Sending Email Messages to Vocera Devices

The following figure outlines the process for sending short, plain text email messages to Vocera devices:

Figure 1. Sending email messages to Vocera devices

In the above illustration:

All email messages for Vocera devices are sent to a single address, the Vocera Mailbox. Email subject is a user ID or the name of the group that should receive the message. If the user ID or group name is invalid, the email goes to the Alert Recipient Email Address. If the Alert Recipient Email Address is not defined, the message is returned to the sender.
Mail host receives the message.
Vocera Voice Server logs in to the Mail Host and retrieves all the messages.
The Vocera Voice Server distributes all the messages, and recipients view them on their Vocera devices.

To send a text message to Vocera devices from an email account:

In your email program, start a new message.
In the To: field, enter the email address of the Vocera system.
In the Subject: field, specify the message recipient using one of the following formats:
- The user ID of a Vocera user. For example:
  
  jbatista
- The name of a group, if the group is in the global site. For example
  
  I C U Nurses
- The name of a group and its site, if the group is in any other site. Specify the group name in brackets, followed by the site name in braces. For example:
  
  [I C U Nurses] {West Wing}
- With Vocera 4.3 (or later), you can send an urgent text message via email. To send an urgent message, include the string **urgent** anywhere in the subject, and specify the ID of a Vocera user or a group name in brackets. If the user or group is not in the Global site, also specify the site in braces. For example:
  
  [jbatista] **urgent**
  
  [I C U Nurses] {West Wing} **urgent**
In the message area, type your message. Be brief, because the message will be limited to 223 characters on Vocera badges or smartphones, and 236 characters on a Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone (7900 series). Additional characters will not be displayed.

Note: When the recipient views the list of text messages, the entry for an email will show the first thirteen characters of the message.
Make sure the email message is formatted as plain text; HTML and RTF formats are not supported.
Send the email message in the usual way.

The Vocera Voice Server logs in to the Vocera system email account at regular intervals (usually every 30 seconds), downloads all the email in the mailbox, and distributes each message to the user or group whose user ID or group name appears on the subject line of the message.

See the Vocera User Guide for information about reading email messages on the badge display.