.

He emphasizes the fact that the program is not sending e-mails, which typically require more time and different computer functions, but uses the “backbone” of Internet connections to present a message over any other application running at that time. The program has been tested to assure its firewalls and other precautionary measures will protect an organization’s network against outside access. IRAS also is set up to only allow known network administrators to send alerts throughout an organization. Any tenant can send a short message to the network administrators to notify them of any emergencies in their areas which might warrant a broadcast alert.

Customers who already have purchased IRAS will begin using the system in April, and Techradium hopes to offer a wireless version of the program in about a year. That version also would tap into LED screens in facilities that could scroll the text of any messages for tenants who are not at their computers when the alerts arrive.

For more information regarding IRAS, use the link above or call 866-270-0120.

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