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SDSU Alertus Desktop Notifications

South Dakota State University has partnered with Alertus notification systems to enhance the ability to communicate with the community in an emergency. University leadership has placed a high emphasis on emergency preparedness and more comprehensive safety and security measures within the university community. Alertus supports that effort. For more information on campus emergency management efforts, visit the emergency management page.

We have combined our existing Everbridge Emergency Communications product with Alertus, creating a robust and redundant communication system. After extensive testing Alertus is now available for installation on personally owned Mac and Windows computers. Once installed, you will receive notifications through Everbridge in the manner you have selected and receive an Alertus announcement on your computer. To remove the message from your screen, simply acknowledge the alert.

Alertus will run on a Mac or PC and, once installed, automatically connects to our emergency notification servers. The tool is great for students, faculty and staff who take advantage of the SDSU network. Please note the software must be installed from a computer able to connect to InsideState or MyState with valid credentials. Afterward, it will work from anywhere in the world with an internet connection.

To ensure proper installation, make sure all computer system upgrades are installed.

Downloading and installing Alertus is quick, easy and takes just a few minutes. Once installed, the software runs in the background and you can verify it is connected by checking the icon in the System Tray (on Windows) or Menu Bar (on a Mac). If you have an active SDSU login, you can download and install Alertus.

Frequently Asked Questions

Alertus will only be used in an emergency when immediate action is required to address an incident that has impacted or may impact the safety of the SDSU Community. You will also receive notifications for routine tests of the South Dakota State University Emergency Communications System. These test will be announced before the test is conducted.

The Alertus Desktop software client was designed to run on a Windows or Mac computer.

  • Windows supported versions: Alertus Desktop has been tested and confirmed to work on Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Windows 8 systems need to enable .NET Framework 2.0.
  • Mac supported versions: Alertus Desktop has been tested and confirmed working on OSX 10.7 to OSX 10.10. Earlier versions should work; however, they have not been fully tested.

Yes, the client is set to pull data from the server should an alert be issued. The Alertus Software client protocol, used in both Alertus Desktop notifications and Digital Signage Device Override clients, is designed to be as lightweight as possible. When the system is idle with no active alerts, a single client request results in under 1 kilobyte of network traffic. While a message is active, the server response will include more information, but will rarely exceed 3 kilobytes for a single response. Clients will check in once per 20 seconds by default.

The Alertus Desktop client will work from anywhere in the world as long as you are connected to a network with access to the Internet. The client communicates to the server via standard internet traffic using HTTP.

For assistance with the software, contact the Support Desk via email or via phone at 605-688-6776.

For additional information about Alertus, please contact the Office of Emergency Management via email or via phone at 605-688-4251.