One incident, from the first decision to the stand down
Six steps. This is what the software does today — not what it will do, and not what the category does in general.
Raise it
Someone with authority raises the alert
A member of your leadership team opens the Signal 7 dashboard in a browser on your school network and signs in. They choose who the alert goes to — the whole site, or one building — and press the button.
It is a web page, so it works from the office PC, a laptop in a corridor or a tablet. There is nothing to install to raise an alert.
Before anything is sent, Signal 7 shows exactly what is about to happen: the target, the words that will appear on the screens, and a box that has to be ticked to confirm it is genuine. One decision, taken on purpose.
In the room
Every classroom screen changes at once
Every Windows PC, laptop and tablet in the targeted area that is running the Signal 7 client takes over its own screen with the alert. It is a full-screen window with no frame, on top of everything else, and the taskbar is hidden.
The person in the room cannot close it, minimise it, alt-tab past it, or dismiss it with Escape or Alt+F4. It stays until the alert is stood down from the dashboard.
Staff have nothing to learn. No app to open, no login, no shortcut, nothing to carry. The screen appears on its own, and there is exactly one thing a member of staff can do with it — that is step 4.
The wording on the screen is yours. Signal 7 ships a template; you edit it so the screen says the same thing your lockdown plan and your training already say.
The classroom alert is visual. The screen takes over, but the machine in the room does not make a sound — so a room with its screen off is a room the alert has not reached. Your plan should say what covers those rooms.
Targeting
The right building, and only the right building
If you targeted one building, only that building's screens change. The rest of the school carries on.
Signal 7 decides where a PC is from the network connection itself, not from anything the PC says about itself. Your IT lead tells the server once which network ranges belong to which building; after that there is nothing to set up on individual machines.
That is worth a sentence on its own: a PC cannot claim to be somewhere it is not. The decision is made on the server, so no device can talk its way into another building's lockdown.
Coming back
Staff press one button, and you watch it land
The only control on the alert screen is Acknowledge. A member of staff presses it, and the count on the dashboard goes up.
During the incident, the person running it can watch acknowledgements arrive — which tells them the alert is reaching rooms rather than sitting in front of empty ones.
Be clear about what that is: a live count, during the incident. Signal 7 does not keep a per-person record afterwards of who acknowledged. The activation log records the incident; it does not record the room.
Where it runs
All of it on your own network
The server that holds the alert runs on a Windows server in your school. In the on-premises install there is no cloud component, and no alert data leaves your site.
There are three pieces and they are all yours: the server that holds the alert, the dashboard you raise it from, and the client on each classroom PC.
The installer itself currently needs internet access from your server to complete. That is on our list to remove, and it does not change how alerts travel once Signal 7 is running.
Stand down
One button ends it, the same way one button started it
All Clear goes out from the same dashboard. Every screen releases and the machines return to normal.
The incident is written to the activation log — what was sent, where it was sent and when it was stood down — so there is something to put in front of a governors' meeting afterwards.
What has to be in place
Three things, and your IT lead already has two of them.
- A server
- A Windows server on your networkIt holds the alert and decides where it goes.
- A database
- PostgreSQLInstalled for you by the Signal 7 installer.
- The classrooms
- Windows PCs, laptops and tablets running the clientInstalled once; it starts with the machine. Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android coming soon.
Questions about limits, sound, doors and what we have not built yet are answered plainly in the questions page.
See it do this on your own screens
A short demo of the dashboard, the classroom alert and a full stand-down. No pressure, and we will answer the hard questions first.