Healthdirect Australia Help Center

    Notifications to callers in the waiting area

    How to send notifications to individual callers and/or the displayed list of callers in your waiting area.

    There are a couple of ways to send notification messages to callers in your waiting area, if needed. You can notify individual callers as required and you can also notify all callers or a list of displayed callers filtered by their status in the waiting area. 

    If two way messaging is enabled by the clinic administrator, your patients/clients can also message the clinic while they are waiting. Please click on the options below for more information:

    Send a notification to an individual patient/client in the Waiting Area 

    To send a notification to an individual waiting patient/client - for example, to let a patient know that their doctor is running late - follow the instructions below:

    1. From your Waiting Area dashboard, select the caller you want to send a notification to and click on the 3 dots to the right of their caller information. Then select Notify.
    2. Type a custom notification to the caller in the dialogue box and click the send icon.
    3. You will see a number in a small blue circle to the right of the 3 dots indicating how many notifications have been sent to that caller.
    4. The caller will receive your notification in their screen while they are waiting and it will be accompanied by an audio alert.
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    Send notification/s to the displayed list of callers in the waiting area

    Please note: notifications are currently only able to be sent to callers who are on the "waiting to be seen" page. A solution is currently being investigated to ensure that notifications can be sent to all callers regardless of their status as outlined below.

    You can send one or more notifications to all the callers in your waiting area or you can filter by status and send to the displayed list:

    To send a notification to multiple callers in the waiting area, click on the Notify button at the top right above the list of callers.

    If you have no filters applied in the waiting area, your notification will go to all callers, irrespective of their status.
    Type in your message and click Send.

    If you apply a filter in the waiting area, for example filter out callers 'being seen', before clicking on the Notify icon, your notification will only go to the displayed callers you can see in your filtered list.
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    Two way messaging for waiting callers

    If your clinic administrator has enabled guest notification messages in your clinic, waiting patients and clients will be able to send a message to the clinic. This will be a two way messaging functionality between clinic team members and the waiting patient/client. Please see below for more information:

    1. Find your waiting patient in the clinic waiting area. If no messages have yet been sent to any callers, the caller information will look like the example on the right.
    2. You can send a notification to a waiting patient as you usually do - by clicking on the 3 dots and selection Notify
    Type in a message and press the send icon. 
    In this example one notification has been sent to Sue Smith from the clinic - as indicated by the blue number above the 3 dots.
    When two way messaging is enabled, patients/clients are able to send messages to the clinic. They can type their message in the box that has the prompt 'Type a message'.
    Patients can do this in response to a notification sent to them or they can send a message at any time while they are waiting.
    In this example the patient is responding to the notification sent to them by sending a message back to the clinic.
    Once typed the message is sent by the patient clicking on the send icon.
    When a waiting patient/client sends a message to the clinic the number in their caller information updates and the and the colour of the number changes to orange to alert team members in the clinic that a patient has sent a message.
    In this example there have been two messages in total and the latest one is from the patient - as the number is orange.
    If the clinic sends another notification to this patient, the number will change to 3 and the colour will change to blue.
    Please note: your clinic may want to assign someone the role of checking messages coming in from patients/clients, if required.
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    Two way messaging for callers put on-hold in the Call Manager

    If your clinic administrator has enabled guest notification messages in your clinic, certain on-hold patients and clients will be able to send a message to the clinic. These will be patients and clients who have been joined and then put on hold using the Call Manager inside a Video Call, prior to the health service provider leaving the call. 

    If you have joined a call with a patient/client and would then like to put them on hold and give them access to two way messaging with the clinic (remember Enable Guest Notification messages must be configured in the clinic for two way messaging to be available. Clinic admins please click here and look under General Configuration to find out how to enable this):

    1. Let the patient/client know you are putting them on hold, then click on the Call Manager.
    2. In the Call Manager drawer, under Current Participants select On-Hold. This puts the caller on hold in the current call.

    Please note: This step is essential and must be done prior to you leaving the call, or two way messaging will not be available.
    3. Next, click the hang-up button and select Leave Call. Once you leave the call, the caller will see the correct on-hold screen and will show as on hold in the waiting area.

    The caller will see messages sent by the clinic, and can also send messages back to the clinic if Enable Guest Notification Messages is enabled in the clinic.

    Click here and look under General Configuration for more information about enabling Guest Notification Messages.


    Example of a caller messaging the clinic while on hold
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