Using a Template

Your administrator may have created message templates for you to use. These templates enable you to send emergency messages quickly, as the text and recipients have already been defined for you.

  1. In the Secure Messages screen, tap the Compose icon at the top right of the screen.

    If message templates have been created for your environment, the New Text screen appears.

  2. Tap the name of the message template that you want to use. The template is displayed.

  3. To add additional message recipients, tap Add Recipient to display the Select User / Group screen.

    When the Select User / Group screen appears:

    1. Filter the recipient list using one of the following options, available at the top left of the screen:
      • Favorites: Show favorites only.

      • Contacts: Show all contacts.

    2. In the Search field, type the first few characters of the name of the contact to which you want to send a message. Each character you type performs an incremental search displaying a list of closest matching contacts.
    3. Tap on a contact name to include the contact in the message.

      If you are in the Favorites screen and the contact is an individual user, the color of the ring around the contact's photo or initials indicates the contact's availability:

      • Green: The contact is available.
      • Yellow: The contact is in Do Not Disturb mode for voice, text, or both.
      • Red: The contact is unavailable.

      Details on the contact's current status are provided below the contact's name and title. These include the following:

      • The contact's availability status, corresponding to the colored ring around the user's photo or initials. This is one of Available, Do Not Disturb, or Not Available. For Do Not Disturb, the current status indicates whether calls, messages, or both or are not being let through.
      • Messages Forwarding indicates that messages to this contact are being forwarded to another contact.
      • Off Campus indicates that the contact is available but is not on the corporate network. An example of this is when the contact is logged into the VMP Web Console.
      Note: If a message recipient is having messages forwarded to another contact, that contact is automatically added to the list of recipients when the message is sent.

      To remove a contact from the message, tap the contact name in the To field to select it and tap the backspace key. If you have selected a contact for removal, tap the space bar to cancel the remove operation and continue with the message.

  4. In the Subject field, if no message subject has been provided in the template, type the message subject. If subject text has been provided, you can edit it.
  5. If your system administrator has implemented the Engage patient context adapter, you can add a link to information on a specific patient to the message. See Real-time Situational Awareness for details. To add patient information:
    1. Tap the Tap to attach patient info link. The Select Patient screen appears.

      If no patient information is available, this link does not appear.

    2. Tap My Patients to see a list of patients assigned to you, or tap All Patients to view a list of all patients for which information is available.
    3. Type text in the search field to limit the patient list to patients whose name matches your search text.
    4. Tap on the patient whose information you want to add.

    A link to the patient information is now displayed in the message.

    Note: If you have attached patient information to your message, and there is no text in the Subject field, the patient name appears as the subject in the Secure Messages screen.
  6. The Message field contains the message text that has been provided as part of the messaging template. You can edit this text if you like.
  7. Below the Message field, your administrator may have created additional fields in which you can provide information. One or more of these fields may be required. Here is an example:

    When you send a message using this template, the custom fields are included as part of the text of the message:

    For more information on the templates and fields in use in your environment, contact your administrator.

  8. Tap Priority to change the message priority.

    Select one of Normal (the default), High, or Urgent.

    See Sending a Message for details on how these priority levels are handled.

    Important: On some devices, messages sent with Urgent priority may be spoken out loud to some recipients. Sending confidential patient health information with either of these priorities may violate privacy regulations.
  9. Tap Notification Expiration to specify a time limit for this notification, after which the message conversation will expire. Select Never (the default) if the notification never expires, or select 2, 5, or 10 minutes. You can also specify a custom number of minutes before the notification expires.
    Note: Once a message conversation has expired, the message will no longer be delivered to VCS and VMP Web Console users that have not yet received it and will not be retrieved the next time they log in.
  10. Tap Response Expiration to specify a time limit for the response request. Select Never (the default) if the response request never expires, or select 2, 5, or 10 minutes. You can also specify a custom number of minutes before the response request expires.
  11. Tap Notify Me if you want to receive a notification if you do not receive a response within a specified time. In the Notify me screen, select Send Notification to enable response notification. Select a time period, which can be 2, 5, or 10 minutes. You can also specify a custom time period.

    If the message is not responded to during this time period, a notification banner is displayed at the top of the screen, and a red star icon is displayed in the message link in the Secure Messages screen:

    Tap Close to hide the notification.

  12. Select Deliver to on-campus users only if this message is to be delivered only to users who are on-campus. This ensures that emergency messages are sent only to those people who can immediately respond to them.
  13. Tap in the Response Options section to add a response option, and then type the text of the response option. Repeat until all of the response options that you want to specify have been added. To remove a response option that you have added, tap Delete.

    Note: If you are sending a message to a Vocera badge, response options can be a maximum of 15 characters.
  14. Tap Send to send the message.
Note: If the message is not sent successfully, Vocera Collaboration Suite will attempt to resend the message for two minutes before giving up.