UF Alert test scheduled for Friday morning

November 12, 2014

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The University of Florida will conduct a test of its UF Alert emergency notification system for the Gainesville campus from 11:30 to 11:45 a.m. Friday (the break between fourth and fifth class periods). This year's test message will be sent by UF Student Body President Cory Yeffet.

Included in Friday’s test message will be a link to the UF Alert website http://ufalert.ufl.edu, where students, faculty and staff can learn more about the system’s features. Included in those features is the MyUFL emergency contact information screen, which displays the cell phone number indicated to receive an individual’s UF Alerts. It also allows the user to opt into or out of location-based emergency notifications for the University of Florida campus in Gainesville and the UF Research and Academic Center at Lake Nona. All users will receive systemwide alerts.

The text portion of Friday’s message will be sent to students, faculty and staff via text messaging, email, UF Alert social media accounts, the UF home page, IP telephones and speakers and Department of Housing and Residence Education visual displays.

The audio portion of the message will broadcast to essentially all Cisco IP telephones on the UF campus as well as outdoor speakers in high-pedestrian traffic areas, such as the Plaza of the Americas, the Reitz Student Union North Lawn, Turlington Plaza and the Sun Terrace at the UF Health Science Center. Additionally, Most UF academic classrooms and class laboratories on campus are equipped with an IP telephone or speaker to receive broadcasted UF Alerts.  The audio message may repeat for up to two minutes during the test. 

To ensure that they will receive text messages, students, faculty and staff should update their emergency contact information and location preferences in MyUFL. Updates can be made at MyUFL by clicking on “My Account” and then “Update Emergency Contact.”

The emergency text messaging system is used only in cases when a threat may affect the university’s campus. In such cases, the UF home page is the official source of university emergency-related information.

To learn about UF Alert, including subscription settings, notification methods and additional information, go to http://ufalert.ufl.edu.