Settings › Notifications controls what Task notifications each staff member receives. Staff configure their own preferences here: a master switch, a per-facility toggle, the locations they cover, and the Task Types they want to be notified about.
🔔 For Staffing-based Task Types, your alert status directly affects patient availability. A Staffing-based request is only available to patients while at least one staff member at that location has notifications on.
Confirming Notification Status
Notification status is visible in two places without going into Settings.
Task Status Widget: the bell icon in the left sidebar. Hover or click it to open the Notifications panel, which shows whether facility requests are currently live and whether personal notifications are on. Both showing green means coverage is active.
Tasks queue pill: the My notifications on pill in the top-right corner of the Tasks queue shows which facility is currently active and confirms notifications are on for that facility. If notifications are off, the pill will say so.
How Notifications Work
Notifications fire when a request matches both a selected location and a selected Task Type. So if you select Emergency Department but do not select "Pain Management," you will not get alerts for pain requests in the ED, even though both exist.
This is how you tune alerts to your role. You are not getting every request, just the ones that matter to you!
Confirming notification status from the Tasks queue
Current notification status appears in the top-right corner of the Tasks page. The indicator displays the number of locations and Task Types currently active for the signed-in staff member (for example, "Notifications on: 4 locations · ED Patient Complaint +5").
If the indicator displays: "Notifications off", Staffing-based tasks may be unavailable to patients at their locations.
Turning Notifications On
There are two ways to set up or update notification preferences.
From the Notifications panel
The Notifications panel is accessible in two places:
The bell icon in the left sidebar.
The My notifications on pill in the top-right corner of the Tasks queue. This also shows which facility is currently active.
Both open the same panel. From there, toggle My notifications on, and use Manage locations & task types to update location and Task Type selections without leaving the Tasks queue.
From Settings › Notifications
Go to Settings › Notifications.
Confirm All my notifications is toggled On. This is the master switch. Turning it off disables all notifications across every facility without clearing individual selections.
Confirm the facility toggle (next to the facility name) is On.
Under My locations, select every location to receive notifications for.
Under My task types, select every Task Type to be notified about.
At least one location and at least one Task Type must be selected for notifications to fire.
My locations: Location chips appear under each facility. Selecting a chip means the staff member will be notified about requests raised at that location. Chips with a blue checkmark are active. Chips without a checkmark are not selected and will not generate notifications.
My task types: Task Type chips control which categories of patient requests trigger a notification. A staff member must have at least one location and at least one Task Type selected for notifications to fire.
Common Scenarios
On shift in the ED but covering multiple units.
Select all locations being covered under My locations, and only the Task Types relevant to the role under My task types. Notifications will fire for those Task Types across all selected locations.
Handling one request type only.
Select locations under My locations, then select only the relevant Task Type under My task types. Notifications will only fire for that request type, not others.
Going off-duty.
Toggle off All my notifications, from the Notifications panel or from Settings › Notifications. All location and Task Type selections are preserved. Toggle back on and subscriptions are exactly as they were.
FAQs
Notifications are on but texts are not arriving.
Confirm the master switch (All my notifications) is On.
Confirm the facility toggle is On.
Confirm at least one location chip is selected under My locations.
Confirm at least one Task Type chip is selected under My task types.
If all four are correct, contact Vital support. The staff member may have an SMS delivery issue that requires investigation.
A 0 appears on a Task Type chip on the Team page.
This means the staff member is subscribed to that Task Type but has no locations selected for it. They are not providing active coverage. Direct them to Settings › Notifications to select locations.
Turning notifications off temporarily.
Use the All my notifications master toggle to turn off all notifications at once. Individual location and Task Type selections are preserved and reactivate when the toggle is turned back on.
Why are alerts not firing for a specific request type?
Confirm that both a location and a Task Type are selected. Notifications require both. Selecting "Emergency Department" with no Task Type selected will not generate any alerts, even from the ED.