Information Technology Services sent a test emergency text message to students, faculty and staff Friday morning through its new emergency text messaging service provider, FirstCall.ITS sent 25,105 text messages within 12 minutes and received 1,272 notices of delivery failures from the carriers. Five percent of the FirstCall text messages were undelivered.The majority of these failures was the result of cellular numbers no longer being valid and plans not allowing text messages, said Sheri Thompson, IT Planning and Communications officer.”Overall, I’m pleased with how well the test of our new provider went,” said Brian Voss, University vice chancellor for information technology and chief information officer, in an e-mail to The Daily Reveille. “We can see that we need to do better at getting individuals to update their cellular contact information.”A full report of the test will be available on the Emergency Text Messaging System’s Web site today at 4 p.m.The University will officially switch to FirstCall beginning Oct. 1. The former provider, ClearTXT, no longer offers emergency notification services.ITS transferred all users signed up for the emergency text message system Wednesday. If users didn’t receive the text message alert, they are able to log in to PAWS and report problems.The University temporarily stopped accepting new enrollments in the text messaging system last Wednesday. New enrollments will be accepted again Oct. 1.To sign up, users must log in to PAWS and select “Emergency Text Message” listed under “Campus Community” in the left navigation bar. There is no fee to subscribe, but users will pay regular text messaging rates through their cellular providers.
 
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Contact Leslie Presnall at [email protected]