Getting Started With AMGAlerts Congratulations on your new account with us! Now the fun part starts, and we are not joking. You ll be happily surprised at the ease of getting the system up and ready to send alerts. Set-up is an easy, three-step process described below. First, get set up! We cannot overstate the importance of understanding how the system works with a quick read through the User Manual and then putting some thought into the data setup. You do not want to enter lots of communication profiles by hand or via upload, or launch the portals so your Subscribers can do it, to only THEN decide that you need to add optional information dropdowns, or edit that Category information. The idea is that you want to know what information to collect before actually collecting it. So make sure you address the following: 1) Category is a very broad description that is special in that you can manage information collection through the portals because each Category has a different link. When you add optional dropdowns or free text entry fields, you can tell the system to which categories these apply. For example, if I want a Location dropdown that only applies to Categories 1 and 2, label a field Location, check the Dropdown box, and check in Applies to Cat: both the 1 and the 2 boxes. Then I click Save at the bottom of the page. You now have a dropdown that applies when people add or modify records. If they use an external link (they are not an admin and can t select their Category, only Category 1 and 2 people will see this new option. Then go back up and you ll see a link in that area called Administer Optional 1 dropdowns (assuming that this is the first optional field you ve used) and click it to add your dropdown items. This is also covered in the User Manual (toward the end of the document) in slightly more detail, as are most points in this document. For example, you might have Category 1 named Employees, and Category 2 named Management, and Category 3 named Security. You might then specify an optional field called Location that applies only to Categories 1 and 2, because you would never need to launch a notification to Security based on Location. This keeps the system as simple as possible.
2) Determine whether or not you wish to use the Alternate Email Address feature. By default, this is turned off for simplicity. Subscribers enter one email address, and that is where they get their notifications. This is also where they receive Update Requests and other system maintenance communications. In the case of corporate users, this might be a mycompany.com address in the case of their employees. But what if the main mail server is down and no email is going to addresses with a domain mycompany.com? Having the Alternate Email Address feature turned on (which is done centrally by AMG Alerts on request), adds another email address field for the Subscriber to fill out. Then at the time of Launch, there will be an option that allows the Admin to indicate if mycompany.com is down. The system will then look for the alternate email in cases where the primary email contains the mycompany.com domain. Before any requests for information are made to the subscribers (see next step), the optional fields must be determined as should whether or not an alternate email address field should appear. On the subject of emails, if AMGAlerts emails will go to a single domain ie <username>@myorganization.com, make sure that your anti-spam system on myorganization.com s email server(s) will not reject email from our server(s) when receiving many emails as could happen in an alert situation. Whitelist the domain amgalerts.com and/or our IP addresses as required by your anti-spam software. Feel free to contact us to find out which IP addresses we currently use for email sending. 3) Determine whether or not you would like to brand your external portals or your alerts. There is a document under Support that goes over the Alert Branding options. For portal branding, generally it s just a matter of sending us a suitable logo and we will take it from there. Second, communicate Let your Subscriber base know that you are implementing a system that will enhance the service you offer. Describe its intended use. You may link to our web site. This communication may be done in a variety of ways through an e-mail that you send, through a newsletter, or perhaps through a popular section of your web site. Often, you ll use all methods at your disposal. You ll be pleased to learn that for much of your time-sensitive communication, this will be last time you ll have much of a challenge talking to everyone. You will also want to make sure Subscribers with e-mail addresses white list the amgalerts.com domain through their ISP or their e-mail software, just to be sure that alerts and update requests that are delivered via e-mail reach their intended targets and don t end up in Spam folders. Third, decide how you will enter the Subscriber Contact information into your AMGAlerts database This is the Final step in getting set up! When you log in to the Control Panel you will see an Administer Subscribers button. Clicking on that button brings up the Subscriber Administration page, and under Add Subscribers, you will see the three choices shown below:
The first option is Add Subscriber. This option allows the addition of Subscribers one at a time. When you click on it you ll see the following screen: This allows the entry of all contact information, as well as preferences for Voice, and general Alert mode. You also must choose a category here. If you have only e-mail address, you may simply enter that, and you may use the Request Updates function, which uses e-mail, to have the Subscriber enter the remaining information. Note that you should always choose a category here. A Subscriber cannot choose his or her category. Most large organizations choose not to enter their Subscriber information one at a time. The next two methods are generally used when there might be hundreds, or thousands, of entries.
As a second option, you may Upload a List. This involves simply downloading an Excel template and then populating it, either manually or through an import from another system you may have that contains contact information. Just as with the individual Add Subscriber function, you may choose only to populate name and e-mail address as the only contact information, and allow the Subscriber to update the rest through the Request Updates function, which will send the Subscriber an e-mail with a link that directs them to the Updates screen. Again, in addition to the e-mail address, Category information must be a part of the uploaded information because the Subscriber cannot update that. You also need to pre-populate AlertPref and IVRPref based on the information you re loading (see User Manual) The Third and Best option is to Send or Publish Links. This method allows Subscribers to directly access and enter data into your AMGAlerts database. You may use your own e-mail to do this, or you may distribute the link in any fashion that suits your Subscribers, whether it is in a newsletter or on your own web site. This is often coupled with an explanation of your new alerts program. When choosing Send Links from the AMGAlerts Control Panel>Administer Subscribers, you ll see a page such as that below: Any of your intended Subscribers who visit the link in red may put themselves into the system. Note that the Cat= portion of the link is what identifies the category for the Subscriber. So in the case of a school where category 1 is Students, Category 2 is Parents, Category 3 is Employees, and Category 4 is Administration, the links will be different because you ll want Cat=1000 for students (they are in the first category, so a 1 is in the first position), and Cat=0100 for Parents, because they are in the second category. So Faculty might be Cat=0011 they are in both Category 3 AND 4 because they are Faculty, but they are also
Employees, so a 1 is in the third position as well as in the fourth position. So, for example, their entire link would be: https://www.amgalerts.com/frmuserinput.asp?usr=rbhj5amg0&cat=0011 You will want to publish the links in different batches for different groups (Categories), or publish multiple links and give instructions on which ones to click. Clicking the above example link would take a potential Subscriber to a page like this: This page differs from what an Administrator would see because it does not allow category selection. The directions listed explain the fields shown. Also note that you have a few options here and these should be considered prior to rolling out the portals:
1) Make sure you have the data setup the way you want it (but then we saw that earlier in this write-up, right?) 2) The portals may be branded with your color scheme and logo. See the information on Branding under Support. 3) If you want a special set of instructions just for your account, we can add those as a link on this page. Just send us a PDF document. Note that our instructions are selfexplanatory so you should only do this if you have special information gathering guidelines. 4) If you do have special information-gathering guidelines as noted, we can actually put logic behind the form to assure that the Subscriber follows the rules. For example, sometimes our customer wants the Subscribers to use their personal email addresses and not company addresses, in case their own email server goes down. We can facilitate that with restrictive logic. 5) Because sometimes there are issues with Subscribers receiving short code SMS messages that are only discovered on the first alert, it s not a bad idea to advise Subscribers whose alert preference is Text to send AMGALERTS OPTIN to our short code, which in the U.S. is 878787. A link may be visited more than once in order to put in more than one record. For example, a college may send the Student category link in an e-mail to students and, within that same e- mail, include a Parent category link so that the student may complete profiles for one or both parents. It could work the other way around in a primary education setting, where the parents get the links for themselves and the student and may complete new entries for both. Note that the Administrator may, through the Control Panel, disallow any new record entries using the links, perhaps after the initial campaign of data entry is complete, and then use manual or upload methods for any new entries that trickle in.