Update on Collecting Telephone Numbers for Inclement Weather Communication

Anyone who hadn’t already updated his or her telephone information for the Agency to use for inclement weather communication should have received a reminder e-mail last week to do so. If you haven’t yet updated your information, please so as soon as possible. It’s December, so we’re entering prime time snow season!

And as a reminder, here are the helpful hints about calls from SchoolReach, the online system the Agency will use to make calls to staff about office closings.

SchoolReach
This is an online system that is able to send voice messages to staff when there is an office closure. When used, the service will call selected phone numbers in our employee contact list and will deliver a recorded message. The service will deliver the message to both live answer and answering machines. No answers (phones ringing over 40 seconds) and busies will be automatically retried twice in 15 minute intervals after the initial call.

We will contact only those staff members who are assigned to offices that close. For instance, if the Newton and Indianola offices are closed, we will make one call to the staff members assigned to both offices to let them know of the office closure. Staff in other offices won’t automatically receive a call. The calls that SchoolReach makes will be generated by the Agency’s Communication Department; they will not come directly from a person at SchoolReach.

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING ABOUT SCHOOLREACH:
When SchoolReach places a call, if your phone has caller ID, the ID will display the Agency’s main number (515) 270-9030. When you get a call from the system, there will be a short pause at the beginning of the message. This usually is only a few seconds pause. Answer your phone as you normally would with “hello” and hold for the message to begin. Multiple “hellos” will delay the message. Please inform all family members who may answer your phone of this process.

If you rely on your answering machine to screen calls, the system will detect that your machine has answered and will play the recorded message to your machine. The phone will ring for up to 40 seconds. Make sure that your machine answers after four rings or you may miss the message.

At the end of the message you will be prompted to “press any key” to hear the message again. This can be helpful if a child answers the phone and hands it to a parent, who can then have the message repeated in its entirety.

What can be done to avoid any problems in message delivery:
• Do not say “hello” more than once. If the system detected your answer incorrectly, all noise will reset the three-second counter.
• If, after you answer, the message does not immediately play, cover the mouthpiece of the phone to cutout all background noise. The message should begin after three seconds.

Please make every effort to provide Human Resources with current and accurate phone information any time there is a change to ensure that you do not miss important information. Your phone data will be used exclusively by Heartland to communicate important information to you; it won’t be accessible to anyone else.