When I first started at EPS, campus-wide communication was done via classroom phone speakers. It wasn’t ideal, but for a smaller campus with smaller classrooms, it sufficed. However, as our campus expanded, particularly with the TMAC building, we quickly realized the need for a more robust intercom system. After the first year of the TMAC building came online, we quickly realized that the phones were not ideal in larger spaces. TMAC posed different challenges: bigger rooms, higher ceilings, and smaller spaces that didn’t have phones. We knew that a more traditional campus-wide intercom system would be needed.
While the tech facilities collaboration is extremely strong nowadays, this was not always the case. Often Tech would be handed hardware to support. It was no different with the initial rollout of the speakers, the clocks, and the software to run them. Tech did not get much say, but we were expected to deploy and maintain them. The first rollout of the intercom system was straightforward. With the help of Oliva and Sam, we ran all the wires and installed all the boxes in TMAC, LPC, the old MS, and ANNAX in a summer. Oliva and Sam did the hard work; Roger and I installed the clocks and brought them online.
When it came to TALI, James, our low voltage guru, ran all the lines, and Schuchart mounted the boxes for the clocks. Tech still had a big role to play. I installed the clocks, Jannell connected the wires in the network closet, and Roger lit up the clocks and added them to the system. It took us a month to bring TALI fully online, but the clocks only took about a week. It was straightforward and repetitive.
For the first few years, the intercom system was run by software developed by the clockmaker ATLAS IED, called GlobalComm GCK. It was clunky and outdated. It had freezing issues, and you never knew if it would come back online after a reboot. In the fall of 2022, facilities informed us of a switch to Informacast, a more advanced system. I was hesitant at first. Informacast was a huge leap up from GCK and did way more. It seemed overkill, but I took the lead on deploying this new software and quickly found it to be a solid piece of software we could grow into.
Because it was the middle of the school year, it took a few months to make the full switch to Informacast. I deployed the new system first without adding any clocks. With Jannell’s help, I brought a few spare clocks online in the new system to get familiar with it. There was a big issue, though. While I could get the clocks into the system, I couldn’t get them to work with our phones.
The original system had a simple way of calling in, but the new one required a trunk, creating a tunnel from the phone server to the Informacast server. There was zero documentation on making Informacast work with our phone system, so I had to rely on trial and error. I finally figured it out and made the trunk. Over EBC/Spring break, we made the big switch. Jannell was a huge help in this process. The switch went flawlessly, but there were still features of Informacast we weren’t utilizing, and that was the point of switching.
At this point, Informacast did everything that our previous intercom server did, but we were not utilizing any other features that were available, and that was kind of the whole point of going to a new system. Informacast could not only broadcast live and pre-recorded audio to our clocks, but it could also scroll messages, send SMS and email alerts, pop up messages on users’ desktops, and much more. To decide what features to roll out and when, Jordan, Matt, and I started bi-weekly meetings last fall. The meetings would typically take place a day or two before a drill and also before the larger Operations Group meeting that both Jordan and I sit on.
Our first step was to identify the best days and times to run each of the drills that would take place during the school year. We didn’t want any one period getting hit more with drills than others. Next, we had to figure out what basic needs we had for that drill and what new features we might want to include. We didn’t want to overwhelm ourselves or the drill participants by adding too many features each time. So instead, we worked off a baseline of ‘every drill needs to have the intercom’ and then added something new every time.
For our first drill of the year, we just duplicated what we had done to date. Jordan got on the intercom and walked the campus through the drill. For our second drill, we added a scrolling message with key points from Jordan’s script. We are now at a point where we can run drill scenarios with a warning sound, prerecorded message, and scrolling text with the click of a button.
Throughout this process, we also introduced cross-training, where I played the role of Matt in a drill, Matt played the role of Jordan, and Jordan played the role of me. We continue to find areas for system growth that we will introduce over the next few months.
In all, this partnership has grown over the past school year and is still growing. Informacast is a big part of our collaboration, but we now act and work as one team rather than two entities coming together occasionally. They run ideas and projects past me, and I do the same with them. The partnership benefits both departments and the school as a whole.