How can I use BlueNotes with smart watches?

Apple Watches with the BlueNote Remote Web Browser

Typically, Apple watches do not have a web-browser enabled, but if you have BlueNote Remote View turned On at one PC in your office and your phone is connected to your private, secure WiFi network, you may be able to send your phone number a website URL link via iMessage, and then open that iMessage on your watch instead.

To do this, open the BlueNote App on a computer that you use frequently and make sure that BlueNote Remote is enabled. Then navigate to Menu > Preferences > Remote View > URL Information. Click "Copy URL" or use another method to manually enter everything in the Browser URL field as an iMessage on your phone or Apple device, and Send this to your phone number. If you have iMessage notifications enabled on your Apple Watch, click on the green iMessage speech bubble icon. You should be able to see something similar to the image above.

Note that BlueNote Remote will need to be set up with your preferred Lights to Display. Once you have this enabled, you will be able to use BlueNote Remote directly from the watch, which includes being able to turn Lights On or Off, and also responding in the form of a preset BlueNote within certain Lights. Because this is a visually-based web browser view only, you will not be notified of incoming notifications by a haptic or a sound.

One-way Mobile Notifications

This may be the best place to start when learning how to use BlueNote Lights to send notifications in the form of Mobile Notifications to smart devices such as phones and watches. Because there are no restrictions on ways you could set up text messaging, email messages, or Pushover notifications, consider this page a suggestion of how we've seen it used effectively in many practices.

Each user will need to determine under what circumstances they want a notification to be sent to them. If the light can already be seen as part of your set up, the user will make choices from the existing Light Panel when they are entering their phone number.

For example, if an assistant chooses to receive a Mobile(text) notification on a phone and/or smartwatch any time the existing light "Help at Front Desk" button is activated from any computer in the practice, this would be programmed in a single Alert Manager at the BlueNote client chosen by the device user. To receive only the notification above, the user would toggle only the red Mobile button beside the "Help at Front Desk" light to green. No text messages would be received for any other Lights.

You can see that if all of the Mobile notifications were toggled to green, a user would receive a mobile notification every time that any light is pressed, anywhere in the office. Of course, this is not practical, so we've come to the conclusion that many offices prefer to separate their mobile notifications from their regular lights. This way, users will only receive Mobile text messages when someone intentionally uses BlueNote to send one.

First Step: Create a new Light specifically for a team member.

You can add a Message Light for each user on any empty Light. To do this you will need to open System Wide Changes and then Publish the changes that you make out to all workstations.

Open System Wide Changes by choosing Menu > Preferences > Advanced > System Wide Changes. Type in " configure" if prompted, and select "Edit Lights Configuration."

Choose Light Panels on the left-hand side, then choose which set of Lights where you'd like the new Message light to appear. If Panel 1 is full, you may need to tab to Panel 2 instead.

Click into a blank space to Edit the Light. Our suggestion is to make sure that the name of the Light indicates its use; in this case "Message for Dr. Lee:". Be sure to add a Colon to the end of the light name. This assures that the user will be prompted to type in the actual message.

Edit the Light with any other modifications; i.e. BlueNote tabs, colors, tones, tags, etc. Then Save the Light and follow the same steps to create each additional Message light. We've created four Message lights in this example, but are only showing you how to set up the mobile notifications for one of them.

Once all of the edits have been made, choose Publish from the left-hand side, Save and Publish Changes to all Clients, then type in the word " publish" to Publish the changes.

Here's what your Alert Manager and the Light panels will look like with the second panel set up for team messaging.

Second Step: Have each user choose a different BlueNote client for their phone settings

A BlueNote client (the program at a single computer) can only hold one phone number at a time, and is responsible for delivering all mobile notifications to that phone or smartwatch. The BlueNote client will need to be turned on and the proper notifications selected for the user to receive text messages.

At the BlueNote client that a user has chosen, open BlueNote and select Menu > Notifications > Alert Manager > Mobile Notifications.

Under Mobile Notifications, toggle the Off button to On so that it appears green. Have the user enter their mobile number and select their mobile provider. For using BlueNote with email messaging or the Pushover application, refer to the Related Articles at the bottom of this page.

The "Next" button will appear. Click it to send the activation code. Once the activation code is retrieved, enter that into the box provided.

At this point, the user can either choose "Turn on SMS Alerts Per Light" or they can to the corresponding Light Panels at the top of their Alert Manager. The user will then locate their designated Message Light's notifications and toggle the Mobile button beside their message Light so that it is green.

The mobile notification for "Message for Dr. Lee:" is now active.

Repeat these steps at a new BlueNote client for each of the Message Lights that you wish to set up. Note that this particular setup is a suggestion only. However, this is a consistent method for users to activate Lights specifically created for text notifications rather than as part of general Light Panel alerts.

Using a Light to send a Text Message

With each of your message Lights programmed, to activate one, locate the associated Light. From any BlueNote client in the office, click on the name of the person that you wish to send the message to in order to bring up that message light's Action Window. Type your message in the blank space, then turn the light On. The Light and any associated popups will appear as usual; however, if you've successfully entered all the credentials, the user will also receive a text message on any associated phones or smart watches.

Note that Mobile messages are read-only. You cannot respond to a text message that was sent by BlueNote.