UF to conduct UF Alert test Nov. 17
The University of Florida will conduct a test of its UF Alert emergency notification system for the Gainesville campus between 11:30 and 11:45 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 17, which is between fourth and fifth class periods.
Included in Thursday’s test message will be a link to the UF Alert website http://ufalert.ufl.edu, where UF students, faculty and staff can learn more about the UF Alert features. Those include 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, UF Health at Shands and the UF Research and Academic Center at Lake Nona. All users will receive system-wide alerts.
The text portion of Thursday’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, GatorSafe app and the Department of Housing and Residence Education visual displays.
The audio portion of the message will be broadcast to essentially all Cisco IP telephones on the UF campus, as well as outdoor speakers in high-pedestrian traffic areas, including the Plaza of the Americas, the Reitz Student Union North Lawn, Turlington Plaza and the Sun Terrace at the UF Health Science Center as displayed on the UF Campus Map in the Campus Safety sections. In addition, most UF academic classrooms and class laboratories on campus include 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 on “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. The UF community can review emergency response and evacuation procedures online at https://emergency.ufl.edu/takeaction and within the GatorSafe app’s Take Action section.
Anyone may elect to receive UF Alert notifications on a mobile device by downloading the GatorSafe app on the Apple App Store or Google Play store. Learn how at http://ufl.to/gatorsafe.To learn more about UF Alert, including subscription settings, notification methods and additional information, go to http://ufalert.ufl.edu.