Emergency Alerts

Overview

In order to assist with the display of emergency alerts on campus, the Office of the Vice President for Communications (OVPC) has developed an easy-to-use emergency alert banner.  The publishing of alerts is managed by Division of Public Safety and Security (DPSS).

Website Banners

Below are the current integration methods that are officially supported.

WordPress Integration

If you are running WordPress you can simply install and activate the U-M Alerts plugin.  This plugin by default uses the development feed from DPSS.  This test will only display to WordPress administrators and turns on and off the emergency alert message usually every couple minutes or so.  When the alert shows and you are comfortable with the integration on your site go to the “U-M: Alerts” in Settings of the Dashboard and switch the Mode to “Production”.  There is also an option to have the HTML placed at the end of the <body> element in case there is some conflict that requires it to be placed there.  This is a less accessible location.

Non-WordPress Integration

To add the Alert banner to non-WordPress websites, you can simply include the following javascript on your site.  This script will automatically load required styles and scripts in order to display alert messages.

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://umich.edu/apis/umalerts/umalerts.js"></script>

This method does allow for some customization and you can do so by adding a block of javascript before the above script like:

<script type="text/javascript">
    window.umalerts = {
        mode    : 'prod',
        location: 'top'
    };
</script>
Customization Options

These are the currently supported customization options and their values.

mode:

  • prod (default)
    This is production and will only show if DPSS issues an emergency alert.
  • pprd
    This is pre-production from DPSS.  The message will cycle on and off every couple of minutes.
  • dev
    This is for development testing.  The message will always display.

location:

Here you can choose where the Banner HTML should be placed.  This should only be changed if there are compatibility issues with the default location.

  • top (default)
  • bottom

Need Help?

Every site and server can be a little different. If there are any issues integrating the alert banner into your website, please feel free to contact umdigital@umich.edu so we can assist.