Fire Dept Emergency Call Out Setup

[dhnl]

We have an option 11 with PRI trunking in use at the fire department. There is a need to call up to 12 people at once to notify of emergency and to confirm attendance at such. Are you aware of a way this could be configured with a list of pre-programmed numbers tied to a single button on a specific set?

Currently a somewhat similar solution (separate from PBX) provided directly by the phone co. is in use however service and support for such was discontinued many many years ago. Future changes and modifications to the call list is no longer possible.

Any ideas of other ways to handle this?

 

[johnpoole]

maybe a work around, not a supported feature. try group call to analog sets, hard forward those sets to the home numbers, don't know if that works. might take a peak at the feature and discription manuals on group call to see if it will follow fdn.. i would build soft sets and use rcfw.. i used to maintain that for a local phone company, it wasn't soft back then, we wired relays together and ran those leads to the actual cable pair.. only draw back was if you were on the phone, it rang in your ear.. that was 35 years ago..

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[dhnl]

I'm sure it is the same system you noted that is still in use. Apparently it has not been "officially" supported by the phone co. since 1980 or so. It does not play nice with ADSL and other more recent features.

I will investigate the group call, thanks.

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

What do you use for Voicemail? Maybe you could have an emergency mailbox with more than one remote notification number?

 

[johnpoole]

you can get a code pager, we use them at the hospital, user dials a number to page a dozen people. our att and security have hot keys for code blue, code red etc. might check with the local pager provider or even your local hospital for that service. the remote notification triggered that thought, bad thing about that, i've tried it with mermail and cell phone notification, it works but only goes down the notify list until it gets answer supervision, and i couldn't find a workaround for that. this was used for a callout list at a in house account. all 4 of their techs needed to respond to a out of service network problem.

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[dhnl]

The problem is they need to know right away if a specific person is going to respond or not. Needs to be two way communication of some sort. The voicemail is meridian mail but I don't think that will help in this situation.

Thanks for your help