We provide a dedicated and separate site to allow potential customers explore HosPortal's functions and features, accessible from https://demo.hosportal.com/. HosPortal will provide you with login profiles and passwords.
Help and guidance
HosPortal is flexible and can be configured in many ways to achieve the similar outcomes. The configuration decisions can depend on the number and structure of your rosters, the number and types of people you roster, your management practices, and the expectations/culture of your staff. As a result we we recommend that you talk to us about your questions and to discuss your rostering needs so we can provide the best guidance on what will work best for you.
There is also broad guidance at our help files located at https://help.hosportal.com/. Because this version of HosPortal is brand new we are still building some of the help files: let us know where you want some more.
Setup
Depending on our discussions, your site could be at various stages of readiness. We generally recommend going through the following steps in order, even if we have set up some of these features already.
1. Review the major configurations on the Admin page
Review and edit as appropriate the settings in:
Site details
Roles, to make sure you have the right staff groups. It is worth discussing with us the level of detail you create your roles.
Roster groups - note that you could have only a single roster group, or many roster groups.
Roster locations
Leave types
Skills and teams, if you intend to use either of these structures.
2. Add staff
We will usually have added some staff for you to get started. You can add more staff at any time, but it is not possible to invite users to create additional logins to the Demo site. Talk to us if you need to issue more logins.
If you are using skills and teams features you can set those up in each user's profile.
You can also add unallocated staffing patterns under each user's 'User templates'. Allocated templates cannot be set up until after you have defined rosters in steps (2) and (3) below.
2. Set up activity-based rosters, such as duty rosters and call rosters
If you are using activity-based rosters such as duty rosters on on-call rosters, go to the relevant roster group page and select admin. Review the existing rosters if there are any and add any new ones.
You can start to create roster templates.
3. Set up location-based rosters, such as clinical allocations
If you are using location-based rosters then go to the relevant roster page. Instructions for creating rosters are in the this help page.
4. Set up your views
Now that you have some structure to your rosters you can configure views.
5. Back at the admin page - set up rules
Now that you have users and the broad outline of your rosters, you can review some optional features, such as:
Leave request rules: define who can use HosPortal to request leave.
Shift conflict rules: create alerts that will warn roster administrators when their staffing pattern will break rostering rules. These rules are also used to prevent users swapping and transferring shifts that break these rules.
Shift change request rules: to allow users to make or request shift changes, such as swaps or transfers.
Shift market rules: to allow users to use the shift market.
6. Permissions
The logins you are issued will generally have a range of permissions, including a site super-user that can administer anything on HosPortal, and rostered users with more standard permissions who can view the roster and their own activity and can only use the functions defined in step (5) above.
You are welcome to change the roster permissions of the standard users by managing permission groups in the Admin page, or giving individuals additional permissions in their user profiles.
Using HosPortal
Once you are set up use the logins you have been provided to create and edit shifts and rosters. You may want to use different logins to explore what different users can see and do, and test out different permission settings.
Emails and SMS messages
Note that this Demo site traps all emails and SMS messages so you can explore all the functions without alerting or confusing people who you might have set up on the system. So although you can use and configure the following features they will not be apparent to the people who would receive communications in the live software:
Shift reminders
The daily digest that each user can configure under their profile
Users' communication subscriptions
Sending invoices
The direct message page
All the alerts: shift alerts, market alerts and leave alerts.
It also means that, although you can add new users for staffing purposes, they will not receive any invitations to set up a login.
Feedback
HosPortal is an evolving software tool used in many different ways. We welcome your feedback on what works well and not so well for your circumstances so we can continue to improve our offering.