Once the app is on the computers: name and group them, decide what each scenario shows on a screen and who counts as staff, set up Get help and notices, read the fleet's health, collect diagnostics, and revoke a computer that leaves.
Admin → Desktop alerts has seven tabs: Computers, Enrolment Keys, Groups, Location Rules, Deployment, Get Help and Notices. Managing computers needs devices.manage, seeing them devices.view, and sending notices devices.notify. What each scenario shows on a screen is on the scenario itself, in Security Ops.
A computer's room (Science block, Room 12) is what responders see when Get help is pressed, so set it early. Give each computer a name and a room on the Computers tab, or let Location Rules do it from the computer's name as it enrols: a rule such as SCI-12- → Science block, Room 12 names a whole building at once. Groups collect computers by building, floor or role (Reception desks, Science block), and a scenario can target a venue, groups or the whole school.
On a shared computer the person signed in may be a pupil or a visitor. Set the staff group in the app's policy (StaffGroup: a local group, or a directory group the computer is joined to) and choose what a session outside it sees (NonStaffBehaviour): the scenario's code phrase card, or nothing. Outside the group there is no Get help, no Recent alerts and no notices, and the person is never named. If the computer cannot check the group it shows the alert and reports staff group unresolved in its health, rather than withhold a lockdown. On a Chromebook the rule is the organisational unit: install only to staff units.
Each scenario tile has a Desktop section: whether it goes to computers at all, where (the whole school, a venue, groups), the sound (alarm, chime, silent), the display (full, discreet on shared screens, discreet everywhere, with the code phrase staff will understand), whether acknowledgement is required, which status replies to offer, and whether the alert is read aloud. A test from a computer's page shows a real alert on that computer and tells nobody else.
The Get Help tab names the responders' room, which receives every press on its phones and computers; the escalation room and time, for a press nobody has seen; whether computers show Get help at all; and whether the What's happening? question is asked after a press, with which needs. Test Get help from a computer's page sends a practice request that is marked as a test everywhere.
The Notices tab sends a routine message to the computers you choose, for up to seven days, with or without a chime. It is never an alert: no alarm, no full screen, no lock screen. The tab shows how many computers showed it and how many pressed Got it. Withdraw a notice and it leaves every screen within a minute.
The Computers tab shows each computer's status, when it last connected, its version and the problems it has reported: a web filter, a missing audio output, a display the app could not show on, a Get help press that did not get through. Problems are grouped above the list, and Dismiss hides one you have dealt with until it recurs. An incident's Desktops panel shows which computers were reached and who acknowledged.
Tell staff what the app is for, that acknowledging, replying, On my way and Get help are recorded against the account signed in, that those records exist so the school knows its people were reached and are not an attendance record, and that a diagnostics bundle is collected only when an administrator asks and holds the app's own logs. The Desktop Alerts on Staff Computers article is written for them. Run a drill with the app in the first fortnight: a test alert to a few rooms, a Get help from one, and the all clear.