At Connecteam, we want your setup to be swift and clean. As customer success managers we took our experience from working with hundreds of Healthcare companies worldwide and created this step-by-step tutorial to get your company set up to PERFECTION.

You can expect this guide to go through all of the steps needed to get your account up and running with real-world examples of how each feature or capability can work for a security company your size. Like Connecteam, this guide works as an all-in-one solution to your Operations Hub Set Up.

While there are many other articles found here on our Help Center we have designed this guide, particularly for Healthcare companies of your kind and it should walk you through your complete setup step by step.

Don't worry! We’ve got all of the first steps to make your life easy and Connecteam work for you! 🤩

After reading this guide you should be able to start fully operating the platform you will learn how to:

Tip: Anytime you see blue text in this article it is a link or menu of links to other areas inside this guide. If you're looking for something specific, or you can't finish the setup in one day - you can always find what you need or pick up where you left off by clicking on the relevant topic.

The first step is adding your users to Connecteam, giving them the correct credentials (for example CNA, RN, caregiver), and sorting them into relevant groups. As the owner of the account, you can add new users, and control their personal information, activity status (active, archived, deleted), their permissions levels (mobile user, admin, owner), and even specific assignments for the admins (per feature and smart group).

Custom fields are information fields found inside the user's profile, and are filled with information specific to each employee. Custom fields are a smart way to identify and group your workforce, allowing you to customize what information is important to your company to organize its users. Examples of custom fields can be Position, Qualification, Department, Birthday, Uniform Size, and much more.

We recommend planning out the information you want to know about your employees and creating these custom fields before adding the employees themselves. This will allow you to update all their information.

To Add a Custom Field: Head over to the Users tab, enter the employee's detail page then select Add Field and choose the type of field, name it, and press save. In the example below you can see we created a custom field named position. In our company, the positions will be CNA, RN, Caregiver, Doctor, Vet Etc. Another custom field can be the locations or branches the employee works at - Clinic’s name, Client’s / Patient’s home. You can also set additional custom fields by Contract - Full-Time / Part-Time.

Please note that there are 3 default fields you will never be able to edit or delete; these are First Name, Last Name, and Mobile Phone.

Then name it and press save. In the example below you can see I created a Custom Field named Job. If you create a custom field for one user, that custom field will be added to every one of your users' profiles. The admin will only need to update the created custom field in each profile.

Pro tip #1: By default, the user profile has two categories of fields these are Personal Details and Company Details, but you can always create additional categories or rename these. To add a category simply click on + Add Category in the top right-end corner and name the category. To rename the category, hover over the Personal Details or Company detail title and select the pen icon.

Pro tip #2: We recommend using the drop-down custom field type when creating your custom fields, which allows you to create a list of information to select from when filling out the custom field. This way you’ll just choose from a list and avoid mistyping.

Once you have added a custom field it is important to set their settings. This can be done either while creating the custom field, or after the fact. To set a custom field's settings simply enter the employee details page, hover over the custom field, and select settings. Here you are presented with a few options:

Once all of the custom fields were created, you can go ahead and add all of your users to the Connecteam. This is an essential step so you can assign your employees shifts, and tasks and manage them. You have multiple ways to add users to the platform

To begin adding Users, go to the User's tab and click on "Add Users", and fill in the three required fields: First Name, Last Name, and Mobile Phone. Make sure to fill in the relevant country code before adding the number.

At the bottom, by ticking on / off, you can choose if you’d like to invite your users immediately, or at a later time.

Importing multiple users can save you a lot of time and effort and will help you set up your entire account before launching the app for all your employees.

To import users, access the Users page, and then click on the Import Users button as shown in the image below.

Pro Tip: we recommend creating all the Custom fields before importing

The first step is all about preparing your Excel file to import. You may want to download our Excel template but you can of course use your file, as long as it aligns with the Launch Pad's language.

