InformaCast^®

InformaCast is a robust, full-featured system that allows users to simultaneously push an audio stream and/or a text message to multiple IP phones, InformaCast IP Speakers, the InformaCast Desktop Agent, and overhead paging systems. An administrator can select a prerecorded message or send a live broadcast through either a password-protected web page or the IP phone services menu.

InformaCast is ideal for:

• Organizations that need to be able to send emergency broadcasts, such as government agencies, schools and hospitals
• Organizations that need to do large-scale paging, including across multiple facilities and locations
• Schools, retailers and other organizations with complex scheduling needs like the Bell Scheduler feature to centralize all their paging, clocks and bells on a single server

New features include:

• E-mail and SMS Messaging. Using a scripting interface users can easily set up your InformaCast broadcasts to initiate e-mails or SMS messages.
• DORA (Direct Observation and Realtime Alerting) and Contact Closure Devices. Let your building systems talk to InformaCast with our companion product, DORA. You can use contact closure devices to send specific messages to InformaCast paging groups during certain times of the day.
• Intercom service. Phones may be subscribed to a new service offered by InformaCast which provides an intercom session between the phone and a single microphone-equipped speaker. The session is half-duplex (each end can either listen or talk, but not both at once), and control of the session is managed from the phone. Speaker selection is by dial code only.
• High-Quality Audio option. Messages which are to be used with only CDW Berbee IP Speakers and the InformaCast Desktop Agent (in other words, which will never need to reach phones or external paging systems via voice gateways) can now be recorded with higher fidelity (16 bits per sample, 44,100 samples per second).
  This is equivalent to the CD Audio standard, although broadcasts remain intrinsically monaural. Note that such messages consume far more network bandwidth (roughly eleven times, about 800Kb/sec) than the standard G.711 format which must still be used if telephony devices are to receive the message.