This article provides a quick overview of the more commonly used functions in HosPortal. There are more detailed explanations of some of these changes for roster administrators on other help pages.
Navigation and the Dashboard
The main menu is on the left-hand side and it is collapsible (click B).
Each roster group will have its own menu (B). Typically there will be a different roster group for on-call shifts and clinical allocations.
You can send SMS and Emails to your colleagues on the Direct Message page (C). You can also track the send and delivery status of your messages.
The Shifts of Today panel (D) shows the shifts that your roster administators wany all users to see on their Dashboard. This is typically only a subset of all the rosters. The full rosters can be seen on the various roster group pages (B).
You can see a colour-coded calendar of list of all your activities. Although your facility might use their own colour codes for different roster groups, there are some standard colours across HosPortal:
Template shifts are pink
Events/meetings are purple
Market shifts are orange
Approved leave is green
Requested leave is light orange.
If your facility turns on shift approval rules, then your Dashboard will show a panel for all shifts that have not yet been approved/declined, as well as showing an icon on the shift itself.
Viewing rosters and shifts
You and your roster administrators can define and name different views for you to use later (G), and manage the views and their order.
The highlight button can assist you find your own shifts (H). Some highlight options (e.g. show conflicts) only work work if you have administrative rights.
There is a sophisticated menu to allow you to customise your views (I). In this menu you can now do such things as:
Filter by roster, roles and locations (J1), including by role and roster tags. You have complete flexibility about the locations you show, and the ordering of those locations, in every view.
Have your layout based on location or roster (J2).
Decide what information to show about the shift (J3).
Decide what information to show about the staffed users (J4) including to show their full names (rather than just the shortname), their role and phone number. Or not show users at all if you just want to show the shift labels.
Save any changes to your views (J5) to be able to select from the view dropdown (G).
The market
If your facility enables the market, this is where you can offer shifts up to swap with others or transfer to others, and can see what shifts are available for you to pick up. Your roster administrators may use the market to list vacant shifts.
On the market page you can filter and search for shifts that meet certain criteria, for instance certain rosters (K).
Direct messages
The Direct Message page allows you to send SMS and email messages to your colleagues. Depending on your permissions you may only be able to send email and not SMS messages.
The Track function (L) keeps a record of all email and SMS communications you have sent, the transmission status and (for emails) the open/read status by recipient.
You can send to people who are on a particular roster or roster group on a particular day (M).
The phone book (N) keeps a record of non-HosPortal users who you might want to send regular communications to.
All emails can be formatted and have hyperlinks (O).
Staff page
The staff page allows you to search for other users and review their profiles. Some data in each user's profile is only available to administrators.
Search by role, team and skills (P, Q).
Staff are listed with their skills and teams (R) and may have a title or position, such as 'Head of Department' or 'Roster administrator', listed on the staff page (S)
Your profile
There are separate pages to manage your profiles at each site, and your overall personal account settings (T1). So you can have different emails and mobile numbers for each site.
If you are at multiple sites, you can review your different profiles under your Master Profile (T2).
It used to be that your 'HosPortal Shortname', the name you appear as on the roster, was defined when you first signed up to HosPortal and was then applied to every facility you work at even if that did not suit them. Each facility can now define its own Shortnames (T3) - so you may now have many of them. Only roster administrators can edit your Shortname.
User templates are now more flexible, with better colour-coding, the ability to define templates/staffing patterns for all roster groups (e.g. Call and Allocations), and easier ways for you to define 'Available' and 'Unavailable' templates outside your normal working hours.
Skills and teams can be used to define staffing requirements. You cannot edit these yourself.
Communications mutes are now more comprehensive and easier to use. You can elect to mute certain types of communication to reduce the emails and SMS messages you receive. Your roster administrators now also have more power to override these mutes on occasions when they need to.
Communication history tracks all the system and direct messages you receive.
Invoicing is now more flexible and powerful. You can define your own billing frequency, and all shifts in the same billing period are now consolidated into a single invoice.
Account settings
Under the separate Account settings page you can now:
Elect to turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA), using either an SMS code or a separate authenticator. Note that your site administrators can also elect to turn on MFA for the whole site, in which case you will not be able to turn it off.
Change your timezone, which will change the time that you receive your notification and alerts (it will not change the time of the shifts on the roster - they are always shown in the time of the facility).
Subscribe to iCal, to sync with your other calendars such as Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar.
Manage your communication digests. Rather than HosPortal's standard digest being sent at 07:00 and 19:00 Sydney time each day, you can now define your own digests in your local timezone, or delete them altogether.
Leave
The Leave page allows you to apply for leave and see the approved leave of others. If you have administrative rights then you can also approve the leave of others.
Your administrators can set leave rules, for instance to prohibit certain types of leave or leave over certain dates, or to automatically approve certain types of leave for certain users.