The main columns you must have to create a user are First Name, Last Name, and Phone. The phone number MUST be a mobile phone number. We also included some tips along the way, so make sure to read them as you go through this process for the first time.

Here's an example of how the file may look:

The first step is all about preparation, so once you're done preparing your file, you can click on the NEXT button on the bottom right corner of the screen.

This step is important as this is the time to select what you'd like to happen when you import the file. There a 3 main options to choose from:

You can find more information about the 3 options HERE

When done, choose the option you want and click NEXT.

Now it's time to upload your file. You can do so by dragging and dropping the file or by browsing your computer. Just make sure you've saved the spreadsheet as a CSV file (Comma separated values). When done, click NEXT.

Smart groups are the best way to arrange your employees by qualification, team, department, or even the locations they work at and sort them into relevant groups.

From our experience, most Home Care companies sort users by their position, qualifications, their locations, and shift type (hourly/part-time/full-time). Another typical use case would be to create a Smart Group per patient and assign it to the relevant caretaker.

Grouping your users now will help you later on with scheduling correctly (and much more).

Smart groups are the best way to arrange your employees by qualification, team, department, or even the locations they work at and sort them into relevant groups.

Smart groups are groups based on rules -All the users who meet the rule will automatically be added to the group and those who don't will be added. It's as simple as that. A smart groups filter is based on custom fields - which we previously created.

Home care companies' smart groups are hugely beneficial and allow you to create different teams with different Qualifications \ Positions \ Certifications. In addition, many home care companies create groups for each Location \ Clinic \ Patient. Bigger companies that have a different management level, usually create a group also for that (Department manager / Region Manager). Since Connecteam's features, assets, jobs in the schedule, chats and much more can be assigned to smart groups, grouping them now will help us later on with things like scheduling correctly (and much more).

To create a smart group follow these steps:

Step 1: Navigate to the smart group's category on the left sidebar

Step 2: First, add a Segment

Step 3: Use the + Add a group button from inside the Segment to create a group and then name the group.

Step 4: Set the Filter. First, choose the Custom field, and then finally select or enter the criteria that the group will be defined by.

You can click here to see the shot video about how to add a smart group

The Operations Hub consists of 4 Features. This Set-up article will focus on 3 main ones:

Utilizing the time clock will allow you to track your employee’s work time and help you to ensure that you are paying them for the actual time they’ve worked, all while tracking their location while they’re on the go visiting clinics and patients.

In addition to that, It will also help you track the time your employees are spending at each client’s facility, making it easy for you to invoice him at the end of the payroll period.

This is how you can set up your time clock to be perfect for your company's needs:

The first thing you will want to do is set up your Jobs. “Jobs” in Connecteam is an information layer that you track time for. From our experience, home care companies typically define their jobs as a client name or facility, while Centralized / Facilitated Healthcare such as Clinics and Hospitals define their jobs as Positions or Roles. By doing so, you will be able to track the number of hours spent at each client or facility and bill them accordingly.

If you want to add new customized jobs, you can easily do it by following these steps:

Real-World Example: A Staffing company that schedules RNs to patients' homes created the name of the patient as Jobs. This way they can track the total hours they are spending with each client and they can invoice the patient accordingly. The employee Clocks into the client’s Job.

Another example - A hospital that named the jobs based on the positions or roles of the employees. This way the hospital can track the total time they spend for each role, and understand how many hours each employee was working.

Make sure that only qualified users (according to their position, location, and abilities) can be scheduled for each job. Only qualified users (like the RN smart group selected in the image below), will be able to see and claim relevant shifts from their schedule in the app.

Real World Example: The job is a Patient name (“John Johnny”) and the group assigned is only the group with qualified employees to work at John’s location. This way, only the employees that are qualified for this patient can actually see this job and claim the shifts the company published.

When you have multiple clients, patients, or facilities that you’re invoicing, you'd like to be familiar with the option to view job insights and export it as a report which can be used for your own analytics, delivered to customers for billing purposes, or any other use you find useful.

