This semester the Wesleyan Station (Wes Station) has implemented a new digital program to notify students about their package deliveries called My Digital Doorman. According to Associate Director of Information Technology Auxiliary Services Allen Alonzo, the University first heard about the program when the company contacted them this summer.
“We were approached by the company over the summer and they wanted to do a pilot trial and it looked much more efficient than the system we had been using so we just decided to roll it out this fall,” he said. “We did extensive testing and got some new hardware to print labels and scan bar codes.”
The new program allows students to receive notifications about their package arrivals much quicker than the old email system.
“When a package arrives, an email will go out immediately, instead of having to wait for all the hand-held devices to sync, which would add maybe two or three hours to the package notifications,” Alonzo said.
The program is hosted similarly to a cloud-based system, and Wes Station provided the vendor’s programmers with campus mailbox information. The new program also allows students the option of receiving mobile alerts.
“Students can sign up for text messaging if there’s a package,” Alonzo said. “Even though they don’t get all the information, at least they know there’s a package there, and they should still check their email to get more specifics as far as where the package is located and where it’s from.”
Mail Services Supervisor Holly Nicolas said he and his staff are still getting familiar with the new system.
“We’re still learning the new system so we know what to expect,” he said. “We’ll see how it goes.”
Alonzo said that the system had been working well so far, but that the vendor had to upgrade to new servers this week after an increase in usage this past weekend.
“We got a note from the vendor that they’re expecting heavy usage with all their other college customers, but they’re upgrading their servers and should have that resolved by Monday,” he said. “It was a little bit slower than usual [on Friday], but they’re switching to a new server for [this] week.”
Another change by Wes Station this summer was the conversion of the old multipurpose room on the basement level of the Usdan University Center (Usdan) to a storage room for larger boxes to be used by the package center. Alonzo believes Wes Station will continue to use the Digital Doorman program for the foreseeable future.
“[We’ll keep it] as long as nothing better comes by,” he said. “We’re always looking to do some improvements, and this is the best thing we saw so far.”