Growing and Managing Your Team

Introduction to teammates on Spruce

Spruce is built for teams, helping you communicate securely and collaborate around your patients' care. Adding teammates to your Spruce organization creates a shared inbox through which all team members can engage in patient communication and secure messaging with each other.

To see all of the teammates currently on your account, open your Settings and select Teammates.

Inviting a teammate

• NOTE: Only Administrators of your organization on Spruce can invite or remove teammates.
• Each new teammate will add an additional paid seat to your Spruce account. Your monthly bill will be adjusted accordingly, based on your current plan.
• Invite Teammates using their Personal Cell Phone Numbers NOT their direct Spruce Lines. 
• To invite a teammate from the web version of Spruce, open your Settings by selecting the Gear Icon on the home screen. Select Teammates, and then click the Invite Teammates button in the upper right-hand corner.

• On the Spruce mobile app, open your Settings. Then select Teammates, and click on the "+" icon in the upper right-hand corner.
• Enter your teammate's email address and mobile phone number and select Invite.

Teammate Invite Experience

• Inviting a teammate automatically generates an email from Spruce (support@sprucehealth.com) that will say, "You've been invited to join [Practice Name], and a button that says "Accept Invite."  
• New teammates should wait to receive this email and select Accept Invite either on mobile or their computer. 
• If they do not see this email, please have them search Spruce, support@sprucehealth.com, or check their spam folder. They cannot join your practice without an invite. See the image below. 

Teams on Spruce

Teams allow you to group together multiple teammates so that they can be paged as a group, assigned conversations, receive calls, and more. For example, you might have multiple front desk staff members who should be receiving the same notifications. You can easily accomplish this by making them all part of one Team called "Front Desk Staff." 

When you add teammates to a Team, those specific teammates will get page notifications when that Team is paged. You can also add a Team to a Saved Ring List or Numbers to Ring list to forward calls to all teammates in that Team. If your organization uses Spruce membership management, you can set a Team to have default membership just like you add an individual. 

When someone is added to a Team they will automatically have a new Team inbox filter added to their Inbox view. For example, someone added to the Team "Front Desk" would see an inbox called "Assigned to Front Desk." Conversations assigned to the Team would appear in that inbox.

Teammates can belong to multiple Teams, and Administrators of your organization on Spruce can add and delete teammates from these Teams. You can manage your Teams in your Settings, under Teams. Please note that this option will appear only once you have added teammates to your Spruce account. Learn more about alerting and paging members in a team.

Everyone can view a list of your current Teams from Settings > Teams, but only Administrators can make changes to the Teams.

If you are an Administrator on your Spruce account, you can:

• Create new Teams.
• Add and remove members from existing Teams.
• Rename existing Teams.
• Delete Teams.

Creating a Team

Only Administrators have the ability to add a Team to your account. This can be done on the Spruce web or mobile apps. If you are an Administrator, follow these steps to add a Team to your Spruce account.

From the web:

• Select Settings > Teams.
• Select the "Create New Team" button.
• Type in the name of your Team.
• Choose the members you'd like to add and select "Save."

From the mobile app:

• Select Settings > Teams.
• Select the "+" icon.
• Type in the name of your Team then click “Save” on iOS or "Create" on Android.
• On iOS, choose the members you'd like to add and select "Save." On Android, click "Edit" then choose the members you'd like to add and select "Save."
  

Removing a Team

Only Administrators have the ability to remove a Team from your account. This can be done on the web version of Spruce. If you are an Administrator, follow these steps to remove a Team from your Spruce account.

From the web:

• Select Settings > Teams.
• Find the Team you wish to remove and select the three-vertical-dot menu icon.
• Select Delete Team from the menu.
• This will open a box prompting you to "transfer ownership" to a Team or teammate. Type in the Team or teammate you wish to transfer ownership to.
• Select Continue with Deletion.
• Type “Delete Team” in the text box then click the Delete Team button to confirm the removal of the Team. 

Spruce will transfer assigned conversations, conversation membership, phone numbers, fax numbers, Spruce links owned by the deleted Team, auto-replies, auto-welcome messages, ring lists, and schedules to the designated Team or teammate. 

This simplifies the process for the administrator significantly as these steps do not need to be done manually. If you are uncertain who to choose as the recipient of the transfer you can create a new Team to act as a vessel until another decision is made.

Note: When you delete a Team, the teammates on that Team will not be removed from your organization. If you are looking to remove individual teammates, follow the steps here.

