Have you signed up to receive the City of Somerville's CTY phone calls?

[somervillema311.livejournal.com]

The City of Somerville provides a free service of alerts via phone calls, text messages or email to let you, the constituent know about important civic information.

 Previous CTY calls have been about the following:

 * Possible snow emergencies.

* Construction projects.

* School closures

* Road detours

* Community events

 Signing up is quick and easy, just click on the link below and provide us with your information.

 https://portal.blackboardconnectcty.com/welcome.aspx?eiid=1207B6088C3473A4637E

 If you have any questions please call Somerville Constituent Services at 617-666-3311 or 311.

Comments

[ron_newman]

Welcome back to DSLJ. (But what happened to somerville311 who used to post here?)

Are you Jackie Rossetti or Michael Meehan or someone else at the city?

Somerville311

[somervillema311.livejournal.com]

Hi Ron,

My name is Jesse and I work out of the Constituent Services/311 Office. Happy to be a part of this LJ community.

I'm not sure who was posting under "Somerville311", but from now on the department is going to use the Somervillema311 profile.

We are also on Twitter at www.twitter.com/somerville311 and Facebook at www.facebook.com/somerville311

Thanks!

Re: Somerville311

[junesrose.livejournal.com]

just tried your twitter page....it does not exist...


??????

ETA: I did find this page though...

http://twitter.com/somervilleinfo

is there an additional one?

Re: Somerville311

[somervillema311.livejournal.com]

http://twitter.com/311somerville

Whoops, typed it in wrong earlier, but that link above should work. I also wrote the facebook one backwards as well. It should be www.facebook.com/311somerville.

Sorry about that,

Jesse

Re: Somerville311

[somervillema311.livejournal.com]

The city has two twitter feeds, 311Somerville which operates out of the Constituent Services office and Somervilleinfo which operates out of the Communication office. We will sometimes tweet the same information, but never conflicting information.

Thanks,
Jesse

Re: Somerville311

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Isn't there also SvilleSchools or something like thar?

Re: Somerville311

[somervillema311.livejournal.com]

Yes, but that one is primarily for Somerville schools. It was really helpfully yesterday about getting the news about SHS being closed for the day due to a power failure.

Re: Somerville311

[somervillema311.livejournal.com]

Actually Somervilleinfo is the Boston Globe's Somerville Twitter feed, the Communications office is Somervillecity.

Re: Somerville311

[ron_newman]

Thanks. Can you tell us your full name? Some of us may want to talk to you on the phone or in person at some point.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

A suggestion for service improvement: Would it be possible to segment the SMS alerts so I could sign up for only certain categories of notices? for instance, being able to get text alerts about snow emergency info without also getting text messages about other things like community events?

segmenting the SMS alerts

[somervillema311.livejournal.com]

I will look into this for you, but I think currently it's an "all or nothing" situation.

Thanks,
Jesse

Re: segmenting the SMS alerts

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Another possibility would be to have different hash tags for the twitter updates. If twitter doesn't yet have a way to direct certain hash tags to SMS, then I bet there will be clients that will do this soon. There are also twitter retweet bots.

The user model I'm thinking of is someone who wants to hear about snow emergencies asap (because "OH GOD TIME TO MOVE THE CARS PLZ") but doesn't want to otherwise get texted for stuff because not everyone has unlimited text messaging on their cellphone. :)

(I'm the person who set up a snow-emergency-only twitter acct (svillesnowemerg) a few years ago when the city didn't have a twitter presence, so I think I think too much about this stuff)

Re: segmenting the SMS alerts

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

That's why I had to get back off the system. Text messages are the best way to reach me with something important or potentially time critical, such as a snow emergency, but they do cost me money and I started feeling harassed and spammed by the city. When I signed on originally, the alert system was something like an emergency alert system, but now it's become more like office email.