The Job Insights report will include the total hours your employees were spending at a specific location or patient and will eventually help you understand your resource allocation.

Enabling Breaks within the Time Clock, you can easily track your user's break hours. This ensures that you comply with your state or country's break laws and/or that you don’t pay your employees for time they were not actually working on the clock. Connecteam offers two types of breaks: manual breaks and automatic breaks.

To activate, simply go into the settings of your Time Clock > click on Breaks > toggle on the automatic breaks capability and set the amount of break time your employees receive and that is it! You're all set.

One of Connecteam's goals is to give you the tools to be in control of your team's shifts. When your employees are always on the go, visiting a patient or a clinic, it can be difficult for you to control time theft and prevent employees who arrive early to clock in before their shift starts.

If your Time Clock and Job Scheduler are synced, you can set up Limitations.

The Time Clock limitations can be found in the Time Clock settings and include the following limitations:

Real-Life Examples: A staffing company that provides and schedules employees for a shift at a specific clients residency wanted to make sure the caregiver does not forget to Clock-out at the time he is scheduled to finish, thus they set an Auto-Clock out limitation - that way the client will only be invoiced for the actual time, and the employee will be paid only for what he is scheduled for.

When your employees are always on the go, you don’t want them to just clock in randomly while they’re on the way, you want to pay them only for the actual time they are working at the location they are supposed to be (A patient’s home, at the clinic they were sent to).

The Geofence is a capability that allows you to create a geographic "fence" around a site or an address to ensure your employees are clocking in/out in the right place at the right time.

You can create a Geo-Fence for each facility or patient's home.

Real-life Example: A Staffing company we work with is providing CNAs for hospitals at multiple locations and wants to make sure its employees are only clocking in once they get to the hospital.

Whether your employees are out visiting a patient or moving between different locations, with our Breadcrumbs feature you will always be on top of their location while they are clocked in! You will be able to review the routes of your employees through the Map View and easily track their whereabouts throughout their workday.

To activate Breadcrumbs, head to your time clock > click on Settings at the top right > select geolocation on the left > activate Breadcrumbs

A Real World Example: Home Care company that provides doctors visitations for multiple clients a day - They wanted to make sure that the doctors made it to all the patients and weren't spending time in places other than the patient’s address.

While your employees are visiting each location, they might use some resources during their shifts. Shift attachments are information pieces that users are asked to add to their shift time. These could be the equipment that was used, mileage covered, what medicine was used and given, what equipment was used, and even notes or a signature.

At the end of the payroll cycle, you can track and understand what was used and track your expenses, or reimburse your employee's mileage.

To create a shift attachment, open your admin dashboard and navigate

to the Time Clock settings.

Add the shift attachments you wish your users to add to their recorded shifts and save changes.

The following types of shifts attachments can be created:

A Real World Example: A staffing company that uses Connecteam’s shift attachments so the employees will mention all the equipment they were using while they visited the patient (Bandages, Pills, Medication, respiratory masks, etc.)

Track employee hours and prepare for payroll with this simple guide.

Employee time cards are fully adjustable by the manager, with an option to add manager notes per shift and export them as a PDF or a payroll-ready Excel file.

Start by setting the timesheet and payroll export format. Most Healthcare companies use the Decimal time format.

​​To change your time clock export format follow the video:

The next step is Exporting timesheets for payroll.

After you have gone over all your employees' hours you are now ready to export the timesheets for payroll. Most Healthcare companies use the Shift Report Export.

To export your time clock timesheets: simply navigate to your time clock--> Click on the "Timesheets" tab.

You then have three options:

A Real-World Example: Many companies we work with, choose to export payrolls as shift reports since it’s much easier to export overnight shifts.

The Job Scheduler makes it effortless to publish 'claimable' open shifts for your team and provides them with all the info they need right in their mobile apps, such as location, date & time, special instructions, attached files, and more.

