BlueNote Lights is a complete alert system designed especially for dental practices that have computers in most rooms. Lights are activated by pressing a text button, which then alerts all other users with a tone and a popup that an action has occurred or that a person is needed. You’ll find that the retro-modern styling and simple peer-to-peer architecture of BlueNote Lights streamlines communication in your practice while being easy to learn and use. And thank you to all of those dental offices that have journeyed with us since 2004 and who continue to help us create good communication systems by sharing your ideas with us. BlueNote Lights - User Guide bluenotesoftware.com Page 1
Transcript
BlueNote Lights is a complete alert system designed especially for dental practices that have computers in most rooms. Lights are activated by pressing a text button, which then alerts all other users with a tone and a popup that an action has occurred or that a person is needed.
You’ll find that the retro-modern styling and simple peer-to-peer architecture of BlueNote Lights streamlines communication in your practice while being easy to learn and use.
And thank you to all of those dental offices that have journeyed with us since 2004 and who continue to help us create good communication systems by sharing your ideas with us.
BlueNote Lights - User Guide bluenotesoftware.com
Page 1
Starting Up
Once BlueNote Lights makes a network connection the light panel will appear. Twelve of the 24 available lights have been pre-programmed instead of starting with blank lights. You will be able to change these to suit your practice, as well as add more when you need them.
See page 7 for instructions on how to change or add lights to the NoteBoard.
BlueNote Lights - User Guide bluenotesoftware.com
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Using a lightTo activate a light, click its text button. A tone will play, the light will turn green and flash, and a popup will appear in the lower right-hand corner of other users’ computer screens.
After a predetermined amount of time has elapsed (the default is 3 minutes), the light will “age” and turn orange. Click on the flashing light to toggle-on the amount of time since the light was activated. The time will only stay on the screen for a few seconds before disappearing.
Once ten minutes (by default) has elapsed, the button will “age” again and turn red.
BlueNote Lights - User Guide bluenotesoftware.com
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Responding to an active lightWhen you click on an active light button, you’ll have a few options. You can reply to it by typing, answering with a preprogrammed Snippet (and then pressing Enter when typing is completed), or you can turn the light off by clicking Clear Page. See page 9 for more on Snippets.
Other options include Re-paging (the circle arrow) and the Escalation button (triangle with the exclamation point). If the re-page button is activated another tone and popup will be sent. The Escalation button will cause the entire button to blink until it is cleared. (The Clear Page button in this example is currently red because the Light has aged beyond ten minutes).
Pop-upsWhen a Light is activated, by default all other computers will display a Pop-up in the lower right-hand corner of the monitor. These pop-ups will change color according to how long the light has been active, corresponding to their color on the light panel.
Once a Light has been cleared its pop-up will disappear as well. Clicking the X will only remove the pop-up from your monitor. You will have to clear the Light from the light panel to turn it off and clear all Pop-ups everywhere. Each user can choose how long to display Pop-ups at their computer from the Alert Manager (see page 12).
Additionally, if a message has been added to a Light, that message will also display on the Pop-up.
BlueNote Lights - User Guide bluenotesoftware.com
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Charms Menu
On the upper right-hand side of BlueNote Lights you will find the Charms Menu, which will slide the main view over to the left and allow you to access the following options.
Elapsed times
This will display the amount of time since the light was activated. The time that has elapsed will appear on the lights for 15 seconds. You can also click on the flashing button to view the elapsed time of all active lights.
Sequenced
This view allows you to see only active Lights.
The Lights will be listed in order of how long they’ve been activated, longest to shortest time.
You can resize the font by clicking the + and - buttons at the bottom of the window.
Click on Options to reorder the sequence with the newest page on top or to de-select lights that you want to exclude from the Sequenced View.
BlueNote Lights - User Guide bluenotesoftware.com
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History
This window is searchable, will display any snippets or other typed messages that appeared with the Lights, and is color-coded according to the amount of time that the Light was active. You will be able to view when the light was Paged, if it was Updated or Refreshed, and when it was Cleared. Additionally, the Time to Clear will be posted, letting you know how long a Light was active.
All history may be saved as a text file .RTF by clicking Print.
The History Options Menu opens the window you see to the right. This is where you may choose not to include certain types of pages/lights in the History view, or you may choose to clear all of your page/light history.
BlueNote Lights - User Guide bluenotesoftware.com
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Making Changes and CustomizationYou will want to customize BlueNote Lights to your office once you are more familiar with the light panel. You can display as few as 8 lights (4 rows) and up to as many as 24 lights (12 rows), depending on the needs of your practice.
All lights are global, which means that they will only work if everyone on your network has exactly the same lights on their light panel. You will be adding or changing lights at one computer and then publishing these additions and changes to your network to instantly update the Lights at each computer. See page 11 for publishing instructions.
Click the Menu button and choose Options, then click System Wide Changes. You will be prompted to type the word “configure” in the box. This is to assure that you are aware that you are making changes for all the light panels on your network.