Think about it: there really *has* to be one way to disseminate useful official information about planned construction, road closing for special events that have been scheduled months in advance, etc. and a totally different was to communicate urgent and emergency messages and messages about road floods, snow closings, other immediate/urgent issues. It's really not rocket-science.

Re: segmenting the SMS alerts

[somervillema311.livejournal.com]

May I suggest then following us on Facebook and Twitter. Most of the alerts (time critical or otherwise) that come from the CTY phone calls are also updated on both of those feeds as well.

Re: segmenting the SMS alerts

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately that's not a very useful suggestion for me, and I believe the same is true for a great number of Somerville residents. If I had access to wi-fi every day that might be a good solution, or would be likewise unnecessary since I could read updates here on LJ, too.

The reason that I had signed up for SMS service is that my work takes me away from computers and internet all day several days a week and on those days I'd like to keep up with what's important to keep up with but really can't handle being interrupted by announcements of parades and road work that I know about already or could read about when I get home to my computer.

Again: there's a difference between information it's worth being interrupted for, and information it's not. If finding out about something anytime in the next 24 hours is sufficient, it can be labeled "important" and should go to one announcement group for access in a timely fashion.

If it's potentially relevant anywhere from immediately to within the next 2 to 3 hours, and can *severely* impact constituents who do not hear about it it can be labeled "urgent" and should go out via more interrupt-driven media.

Please consider that not all users are at leisure to check and read messages all day long whenever they come in and that a great many people require uninterrupted work time and still access to true urgent or emergency information. The key to keep in mind when classifying a message is When must this information be acted upon? What are the consequences of not acting on it (when weighed against interrupting someone else's important work).

Re: segmenting the SMS alerts

[siderea]

You going to post those messages to your journal?

[avjudge]

Is there a way to choose just a certain type of notice? I don't want to get phone calls, just email. I may already be getting everything, but I signed up with the new interface anyway. But once again, as with the old interface, I didn't see a way to choose not to receive phone calls, so I just put in a fake number.

[leko.livejournal.com]

Yeah, putting in a fake number seems to be the only way to do it. I sent them an email asking about this and their response was something like "you are setup to only receive text messages" which made me think they completely missed the point of my question.

Text messages

[somervillema311.livejournal.com]

I just took a look at the sign up and it looks like you can enter the # you want to receive text messages to under "SMS Phone Number:"

I hope that helps!

Re: Text messages

[leko.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is indeed how you receive text messages. The complaint is that you cannot leave the phone number entry blank. Attempting to do so results in an error. Entering your phone number results in robocalls. So the only way to sign up for the service and get ONLY text messages is to enter a fake phone number in the main phone number field.

Re: Text messages

[somervillema311.livejournal.com]

Hi Leko,

I looked into this further and the way to get ONLY text messages is to put in a fake phone number for your primary, 999-999-9999 for example. This way you will only get texts and not robocalls.

Thanks!

Re: Text messages

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

So... that's kind of a great big bug. As in not a feature.

It may be something to raise as an issue at the next meeting concerning the efficacy of this web interface with the designer/developer.

Re: Text messages

[somervillema311.livejournal.com]

That a great point Srakkt, as without any instruction it could be very confusing. I will bring it up to the people who facilitate the sign up tool and see if any easy fix could be made.

Thanks!

Re: Text messages

[nurrynur.livejournal.com]

I was getting both emails and phone calls. I contacted 311 using the form Ron links to below and asked them to remove my phone number. Now I just get emails.

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

If you give a fake number, write it down somewhere. It took forever to finally get back off the list, because I had an old phone number listed and they couldn't find my entry.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Is there a way to UNSUBSCRIBE from these alerts?? I get them as phonecalls AND via email within seconds of each other, but email is really sufficient. Also, I'm going to move out of town in the fall, so I'm planning ahead. From all I've heard (here on DSLJ), there is no known way of getting removed. But there should be.

[ron_newman]

Try this form.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Oh Ron, you're a genius. :-D
Done! Thanks!