Here we will mention the most used capabilities by the Healthcare industry to make Connecteam help you schedule the optimal schedule.

You Need Only 3 things to know to get started

As mentioned previously, the first thing you will want to do is set up your jobs. "Jobs" in Connecteam is an information layer that you track time for. Home care companies usually use clients/facilities as "Jobs" (Clinic A, Patient b, Facility C). Another option is based on Position (RN, Doctor, Vet, Caregiver). Larger companies, that might be working in multiple locations, use locations as “Jobs” (clients' homes, different facilities).

You can add Sub Jobs to make your scheduling process more detailed and accurate.

For example, if you have a job that is a client with multiple locations the sub-jobs can be these locations. (Job - Client A > Sub-Job - Caregiver)

Make sure that only qualified users (according to their position, location, and abilities) can be scheduled for each job. Only qualified users (like the RN smart group selected in the image below), will be able to see and claim relevant shifts from their schedule in the app.

Real World Example: The job is a Patient name (“John Johnny”) and the group assigned is only the group with qualified employees to work at John’s location. This way, only the employees that are qualified for this patient can see this job and claim the shifts the company published.

When creating your shifts in the schedule, you can insert 2 different information layers: Job and Shift Title.

Job: The jobs that you created in the previous step. As mentioned, Healthcare companies usually choose their clients' names, locations, or actual positions as jobs. Your employees will also be able to clock in and out of these jobs, using the Time Clock feature (as mentioned above).

Shift title: This is another information layer to give users more information regarding their shift, for example, morning shift\ evening shift\night shift, or the Client's name if the job is the position\qualification.

A Real World Example: One staffing company we worked with provides 24/7 caregiving service for patients who set their shifts in a 24-hour schedule divided by 3 shifts, 8 hours for each shift. Each shift is scheduled for a different employee.

Open shifts let you publish your specific shifts to be open so your employees can claim it by themselves, clearing some time for you.

In addition to that, you can publish Claimable Open Shifts that will be under your admin’s approval - Users' requests to claim a shift will be visible and pending approval (like in the image below). At this point, staffing agencies usually double-check with the facility before approval, and hospitals and clinics let the employee choose when they’d like to work and who they like to schedule for that shift.

Pro tip: save shifts as templates to schedule quickly and easily!

A Real World Example: A Home care company that provides doctors' visitations for multiple patients publishes the schedule for the whole week. Each doctor claims the visits that he can attend based on his free time and the visits he can do. This way the company reduces the amount of time they’ve spent on the scheduling process.

We want you to be able to view your schedule in the way that is most convenient for you. For this reason, we created different viewing options.

The option to View by Jobs allows you to view the schedule according to Jobs, with the jobs displayed on the left side. This option helps you to make sure there is never a job without a shift attached to it!

Healthcare companies usually use this view to ensure that all their jobs have the correct number of shifts at the right time.

To find the view by options, enter your schedule and navigate to the top left:

A Real World Example: Most staffing companies are using this view to ensure that they are scheduling enough employees for each patient's location.

Each job is titled by the patient's name, and they want to make sure they have scheduled 3 shifts for him (3 shifts of 8 hours each).

Another example is a clinic that wants to make sure that each role is being populated with the correct amount of employees.

Jobs are set as positions/roles (RN, CNA, etc), and each day they need to make sure that they have 3 RNs.

Adding shift-related Notes: In the note section, you can add any information that is related to the shift. Home Care companies might write in the notes section related details about a client, like a phone number, personal information, background about him, or instructions for the visit.

Hospitals and Clinics can use that to give any kind of instructions and notes the employee needs to do during the shift - Visit patients and the 2nd floor, fill up the supply room, and mention the location of the ECG device.

Real World Example: A staffing agency mentioned on the shift notes the medications the patient needs to take, and attached a PDF with the instructions as to when and how he should receive them.

Create shift templates that are frequently used to save the dispatcher much time and effort, making the scheduling process a walk in the park! Healthcare companies usually use shift templates for jobs that are repeating and are not one-time jobs. (Patient’s weekly visit, A morning RNA shift, etc).

