When a school initiates an Emergency Roll in Orah, students receive notifications through the app. Previously, these notifications depended entirely on the device's notification settings. If a student had disabled notifications for the Orah app, they might not receive the alert. With the introduction of Critical Alerts, this has changed. Critical Alerts bypass standard notification settings, ensuring that students receive emergency messages regardless of their device’s silent or "Do Not Disturb" settings. However, for this feature to work effectively, students must enable Critical Alerts on their devices when they first install or update the app.
Key Updates on Critical Alerts:
Override Silent Settings – When enabled, Critical Alerts will notify students even if their phone is on silent or has notifications disabled.
Student Action Required – Upon first using the Orah app, students must accept Critical Alerts. If they decline, they won’t receive emergency notifications unless they manually update their settings later.
School Process Adjustment – Schools should ensure students are aware of this requirement and encourage them to enable Critical Alerts during onboarding.
Future Enhancements:
Orah is working towards automating the Critical Alerts setting, ensuring that students don’t have to manually enable the feature. However, this is still in development and currently requires user consent at the device level.
How to Enable Critical Alerts
To ensure full emergency communication, students should follow these steps:
Open the Orah app.
Navigate to notification settings.
Enable Critical Alerts to receive emergency notifications under all conditions.