Vocera Platform

Release Notes - Version 6.1.0.96

Updated: April 20, 2021

About the Vocera Platform

The Vocera Platform optimizes patient safety by helping clinicians make real-time decisions and communicate instantly in critical situations; it is the intelligent ecosystem that connects all the people and information needed to deliver patient care.

With the intelligence of the Vocera Platform, clinicians can quickly determine what to prioritize next and close the loop faster with secure messaging, phone calls, and alert and alarm notifications--all in one place. You can locate people quickly, collaborate productively, and reduce the noise, using the device that fits your workflow--the Vocera Vina smartphone app, the V-Series Smartbadge, or the B-Series Badge. The Vocera Platform enables the flow of meaningful, actionable information between people and systems and allows it to be received when, where, and how it’s needed, keeping the patient at the center of care.

In addition, the Vocera Platform now offers simplified deployment, maintenance, and administration, as well as a smaller footprint requiring fewer servers.

What's New

This section summarizes the new features in this release.

What's New in Vocera Platform 6.1.0

This release includes enhancements to several areas of the Vocera Platform.

Voice Experience Enhancements

This release provides parity with voice experience features implemented through Vocera Voice Server 5.3.2, including the following:

  • Announcing phone numbers for incoming calls.

    When Announce Caller's Name After Tone is enabled in the Genie Settings section of User Defaults in the Vocera Platform Web Console, the Genie announces the caller's name, or if no name is available, the phone number.

  • Announcing group name when a message is sent to a group.

    When a message is sent to a group, the Genie announces the group name and the sender of the message. For example, the Genie may say, "You have a message for Med Surge Nurse from Charles Parker".

  • Ability to initiate or schedule a Code Lavender® event and send reminders for it.

    A Code Lavender event helps clinical staff members to continue after being involved with a difficult case, diagnosis, or loss. Hospital staff often feel fatigue, despair, and negative emotions after an unwelcome outcome, due to their growing attachment with a patient. A Code Lavender event helps hospital employees regain the mental and emotional strength to cope with these challenging situations.

    New voice commands to support this feature include "Schedule Code Lavender for <group name>>", "Start Code Lavender for <group name>>", "Delete Code Lavender Reminder for <group name>>", and "Delete All Code Lavender Reminders".

  • Automatically add doctor prefix to alternate spoken names.

    The Doctor Prefix field in the Speech Recognition section of Manage > Users obviates the need to create an alternate spoken name for a user who has the title of "Doctor".

  • A facility-level setting to control the user of Easter Eggs.

    Administrators can enable or disable the ability to use Easter Eggs commands for each facility.

  • Intelligent backoff strategies for Call, Broadcast, Add me to group, and Record Message commands.

    Intelligent command backoff offers additional help to users when the Genie fails to recognize the names of recipients of common voice commands.

  • Commands to lead you through mindfulness sessions of varying lengths.

    Mindfulness is a type of meditation that increases your awareness and improves your attention; it can reduce stress, sharpen concentration skills, and contribute toward your overall mental and physical health.

    Use the Play Mindfulness command to take a mindfulness break with a guided meditation of 30 seconds, one minute, or five minutes. This feature is enabled by default.

  • Automatic prompting for users to record names that are frequently spelled.

    The Genie interactively offers to learn the name of users if you spell it frequently when using the Call command. The Genie plays a prompt offering to learn the name that you spelled when you next log in.

  • Prompt to Play Unread Messages at Logout.

    When a user logs out, the Genie asks if you want to play unread messages before the logout occurs. This reminder is useful because messages are often not played during a busy day, and then forgotten.

  • The ability to schedule reminders for other users and groups, and the ability to schedule reminders for yourself.

    Reminders may be either recurring and non-recurring and can be scheduled through a device or the Vocera Platform Web Console.

  • Updated prompts when transferring a login from a device to the mobile app.

    When a logged-in user switches from a device to the app, the prompt now indicates that the user is being transferred to another device rather than being logged out.

  • Optional voice PIN authentication to play messages.

    Badge users can now define a Voice PIN (Personal Identification Number) that must be spoken before playing messages. The PIN requirement is set by the administrator for individual users or groups.

Web Console Enhancements

This release provides the following enhancements to the Vocera Platform Web Console:

  • First release of the Vocera Platform Staff Assignment application.

    Staff Assignment allows an individual such as a HUC or a clinical system such as Epic to populate room/bed locations with clinical staff assignments, making them available to the Vocera system for use in communication and the delivery of clinical events.

  • Tiered administration permissions, enabling system administrators to delegate specific responsibilities to other users.

    Using tiered administrators distributes the administrative maintenance, allowing system administrators to perform more complex tasks while tiered administrators handle the more routine maintence.

  • Ability to disable a user account through the Vocera Platform Web Console.

    Disabling an account is useful in situations when a user is temporarily not available. When the account is disabled, the user's name and alternate spoken names are removed from the system grammar, improving speech recognition; in addition, disabled users do not decrement your overall user count for licensing purposes.

  • The Device Monitor now provides status information for all logged-in devices.

    The Device Monitor the name of the logged-in user, the IP address of the device, and for users running the Vocera Vina application, the type of mobile device in use.

  • Message templates for the Vina Web.

    Templates allow you to send emergency messages or other messages quickly, as values for many of the fields in the message have already been supplied.

  • Browser-based mini-applications available to end users who have the appropriate permissions:

    • My Profile

      The My Profile application allows users to view and customize profile information, settings, and preferences related to Vocera devices and mobile applications.

    • My Workflow

      By default, the My Workflow application provides access to a set of workflows for four defined user roles: End User, Charge Nurse/Department Secretary, Super User, and Administrator. These default roles allow users to efficiently perform their responsibilities from a menu displayed in a web browser. System administrators can rename these roles, modify their workflows, and add additional roles/workflows.

Server-Side Enhancements

This release provides the following server-side enhancements:

  • Server-side support for Vocera Smartbadge.

    The Vocera Platform has now extended its support to the full range of Vocera clients: the touch-screen enabled Smartbadge, the voice-controlled Badge, and the Vocera Vina mobile application.

  • Support for newly introduced features in the Vocera Vina mobile app.

    See the Vocera Vina iOS or Android Release Notes for a complete list of new application features.

  • Support for Vocera SIP Telephony Gateway running directly on the Vocera Platform server.

    The Vocera Platform now provides a minimal IT footprint by running the voice service, workflow engine, database, and telephony gateway on the same machine.

  • Integration with the Vocera Analytics product.

    Vocera Analytics provides visibility to traffic passing through the Vocera Platform. Access to Vocera Analytics is available through the Vocera Platform Web Console.

What's New in Vocera Platform 6.0.0

Version 6.0.0 is the initial release of the Vocera Platform, which unifies the heritage Vocera Voice Server 5.x and the Engage Server 5.x product lines in a single Linux appliance.

This release includes the following features:

What's Fixed

The following list contains fixes and improvements made to the Vocera Platform.

What's Fixed in the Vocera Platform 6.1.0 Release

The following issues are fixed in the Vocera Platform 6.1.0 product release.

Platform Issues

Web Console Issues

What's Fixed in the Vocera Platform 6.0.0 Release

The following issues are fixed in the Vocera Platform 6.0.0 product release.

Known Issues

This section provides information about known product defects and limitations in the current release.

Web Console Issues

Platform Issues

Deletion Issues