How to choose from my existing templates? Open the shift templates side window, and simply drag and drop shifts to the desired slot in your schedule

A Real World Example: One company we worked with, has created many shift templates for each patient based on recurring jobs they perform. Each shift template includes a specific job, working hours, a note, and a file attachment.

When a new patient is using their service, they create a new shift template with all the instructions and details relevant to him.

Adding Layers allows you to add additional information layers into users' shifts, giving you the manager, full control and an overview of your resources and how they are being allocated. Healthcare companies Can use layers to indicate which patient they should treat, and specify the form of treatment, and medications.

Real-World Example: The homecare company schedules a physiotherapist that uses equipment during the visit. They use layers as the type of equipment their employee takes to the visit (Yoga ball, Rubber straps). This way they can make sure no one is missing a device on their visit.

With our schedule Shortcut capability, you can insert an internal link through the user's shifts sending the users directly to the relevant content with a click of a button.

Healthcare companies use Shortcuts to include forms within the shift to assure compliance. For example, Patient Check-up reports end-of-shift reports, and inventory checks.

A Real World Example: A Pharmacy we worked with, attaches forms (Inventory Check) to a shift at the end of the week, so users can fill up the number of supplies in order to check what should be ordered.

Another case is a Homecare company that asks for a summary of their RN’s visit at the client’s home (What treatment was given).

Automating processes and standardizing them is something that is important for every business and especially in the Healthcare industry. Forms allow your employees to fill in reports, forms, checklists, requests, and more, all from their mobile app anywhere at any time.

The most common forms Healthcare companies use in Connecteam are:

From all the healthcare companies used by Connecteam, we found the following capabilities which should be used to optimally run your business.

These are:

To collect information from your users, we must begin by creating our form. You can create a Form by starting from scratch or selecting an already existing template. Whether you create a new or edit an existing one, you can choose various 'building blocks', like free text, multiple-choice, image uploads, documents scanner, digital signature, GPS location stamp, and much more so that you can capture all the necessary information. With a variety of fields to choose from and a mobile preview on the right, creating a beautiful form for your users has never been easier.

Below is a guide explaining how to create a form:

Step 1: To begin creating your form click on add new and select either "Start From Scratch" or "Use a Template". For this example, we will start from scratch. Don't forget to name your Form!

Step 2: After naming the Form, click on any of the objects on the left side of the screen to start adding fields to your Form. In the example below, we will be adding a task field that can be found on the left side of the screen which will populate the mobile preview on the right.

Pro tip: When creating your Form, you can make a field required, meaning employees will not be able to complete the Form without filling out that field. An example would be a daily task list where you want to make sure that your users are not missing out on completing any tasks. The rule of thumb should be: if the information is crucial for you, make sure to set the field as required.

Step 3: When your Form is complete, make sure to take another look at the mobile preview to make sure it looks good and that you are capturing all the necessary information. When you are satisfied with your Form, click on save changes to assign it to your users.

Pro tip: If you need to make any changes, you can always move around fields or edit them by simply clicking or dragging them.

As your employees submit the Form, their entries are saved and documented on your dashboard and can be accessed whenever you need them. The dashboard also helps to distinguish between entries, see response time, export all information to Excel or PDF files, track activity for each employee, send custom push notifications, and more.

See all entries by clicking on 'Show Entries'. You can also set your Form settings, edit the Form, edit the assignment, or archive the Form, by entering Options.

Now that your Form has been created, your users can fill them out for you to review and provide feedback. Let's dive into our user entries by clicking on "Show Entries". This is where we will be able to analyze all of our entry submissions and provide feedback to our users.

Within the entry submission screen, you can do a variety of actions.

For instance, with advanced filtering capabilities, you can easily filter for any field that you had previously created, making sure that you can acquire the right information at any time.

