Launch and maintain your Alerts
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Launch
We’ll work with you to establish a time to go live.
Once you’ve launched, continue working with Google as outlined below to keep your alerts in good working order.
Maintain your alerts
Once your alerts are publicly visible, it’s very important to maintain a dedicated and responsive team to ensure a good product experience.
- What’s expected from Google?
- Regularly process user comments and feedback, and gather performance insights.
- What's expected from you?
- Quickly acknowledge and resolve issues that Google reports to you, such as downed feeds or unparseable CAP content.
Publish periodic test alerts
Work with your Google Team to agree on a testing schedule, especially if you only occasionally publish alerts.
Please follow these testing guidelines:
- Always use
<status>Test</status> to prevent the public from seeing test alerts. You should also verify that your other distribution channels respect the Test flag too.
- Create test alerts for your most extreme event types.
- Publish test CAP alerts to your normal production feed, not a staging or test environment.
- You may use actual info from a past event, but ensure
<sent>, <effective>, and <expires> times are current to the test.
- Issue at least one test update, cancellation, or all-clear message along with the initial test alert to be sure that the updating mechanism is working as intended.
We’ll follow up with you after the test to confirm whether we ingested the alerts successfully, or to report any issues that should be resolved.
Notify Google Public Alerts of changes
To ensure that end users continue to receive correct alerting information, we
recommend that you establish public or clear mechanisms to notify Google and the
public about updates to your CAP format or additional data.
Provide a news feed (RSS) like NOAA's SCN feed or send an email to google-public-alerts@google.com that announces all updates, preferably linking to the new version of any updated information.
Email google-public-alerts@google.com in advance of major setup or configuration
changes. Announce changes well in advance, including the expected date of implementation change.
If possible, we’d like to know about the following at least 30 days in advance:
- New types of alerts or events
- Changes to critical values of your CAP data for existing event/alert types
- Changes to your geodata/shapefiles
- Planned feed downtime or maintenance
- New feed URL
- New certificates (before the old ones expire), if you digitally sign your CAP
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Last updated 2025-08-28 UTC.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-28 UTC."],[[["\u003cp\u003eGoogle will collaborate with you to determine a launch date and provide ongoing support to ensure your alerts are functioning effectively.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eMaintaining a dedicated team to address issues reported by Google, such as feed disruptions or content errors, is crucial for a positive user experience.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eRegular testing of your alerts, including extreme event scenarios and update mechanisms, using the \u003ccode\u003e<status>Test</status>\u003c/code\u003e tag to avoid public visibility is recommended.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eYou should notify Google of any changes to your CAP format, data, or feed configuration, including new alert types, critical value updates, and planned downtime, preferably 30 days in advance.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["After launch, maintain a dedicated team to ensure a good product experience. You should quickly resolve issues reported by Google, and publish periodic test alerts using `\u003cstatus\u003eTest\u003c/status\u003e` on your production feed. Notify Google Public Alerts about CAP format updates, data changes, or feed modifications via a news feed or email to google-public-alerts@google.com. Provide at least 30 days' notice for major changes such as new alert types, data value changes, downtime, new feed URLs, or new certificates.\n"],null,["# Launch and maintain your Alerts\n\nLaunch\n------\n\nWe'll work with you to establish a time to go live.\n\nOnce you've launched, continue working with Google as outlined below to keep your alerts in good working order.\n\nMaintain your alerts\n--------------------\n\nOnce your alerts are publicly visible, it's very important to maintain a dedicated and responsive team to ensure a good product experience.\n\nWhat's expected from Google?\n: Regularly process user comments and feedback, and gather performance insights.\n\nWhat's expected from you?\n: Quickly acknowledge and resolve issues that Google reports to you, such as downed feeds or unparseable CAP content.\n\n### Publish periodic test alerts\n\nWork with your Google Team to agree on a testing schedule, especially if you only occasionally publish alerts.\n\nPlease follow these testing guidelines:\n\n- Always use `\u003cstatus\u003eTest\u003c/status\u003e` to prevent the public from seeing test alerts. You should also verify that your other distribution channels respect the Test flag too.\n- Create test alerts for your most extreme event types.\n- Publish test CAP alerts to your normal production feed, not a staging or test environment.\n- You may use actual info from a past event, but ensure `\u003csent\u003e`, `\u003ceffective\u003e`, and `\u003cexpires\u003e` times are current to the test.\n- Issue at least one test update, cancellation, or all-clear message along with the initial test alert to be sure that the updating mechanism is working as intended.\n\nWe'll follow up with you after the test to confirm whether we ingested the alerts successfully, or to report any issues that should be resolved.\n\n### Notify Google Public Alerts of changes\n\nTo ensure that end users continue to receive correct alerting information, we\nrecommend that you establish public or clear mechanisms to notify Google and the\npublic about updates to your CAP format or additional data.\n\nProvide a news feed (RSS) like [NOAA's SCN feed](http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/notif.htm) or send an email to [google-public-alerts@google.com](mailto:google-public-alerts@google.com) that announces all updates, preferably linking to the new version of any updated information.\n\nEmail [google-public-alerts@google.com](mailto:google-public-alerts@google.com) in advance of major setup or configuration\nchanges. Announce changes well in advance, including the expected date of implementation change.\n\nIf possible, we'd like to know about the following at least 30 days in advance:\n\n- New types of alerts or events\n- Changes to critical values of your CAP data for existing event/alert types\n- Changes to your geodata/shapefiles\n- Planned feed downtime or maintenance\n- New feed URL\n- New certificates (before the old ones expire), if you digitally sign your CAP"]]