Editing an Existing Team

Only Administrators have the ability to edit an existing Team from your account. If you are an Administrator, follow these steps to add or remove teammates from a Team or rename a Team.

Add or Remove Teammates

From the web:

• Select Settings > Teams.
• Find the Team you wish to add or remove teammates from and click “Edit.”
• Hover over a teammate's name and click the X icon to remove them from the Team
• Type in the name of the teammate you wish to add to the Team and select them from the list.
• Click “Save.”

From mobile:

• Select Settings > Teams.
• Select the Team you wish to add or remove teammates from.
• Click “Edit” then use the checkboxes to select which teammates should be added or removed from the Team and click “Save.”

Rename a Team

From the web:

• Select Settings > Teams.
• Find the Team you wish to add or remove teammates from and click “Edit.”
• Type in the name of your Team and click “Save.”

Managing Administrators

Certain sensitive options within your Settings on Spruce are restricted so that only designated Administrators have access. These restricted activities include:

• Inviting new teammates
• Removing teammates and Teams from your account
• Selecting a paid plan if you are a new customer
• Changing billing information
• Creating Spruce Links
• Editing the owner of phone numbers and Spruce Links

Who is an Administrator?

The first person to join Spruce in your account is designated an Administrator by default. As the first Administrator, you can promote other teammates to Administrator status. Follow these steps to change a teammate's Administrator status:

• Log in to Spruce and navigate to your Settings.
• Select Teammates.
• Select the Teammate you wish to promote to an administrator.
• Select the Promote to Admin button if you're on web. If you’re on the mobile app, click directly on their name to show the option to promote or demote a teammate to and from Administrator status.

Please note that only Administrators can promote and demote other teammates to and from Administrator status. If you need help changing who is an Administrator on your account, please message our Support team through the app. 

This article covers the Spruce functions that are unique to administrators.

Removing a teammate

Only Administrators have the ability to remove teammates from your account. This can be done on the Spruce web or mobile apps. If you are an Administrator, follow these steps to remove a teammate from your Spruce account:

• Navigate to your Settings.
• Select Teammates.
• Select the teammate you wish to remove and scroll down to select the red button that reads Delete Account.
• This will open a box prompting you to "transfer ownership" to a Team or teammate. Type in the Team or teammate you wish to transfer ownership to.
• Select Continue with Deletion.

Type “Delete Account” in the text box then click the Continue with Deletion button to confirm the removal of the teammate. Please note that this will revoke their access immediately.

Spruce will transfer assigned conversations, scheduled messages, conversation membership, phone numbers, fax numbers, or spruce links owned by the deactivated user, auto-replies, auto-welcome messages, ring lists, and saved messages to the designated Team or teammate. This simplifies the process for the administrator significantly as these steps do not need to be done manually. If you are uncertain who to choose as the recipient of the transfer you can create a new Team to act as a vessel until another decision is made.

Note: We do not remove the teammate’s phone number from any ring lists / numbers to ring lists if listed as a direct phone number. Once you've removed a teammate, it's important to ensure that their personal cell phone number is not included in any Call Forwarding / ring lists that your organization has set up; otherwise, the old teammate may still be able to receive calls. Visit our Call Forwarding article for instructions on how to add and remove numbers from these lists.

Starting a team conversation

Once your teammates have joined your organization, you can start a conversation for secure internal chat.

• To start a new team conversation, select the Team icon at the bottom of your app home screen. If you're on the web, select the +New button on the top left-hand side of your screen. Note: This will only be available if you have more than one teammate on your account.
• Select the "+" icon and then "New Team Conversation" on your phone, or the blue new-conversation icon at the top of your inbox if you're on web. Click on "Team Chat" from the drop-down menu.

• Add the members you'd like to include, and set a subject. Compose a message and send it. All of the teammates you chose will see this message appear in their Team inbox. 

Unlike patient conversations, which by default are accessible to all teammates, only teammates who have been added to a team conversation can access that conversation and the messages exchanged therein.

You can add or remove teammates to existing team conversations at any time. To manage the teammates on an existing conversation:

• Select the conversation under Team then All.
• Select the Conversation Details “i” icon. 
• Select Edit.
• Search for the teammate you wish to add and click on their name. They will immediately be added to the conversation. 
• To remove a teammate, hover over their name and select the x icon.

Note: Any teammates you add at a later date will be able to see all previous messages exchanged.

Here’s a video demonstrating how to start a team conversation