Connecteam allows you to track which employees have submitted the Forms and which have not by using the "Filter" button at the bottom of your Form page, that you will be able to make sure that all of the necessary checklists (e.g Start/End of shift report, inventory checklists, etc.) Importantly, you can follow up with employees that didn't submit an entry by checking the box next to their name and using the "Notify" feature, which will allow you to send them a customized notification, reminding them to fill it out:

Most food and beverage companies are looking to create an approval system for their checklists and reports, with our manager fields you can do this!

The greatest advantage of the Manager Fields is that it allows you to perfect the internal communication in your company over a specific entry, both between the managers and employees.

By using Manager fields, you can approve forms with the status field, have managers digitally sign and confirm the entries, add a manager note to the Form, and use the Person field to tag the relevant stakeholders.

Thus, for any process that needs the manager's or supervisor's approval, this capability will come in handy.

For every new Form, one status column will be added by default with the options “Done” and “Working on it”.

Once you have accessed the status settings, you can add more statuses or edit the existing ones. To add more statuses, click the add status button:

To edit a status, hover your cursor over the status and a pencil will appear. Click the pencil to edit the status. You can also edit the name of the column following the same process.

As an admin, you can change the status of a Form, leave a note, add a signature, and more by accessing the entries.

Depending on your settings, your mobile users (employees) will be able to check the entry's Managers Fields. To notify your employees about a change in a Manager field, keep the mobile users able to see this status in the app.

Employees (mobile users) will be notified of a status change as shown in the image below. To find the entries history, employees should access the Profile tab > My entries history:

Pro Tip: We highly encourage adding Manager Fields to provide feedback to your users. From our experience, providing feedback acts as positive reinforcement and leads to higher Form submission rates.

A Real World Example: The company we have mentioned above created daily reports for their Visit Summary report after visiting a patient, and they are using the Tag field to tag the next person that needs to take a look at the report.

One of the cases they mentioned was that after the visit of the home caregiver, the patient needed a visit from a physiotherapist, so they tagged him so he can visit the patient.

After you have finished creating your Form you might want to configure your settings so that the Form entries can be shared with the correct person. Healthcare companies like to use the form share options as a handoff for the next shift with the relevant information or to the doctor who’s in charge of the patient. To configure the sharing options, let's head into the Form settings and share options:

To begin with, at the top of the sharing options you can choose if the receiver should receive Form entries over the email as a direct attachment or as a link to download the entry.

After you have set that up, you have three Form sharing options to choose from to ensure that the right person will always receive the Form information:

The first option allows each Form entry to be shared with any user within your account or an external email address. This is a great option to choose from to ensure that you are on top of every single entry and typically includes managers or company founders.

On the expert plan, you are also able to create specific filters for your Form entries, meaning the entries will only be shared if the criteria are met:

The second option is great to choose when you might want to have the Form entry shared with a specific person depending on a specific situation. For example, you might have several teams fill out the same Summary report, but each team has a different manager/ Doctor who should be receiving the Form. This is when option two comes in handy.

Another example would be when you have a Form that should go to different departments. Then you can fill out the right column with the different departments to make sure the right department gets the entry.

This is how it would look for your users when submitting the Form:

Pro tip: At the bottom you can also allow your users to select multiple users and make it so they have to choose at least one user from the list, ensuring that the entry is shared at least once.

There will be times when you will want your users to share a Form entry with someone, but you do not know their email. An example could be when the Caregiver fills out the visit summary report and wants to share the report with the patient’s family.

That is when option 3 comes in handy which allows your users to select and add any email that they want, ensuring that they also receive the Form entry.

If a user was selected during the sharing process, the user will be able to view the Form entry within the Connecteam app by going to profile > shared with me:

If you selected a user that has an email address within their custom fields or if you just added an email address to share the entry with, they will also receive it in their email.

Need more guidance? 🙋 Our LIVE support team (at the bottom right corner of your screen) replies in under 5 mins to ANY question.