The following sections describe how to launch and maintain public alerts.
Launch
Public Alerts works with you to set a time when your alerts go live. To keep your alerts in good working order after you launch, continue to work with Google as outlined in the following sections.
Maintain your alerts
To ensure a good product experience after your alerts are publicly visible, maintain a dedicated and responsive team.
What to expect from Google
- Public Alerts regularly processes user comments and feedback and gathers performance insights.
What Google expects from you
- Quickly acknowledge and resolve issues that Google reports to you. Examples are downed feeds or unparseable CAP content.
Publish periodic test alerts
Work with your Google team to agree on a test schedule, especially if you only publish alerts occasionally.
Follow these test guidelines:
Use
<status>Test</status>, so the public doesn't see test alerts. Verify that your other distribution channels also respect the Test flag.Create test alerts for your most extreme event types.
Publish test CAP alerts to your normal production feed, not to a staging or test environment.
You can use actual information from a past event, but make sure that the
<sent>,<effective>, and<expires>times are current to the test.To make sure that the update mechanism works as intended, issue at least one test update, cancellation, or all-clear message along with the initial test alert.
After the test, Public Alerts follows up with you to confirm that Google ingested the alerts successfully or to report any issues for you to resolve.
Notify Google Public Alerts about changes
To make sure that end users continue to receive correct alert information, establish clear mechanisms to notify Google and the public about updates to your CAP format or additional data.
Provide a news feed (RSS) like the NOAA SCN feed, or send an email to Google Crisis Response support that announces all updates. Preferably, link to the new version of any updated information.
Before you make major setup or configuration changes, email Google Crisis Response support. Announce changes well in advance, and include the expected date of the implementation change.
If possible, Public Alerts wants to know about the following updates at least 30 days in advance:
- New types of alerts or events.
- Changes to the critical values of your CAP data for existing event or alert types.
- Changes to your geodata or shapefile maps.
- Planned feed downtime or maintenance.
- New feed URLs.
- New certificates (before the earlier ones expire), if you digital sign CAP.