Please note: This is currently part of a limited beta and will be available as part of the Advanced and Plus packages. Stay tuned for more on this update!
You can now send messages via the Agency hub to your Care Professionals using the Birdie app. This free-text notification tool allows you to send real-time messages ensuring you have a consistent and reliable form of communication with your Care Professionals when they are out in the field.
Care Professionals need to update the Birdie app to benefit from this feature. We also recommend Care Professionals enable all types of notifications on their phones. For step-by-step instructions on how to do this, read this help centre article - How to enable notifications on your Birdie app.
How to create a message
In the Agency Hub, you will see a Messages button in the top right. Clicking this will take you to a sidebar where you’ll be able to send updates to Care Professionals and review previous ones.
The sidebar can be opened from any page and will remain open as you move through Birdie, allowing you to seamlessly switch context without losing your message draft. From here you will be able to create a message such as:
Rota updates
Training & HR updates
Client update
Office update
Compliment
Visit Cover Update
Traffic or Logistics Update
Once you have selected the message type you can type your update in the free-text box provided, with a character limit of 300 characters.
Selecting a message type will provide context for your message. When sending Rota Updates, you can specify the exact date or date range that will be affected and when sending Client Updates you can specify which client the message is about.
Select who to notify:
You can choose to notify all Care Professionals or specific ones - e.g. You can select if there are specific people impacted by the rota changes to ensure you are not disturbing those to whom it is not relevant.
Next to each Care Professionals name an icon will show whether they have push notifications enabled to receive the update in real time. However, everyone will be able to see Messages you send them in their app’s Notifications Centre.
Once you are happy with your selection, click Send. The number of people you are sending updates to will be clearly outlined in the button.
How to audit messages
You can view information about sent messages in the History tab. This is where you can check who has opened and read your messages as well as view past updates sent by the team.
To view this, click on the Send button again and click History.
Birdie Academy video for the Agency Hub
How to view messages in the Birdie app
Care Professionals will now see a Notifications tab in their Birdie app, this allows them to view new and previous messages in one place.
Care Professionals who have enabled push notifications on their mobile devices will get real-time updates when a new message is received.
This notification will be labelled with the message title you have selected, for example, it will show as Rota update for rota messages and will highlight the date the update is about.
The Care Professional can then click on this notification, the rest of the message will be hidden to conceal any potentially sensitive information. It will take them to the message detail where they can view the update in full.
Once a message has been opened, it will be marked as 'read' within the Agency Hub under the History tab, providing you with a clear audit trail. If a Care Professional is using their app offline or in an area with no signal, they will be able to view the notification when they are next online.
It is important that Care Professionals enable notifications on their phone in order to receive these updates, for more information on how to do this, read this article - How to enable and receive notifications on your Birdie app
Birdie Academy video for Care Professionals