Room Alert ‘Insider Look’ – Protecting Our Building with Room Alert Monitors and RoomAlert.com

In a few past installments, we’ve looked at how we’ve used Room Alert and RoomAlert.com here at AVTECH to monitor our own facilities. Thankfully alerts have let us know when we’ve experienced environment issues in our own datacenter as well as within our building. In fact, some of those instances have led to improvements and new features in RoomAlert.com after our own team used them in real-world situations.

Recently, we ran into a situation with the facilities manager who helps oversee our building, along with the other buildings in our Cutler Mill complex. He let us know he was constantly concerned about the buildings in the cold New England winters. Some of the areas are unheated, yet have sprinkler pipes and plumbing that could freeze and cause damage. Within minutes we knew it was a scenario we wanted to share to show just how easy it is to use Room Alert monitors and RoomAlert.com for new users.

Building and facility concerns in the cold

Our primary offices are in Cutler Mill, a historic mill complex in Warren, Rhode Island. While the interior spaces have mostly been restored and had modern amenities added, there are still some sections of the buildings that contain older infrastructure. One of those locations is the tower of our building; it contains older pipes and woodwork since it’s not in day to day use.

In fact, those older pipes unfortunately froze and burst a few years back in the middle of the night, right in the middle of a typical New England winter. No one wants to drive to their office in the middle of the night and find the fire department there with water pouring out of one of the doors. Thankfully the damage didn’t impact us or the other businesses in the complex, but it was still a costly situation that thousands of other organizations will most likely have to suffer through this winter as well.

During a conversation among employees, the facilities manager who oversees all of the buildings and common spaces in the complex mentioned offhandedly that he sometimes worries about the little used areas of our buildings. He remembered the burst pipes in the tower, and admitted that he sometimes woke up in the middle of the night, concerned about how low the temperatures were getting and worried about another burst pipe situation. He even drove to the office late at night a few times just to be sure everything was OK.

As soon as he mentioned that, we realized we had a perfect situation to introduce someone new to Room Alert and the account features in RoomAlert.com.

Alerting and reporting in the cloud

One of our engineers who was part of this conversation briefly described RoomAlert.com to our facilities manager; he thought getting alerts when the temperatures exceeded certain thresholds would take a lot of worries off his mind.

We already had Room Alert monitors and Digital Temperature sensors throughout our own offices, and RoomAlert.com was already monitoring and alerting on conditions. Since Ethernet connections were not that popular in 1868, Room Alert 3 Wi-Fi made it easy to extend our environment monitoring into the unfinished space in the tower. It only took a minute to add our facilities manager as a user in our organization’s RoomAlert.com account and we set him up to receive both email and text notifications in the event of an alert. We also have a number of other sensors collecting data, including Flood sensors that will send him an alert if water is detected in the building.

Once he was added as a new user, we showed him how to log into RoomAlert.com from his phone’s web browser so he could see temperature readings (along with other reports) in real time. He was amazed at how much data had been collected, so he could immediately see temperature trends in various points of our building. Within minutes he was navigating around the interface to see the various alerts that were set up, and what reports would be useful to him.

“I can’t believe how easy this is!”

Thanks to Room Alert monitors and the online reporting available through RoomAlert.com, our facilities manager can quickly and easily see what the temperature and humidity readings are anywhere within our building. He no longer has to be concerned about the building during cold spells in the winter, or heat waves in the summer, as he will now receive alerts should the temperature get too hot, or too cold.

If he just wants some peace of mind, all he needs to do is pick up his phone and log into his RoomAlert.com account to see current readings from Room Alert. There’s no longer a need for him to be worried at 2AM about the potential for burst pipes, water leaking during rain storms, or any other environment concern. Should anything trigger an alert, he’ll immediately receive both a text and an email so he can respond quickly.

Watching a new user with limited computer experience immediately latch onto RoomAlert.com was immensely satisfying. Since we’re a tech company, our employees are savvy when it comes to computer use, and are comfortable with cloud applications. Using RoomAlert.com  to monitor Room Alert devices isn’t a big deal for many of us… however it certainly is for our facilities manager. Seeing him learn the interface and alerts in a matter of minutes let us know that we’re on the right track to making Room Alert monitors and RoomAlert.com accessible for users of all types.

If your facilities manager is concerned about your building, add him or her as a user in your own RoomAlert.com account. And if for some reason you’re not monitoring your building, facilities, and critical assets with Room Alert and RoomAlert.com… let us know! With Room Alert starting at just $145, there’s a monitor for any organization.

Don’t let concern over cold weather this winter keep you or your facilities manager up at night! Monitor your facility with Room Alert devices and RoomAlert.com for peace of mind and asset protection. Remember, proactive monitoring is always better than disaster recovery!

Note: The former GoToMyDevices online monitoring and management platform was migrated into RoomAlert.com in December 2017. For more information, please see our announcement article and FAQ.