The lights are numbered from 1 to 24 with the odd numbered lights on the left side of the light panel and the even numbered lights on the right side. The first time that you view the BlueNote Lights Configuration panel it will start with the default lights, or if you have already programmed the lights previously you may choose to import the existing settings into your Configuration panel.
BlueNote Lights - User Guide bluenotesoftware.com
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Configuring the lights
The default buttons will appear as shown below, where you will be able to click on each one to change the text as well as the tone that is played when that specific Light is activated. Click the Play button to preview the sound. Press Save to close the window or Delete to leave the button blank.
Tip: By adding a colon to the end of the light button message, the user will automatically be prompted to include additional information before the light is activated.
Moving ButtonsIf you need to change the sequence of buttons on the Configuration page, select Move Buttons to drag and drop the Lights to the desired locations. Click the button again to save your changes.
BlueNote Lights - User Guide bluenotesoftware.com
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Light TimersBy default, the light timer will change from green to orange at 3 minutes, and then to red when a Light has been active for more than 10 minutes. Use the arrows to the right of each timer to change these settings.
Global Snippets
When you would prefer to have pre-typed responses to lights or other information that needs to be broadcast frequently, by many people in the practice, you may want to have these included in global Snippets. Add, delete, and change the order of the snippets from this screen. You may have up to 10 global snippets in your library. Each light panel will also have 10 individual snippets. Global snippets will appear before individual snippets.
BlueNote Lights - User Guide bluenotesoftware.com
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Snippets also have the ability to include Shortcodes. Type a snippet, insert a shortcode such as {username} and the snippet will then include that information. Here’s an example of how a Shortcode would be used:
{username} acknowledges your light
The Shortcode will grab the Windows user name from the user’s computer, and what will appear on the posted snippet will be:
DoctorOp3 acknowledges your light
Another set of snippets can also be saved locally at individual computers for responses and information that doesn’t need to be available at every computer (see page 14).
Shortcodes:
{time}{24hour}{date}{longdate}{username}
Advanced
These options allow you to import the Lights that you are already using on your local computer into the configuration file, to clear the entire configuration panel using Reset Configuration, to Backup a configuration to your computer, and the Restore button to access a backup file.
BlueNote Lights - User Guide bluenotesoftware.com
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Publishing
When you have completed your changes they will need to be published to all active panels. Clicking the Publish Changes button cannot be undone and will change the layout of all light panels. As a safeguard against unintentional changes, you will be prompted to type the word “publish” to assure that you are authorized to publish these changes.
Computers that are offline when you publish any changes will not receive the new configuration, but you can make sure that they too are updated when they come online by clicking the “Keep all Clients Updated” button and turning it green. As long as this option is selected all light panels on your network will use these changes. No more than one light panel should have this option selected.
BlueNote Lights - User Guide bluenotesoftware.com
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Main MenuThese features and settings are local to each light panel.
The Charms Menu will slide out from the right side of the light panel. Its features are explained on Page 4.
Do Not Disturb when activated blocks all tones and popups. You will still be able to view active Lights on the light panel.
Always OnTop keeps the light panel from disappearing behind other programs running on your display.
Alert Manager
If you are seeing too many popups or hearing too many alert tones you have the option of turning them off at your computer. If a Tone or Popup is green it is enabled. You can also choose to turn off tones depending on their type (New Pages, Refreshed Pages, or Updated Pages), or change the amount of time that a Popup Alert stays on your monitor. The default Popup Time is 3 minutes, but you can set the timer for much longer so that the popup alerts will “stack” in the lower right-hand corner of your computer screen.
BlueNote Lights - User Guide bluenotesoftware.com
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Options Menu
You’ll notice that the Options menu is grouped into tabs, and also includes a link to the website for purchasing the software, a registration window, and access to System Wide Changes (see page 7).
By default BlueNote Lights will automatically start and connect to the network every time the computer is logged in.
Some computers may not be equipped with speakers. If your computer doesn’t have external speakers, you should uncheck “Use PC sound card and speakers” to use the computer’s internal speaker (if equipped) any time that you would normally hear a BlueNote Lights tone.
You can check for software updates manually or have BlueNote lights check for updates automatically by clicking Update Options.
NoteBoard OptionsWhen a message has been added to an active Light, a conversation bubble will appear and the Light will alternately flash between the Light name and the message text. You can change this and other light panel features under the NoteBoard Options tab.
BlueNote Lights - User Guide bluenotesoftware.com
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Individual SnippetsThis is where you will add, delete, and change the positions of your individual Snippets, up to ten at each computer. See page 9 for Global Snippets.
If all ten Global Snippets and all ten Individual Snippets are used, a total of 20 snippets will be available when pressing the Snippet button. Global Snippets will display first, followed by Individual Snippets.
Network, Adapters, Advanced OptionsThese settings may need to be changed depending on the type of network configuration you are using, especially if a computer has multiple network adapters. Additionally, if you have more than one workgroup communicating on a network you can selectively choose which computers communicate with each other. If you need help understanding these and any of the other advanced options please call BlueNote Software directly or email us at [email protected].
