Patient requests and clinical events reach staff as Tasks in Vital Care Team. Two separate settings govern them: which requests patients can raise at all, and which of those notify a given staff member. Most confusion about alerts comes from mistaking one for the other.

Earlier versions of Care Team called this the Alerts tab.

A guided tour for notification setup is available directly in Care Team.

Select Tasks in the left sidebar, or in the bottom navigation bar on a phone. The Tasks queue lists every active request with the patient, task type, location, assignee and status. Staff can also raise a request on a patient’s behalf from the Make Request tab in the visit sidebar. See Working the Tasks Queue in Care Team.

The Location filter on this page changes only what appears in the queue. It does not change which requests send a notification. This is the single most common misunderstanding: filtering the queue to one unit does not stop alerts from another.

Notifications are set per staff member, not per device. Open Settings › Notifications to set a master switch, a per-facility toggle, the locations covered, and the task types wanted.

A request notifies a staff member only when it matches both a selected location and a selected task type. Either one missing means silence, which is why an account with every task type selected and no location still receives nothing.

Each matching request is sent as a push notification to every device where push is turned on. Push is turned on separately on each device, under Push on this device in Settings › Notifications.

The Text messages setting decides when a text also goes to the staff member’s mobile number. Only if push fails sends a text only when no device receives the push. Every alert sends a text every time, as well as push. The mobile number is set once per staff member, under Settings › Profile.

The Text messages setting, with Only if push fails and Every alert

Settings › Availability controls when patients can raise each task type at each location. Every task type runs in one of three modes, or is turned Off.

A task type in Staffing or Staffing & Scheduled mode is Unavailable to patients when no staff member or shared device is subscribed to that location, even inside operating hours.

A task type marked Unavailable because no staff are subscribed to that location

This links the two settings in one direction: for staffing modes, turning notifications off can remove the request from patients entirely. Scheduled mode behaves differently. Its hours hold regardless of who is subscribed, so a Scheduled task type with nobody subscribed stays open to patients but alerts no one. The Availability page flags only one case as Missing staff coverage: a Staffing & Scheduled task type inside operating hours with no staff member or shared device covering the location. Patients cannot raise that request until someone covers it.

Shared devices, such as ward or unit phones, count as coverage in the same way as staff. See Manage Shared Devices for Ward and Unit Phones.

The Team page lists every team member’s notification status, task types and locations, so a gap is visible before a shift rather than after a missed request. Most Care Team roles can view it. Only the Management and Notifications Admin roles can turn another person’s notifications on or off, from the Team page. See Team Page in Care Team.

Requests keep arriving from a unit that is not selected. Why?

The Location filter on the Tasks page is a view filter only. Check the locations selected under the facility in Settings › Notifications, and remove the unit there. That list, not the queue filter, decides what sends an alert.

Do notifications need setting up separately on desktop and mobile?

Locations and task types belong to the account, so they apply on every device signed in to it. Push is the exception: it is turned on separately on each device, under Push on this device. A device without push still receives nothing by push, so check that setting on each phone and computer in use.

Can alerts be scheduled to stop overnight and resume in the morning?

Yes, through Settings › Availability rather than through notification settings. A task type in Scheduled or Staffing & Scheduled mode is live only during its operating hours. Notification settings themselves have no schedule and stay as set until changed.

A staff member left without signing out and is still receiving requests. What stops that?

Staff stay signed in on a device until they log out or the session expires, for up to 14 days. Closing the browser or restarting the device does not sign them out, and signing out on one device does not end a session on another. See Logging into Vital Care Team. Notifications follow the account, so removing the location or turning the facility toggle off in Settings › Notifications stops the alerts regardless of which device is open.