1. Why Is It Necessary to Conduct a Drill Exercise
Prior to any real emergency, it is essential that your safety team is thoroughly familiar with the CrisisGo Direct911 process. This level of preparedness ensures a prompt and efficient response during actual events, helping to minimize the risk of operational issues. The CrisisGo Drill Alert feature allows you to send test alerts using simulated E911 services, ensuring your team is well-prepared for real emergencies.
WARNING: Before conducting an E911 drill exercise, make sure the following prerequisites are met:
You have followed these instructions to enable the CrisisGo Direct911 (E911) feature for your testing building: How To Enable Direct911 (E911) For Building(s)
The CrisisGo Support Team has completed the building address verification, as described in this section, and the building status has changed from Pending Review to Active.
At least one E911 Emergency Contact for the building has a status of Verified. See details here.
The dedicated Alert Types and Message Groups have been correctly preconfigured to allow you to send out drill alerts. If not, please contact CrisisGo Support for assistance.
If these conditions are not met, your drill may not function properly.
2. How to Send Out a Drill E911 Alert
To conduct your first E911 Drill Exercise, follow the step-by-step instructions below.
TIP: Rest assured, initiating a Drill Alert is completely safe—there is no risk of contacting a real E911 dispatch center. During the drill, all interactions are simulated, and a test bot is provided for your team to practice with.
For more information on how CrisisGo Direct911 works in both Real Emergencies and Drill Exercises, see details here: How It Works.
1. Open the CrisisGo app and navigate to the Fast Alert page. Alternatively, go to your message group that has the E911 feature enabled and open the alert list for that group. You should see a red E911 marker in the top-right corner of your configured alert type.
NOTE: Only alerts that have completed the E911 configuration will display the corresponding marker. If you do not see the marker, it means your E911 configuration is incomplete.
Please ensure you have followed all the steps outlined here to complete the setup. If you continue to experience issues after following the instructions, please contact CrisisGo Support for further assistance.
2. Click or tap the alert name to select the E911 alert. On the alert sending page, check the "Drill" option. The page color will change from red to blue, indicating that you are now in Drill Exercise mode and about to send a Drill Alert. Once the Drill option is checked, fill in any required information, then click 'Send' to send the drill alert.
3. Once the drill alert is sent, your safety team's CrisisGo app will immediately receive the notification.
Here's the important part: at the same time, CrisisGo will automatically call your E911 Emergency Contact. If the contact answers, they will hear a message similar to:
"This is a Drill Alert sent from [Building Name]. Press '1' to connect to the E911 test service."
4. The contact should safely press '1' to confirm to CrisisGo that they are available now. The call will then be automatically redirected to the 933 Bot Test Service. The contact will hear a message from the 933 Bot Test Service containing the enhanced information that sent by CrisisGo, similar to:
"This is the E911 test service. Your information is [Building Name], [Alert Type], [Additional Information]..."
Once they hear this message, they can review the information and confirm that the drill was successful. If the primary contact is unavailable, CrisisGo will automatically call the backup contacts, in the order listed in the E911 Contacts list.
3. What If It's a Real Emergency?
In the event of a real emergency, simply send out a real E911 alert without selecting the "Drill" option that mentioned here.
The process is almost the same as a drill. The only difference is that once your emergency contact answers the call from CrisisGo and presses '1' to confirm it's not a voicemail, CrisisGo will connect them directly to the real E911 dispatch center, along with all the enhanced information about your building and alert information. For more details, please refer to: How It Works.