Wolfalert Alertus

Emergency Desktop Notifications

Alertus Desktop alerting software allows NC State to relay critical emergency notifications and communications. During an emergency situation, the screen will flash with an emergency message until the user acknowledges the message. The alert appears on an individual’s laptop or personal computer as a pop-up window overlaying all other open windows on the computer. This software is available to all University classroom, lab, faculty and staff PC’s logged onto the campus network. It is also available for download to personal laptops for all students, faculty and staff; but will only be activated when logged onto the campus network via wifi or ethernet connection.

NC State’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) maintains the central server running the notification software and administers distribution of this free software, which members of the NC State community can install on their desktop or laptop computers.

Once the software is installed, you will see an Alertus icon in your taskbar. The icon will be yellow when connected to the University’s network and red when not connected. When not connected to the University’s server, you will not be able to receive emergency notifications.

In order to receive desktop notifications:

• Your computer must be on the NC State network
• Your computer must be turned on and not in sleep mode

Once an alert is issued to your device you must click the green ‘Acknowledge’ button to remove the pop-up. Alerts may be set to expire after a few minutes or a few hours depending on the situation. If the message is not acknowledged prior to expiration, the pop-up will automatically disappear from your computer.

Ongoing emergency communications will be relayed through the suite of WolfAlert tools and the University’s homepage www.ncsu.edu.

For more information on downloading the desktop notification software, contact the NC State Help Desk at 919-515-HELP (4357) or help@ncsu.edu