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Banner Users Gain Access to Rave Alert Subscriber Data

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 10/09/09

A challenge for many emergency notification systems in higher education is having subscribers keep their contact information up to date in the service used for alerts. The notification service has no way to know that a student or staff member is using a different mobile number or e-mail address unless that person goes into the alert system and updates his or her contact details.

Recently, SunGard Higher Education and Rave Wireless have begun promoting the ability for their respective applications to work together to allow users of SunGard's administrative systems to add campus safety capabilities--a combination that some users have already implemented on their own. Rave Wireless sells the Rave Alert broadcast alerting system, a hosted software-as-a-service application that allows the institution to send broadcast or targeted text messages, e-mail, recorded voice messages, and RSS feeds to notify the campus community of important announcements. The company also offers Rave Guardian, a mobile alarm system that turns users' mobile phones into personal safety devices. The phone-accessed application can be armed and, when triggered, automatically sends the user's picture, mobile number, and personal information to campus police.

With the new partnership, contact information used by the Rave services can be updated from within SunGard's Banner Unified Digital Campus (UDC) or PowerCAMPUS UDC administrative systems. Distribution lists for targeted alerts can also be created automatically from lists and affiliations maintained within the Banner UDC systems.

"The integration of SunGard Higher Education's PowerCAMPUS and Rave Alert allows us to effortlessly manage users across both systems," said Marty Christofferson, dean of Campus Technology for Tompkins Cortland Community College in Dryden, NY. "Without a doubt, PowerCAMPUS customers will be interested in this package."

"From the very beginning of implementing Rave Alert, we have been using Banner as our repository for subscriber profiles," said Pat Burns, vice president for IT at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. "This allows users to manage their profile details interactively via a self-service portal. This has worked incredibly well for us, and we have implemented the same process with Rave Guardian. SunGard and Rave are a great combination for us."