UC Davis is scheduled to conduct an all-out test of its WarnMe emergency alerting service — for providing timely information and instructions in major emergencies -- on Wednesday, April 22.

Campus emergency officials urge faculty, staff and students to check that their contact information, including personal home and cell phone numbers, is registered with WarnMe and that spam filters on their computers are configured to accept the e-mail notification (see instructions below).

The test, scheduled to begin shortly before noon, will include the Davis and Sacramento campuses and other facilities.

UC Davis will send WarnMe test messages to about 73,600 work and personal e-mail addresses; more than 34,000 work and personal landlines and cell phones; some 17,000 SMS text devices; and about 1,200 pagers.

Valerie Lucus, emergency and business continuity manager for the Davis campus, said the annual test is being used to monitor the performance of UC Davis voice and e-mail networks, document and establish standards for delivery times, and raise awareness about the service.

"This is our opportunity to connect the people and the technology and the contact information to practice how it all works together," she said.

Make sure you get the message

• To add or update contact information for WarnMe, visit warnme.ucdavis.edu.

• For help configuring your computer's spam filters, contact your departmental tech support or visit xbase.ucdavis.edu/1930 for instructions specific to your e-mail software. The IT Express computing services help desk is available to provide assistance at (530) 754-HELP (4357).

• Learn more ways to get information in an emergency. Download a new brochure about UC Davis emergency communication at emergency.ucdavis.edu.

Lucus asks the community to be patient about any minor interruptions or inconveniences the test may cause. "Emergencies are never convenient," she said, "and neither are the exercises and tests that help us prepare for them."

A team -- including emergency officials and staff from Information and Educational Technology, the UC Davis Police Department and University Communications -- oversaw a more limited test in February and has been preparing for this test for months. Staff will monitor the test as it progresses.

Lucus said the test time, selected in consultation with the Office of the University Registrar, balances the need to test the WarnMe service during regular campus operations and the desire to mitigate disruption to classrooms.

The test messages will indicate that they are just that -- test messages. Their length and detail will vary by how they are sent. For phone messages, recipients should listen to the entire message; no response will be requested. E-mail messages will request a response and provide instructions. The e-mail message also will include a link to a survey about the WarnMe test.

In an emergency, messages would tell recipients the nature of an emergency, provide instructions and refer them to a source for more information.

Lucus estimates that it will take about 15 minutes to complete delivery of all the e-mail and text messages. A 30-second message will be sent to about 200 telephones a minute, so she estimates it will take up to three hours to complete delivery.

WarnMe uses employees' work contact information from the university's online directory, students' e-mail addresses, and personal contact information that students and employees voluntarily provide.

Although campus e-mail servers are set up so that WarnMe messages will not be tagged as spam and blocked, the e-mail software on individual computers may still label them as spam. In that case, the WarnMe message may be deleted, or sent to a junk mail folder. To prevent this, computer users should adjust the junk mail filter in their e-mail software so their inbox accepts the WarnMe messages.

WarnMe is part of the university's comprehensive emergency management program and is among the many ways the university can alert students and employees to an emergency and provide important information. A new brochure provides information about how the Davis campus community can get timely information about emergencies. Download the brochure at emergency.ucdavis.edu.

UC Davis introduced and first tested its emergency notification system in February 2008, just days after a multiple shooting at Northern Illinois University underscored one of the main lessons from the earlier tragedy at Virginia Tech in April 2007: Campuses need to share emergency information in a timely way.