Alerts

Alerts are an active and auditable communication tool. Assigned staff are informed of the alert and told they must log into the site to see the message. Create an Alert via Staff > Alerts > Create Alert. 

What happens when a staff member gets an alert?

When a staff member logs into the site, they are forced to see the message and acknowledge it before they do anything else on the site. No other actions can be done at all until the message is acknowledged.

Staff have permanent access to the alerts they have been sent.

When should you use an alert?

Alerts are useful because they require immediate attention. When a staff member logs into the site, they are forced to see the message and acknowledge it before they do anything else on the site. No other actions can be done at all until the message is acknowledged. This makes it perfect for information that is really important, where you want to increase the likelihood of your staff receiving the information quickly.
 

Alert options

When you create an alert you will need configure several options. You will need to add a title and a message that will go out to staff. You must set up who the alert is from (this person will be who any replies go to) and the response the staff member gives.

Answer format

You can simply require an acknowledgement, or you can require an answer to a single question. 

This answer can be in the format of yes/no, multiple choice or a very short text reply. You can now use 250 characters for multiple choice answers. The provided information will be shown on the report with yes/no and multiple choice answers summarised into percentages too.

In addition to this you can assign a required document to be completed alongside this.

Require Document to be Viewed

Alerts can also now require staff to either view or download a document when reviewing an alert.

Simply add the document to the alert. They will see the document on the screen or will be directed to download the document if it can’t be displayed directly. They won’t be able to proceed until the document has been viewed or downloaded. Add your document under Choose File.

Publishing a Task

You can set up a publish date for when you want a task to go out, so it does not need to go out immediately, you can set a specific date and time.

Filter staff

The last option you have is who to send the alert to. You can filter this be department, venue, skills, working days, squads contracts or access level.

Alert Report

When you assign an Alert you will be provided with a report for each staff member, letting you know at when they acknowledged the alert, how long they read the message for and any text answer they were required to provide. This is useful as it allows you to see any staff members who have simply acknowledged the message without reading it.

 Navigate to this via Staff > Alerts > Alert report. This will take you to an overview page where you can see all recent alerts in a list, with the most recent appearing at the top. You will be able to directly download the report as CSV file from here, as well as see a percentage figure of how many people have signed (acknowledged) the alert.

For more details, click the alert you're interested in and you will see a more detailed page with more statistic come up. This will include how long each staff member took before reading the alert (before logging in), how long they took reading the alert (which can be helpful to ensure they have spent enough time to properly review the alert) and the date/time signed. It will also give you a total number of staff who have received the alert and then responded to the alert at the top.

In addition to this you are then able to email all staff who haven't responded a reminder, as well as reviewing their phone numbers, reviewing the alert message or deciding to cancel the alert.

We recommend alerts are used sparingly when an auditable response is needed and when you must be able to prove all staff have read the message. All other communication should use the news feature.