Best Practices for Staff Assignment |
When you set up groups that are managed by Staff Assignment, follow these best practices:
Staff Assignment is designed to manage assignments to bed/room groups and role-based groups, not to department or subdepartment groups. Therefore, the Group Type property for all groups managed by Staff Assignment should be Ordinary, not Department or Subdepartment.
Groups managed by Staff Assignment can safely be nested within department groups or subdepartment groups, as shown in the following figure. Changes to the membership of ordinary groups do not affect server performance.
If users are used to calling a room by saying, "Call Room number," make sure the group name for the room starts with the word "Room" (for example, "Room 2013").
Make sure groups managed by Staff Assignment have temporary membership (check the Remove Users on Logout box on the Member tab of the group).
Make sure groups managed by Staff Assignment use sequential scheduling (select the Sequential scheduling option on the Info tab of the group). This ensures that calls are routed first to the first member and then to the second member.
If there are multiple beds per room, follow the room number by a letter (for example, "Room 2013 A"). Leave a space between the room number and the letter.
Assign a virtual extension or a DID number to each bed/room group in the Vocera Extension field on the Info tab of the group.
Outside callers who dial the Vocera hunt number can connect to the group by entering the group's Vocera Extension at the Genie prompt.
The Vocera Extension can be used as the device ID for Alerts and Alarms in your middleware system.
Use the following convention for extensions: Extension = Room Number + Bed Number + Role Number
Bed Number: 0=private room, 1=Bed A, 2=Bed B
Role Number: 1=RN, 2=RN Secondary, 3=CNA, 4=Tech
You can use the Update page of the VoceraAdministration Console to update groups managed by Staff Assignment, ensuring that they conform to best practices. You typically export existing groups to a CSV file, edit the CSV file, and then use the update feature to copy data from the CSV file back to the Vocera database.
For more information about updating groups, see the Vocera Voice Server Administration Console Guide.