Admin & onboarding guide

This guide is for the person setting Rounds up for an agency — typically an administrator or practice manager. If you're a staff member joining an agency that already uses Rounds, the getting started guide is the one for you.

1. Create your agency account

Setting up Rounds starts with creating the agency itself. When you register, you create both your own admin account and the agency it belongs to — everything in Rounds is scoped to that agency, so staff, channels, and messages all live inside its boundary.

1. 1

   Go to the Rounds home page and click Create account

   Open Rounds in your browser. On the public home page, the top-right navigation has a Create account button — click it to open the registration form.
2. 2

   Register the agency

   On the registration form, enter your work email, your name, and your agency name, and choose a strong password. This creates your account and the agency together — and your account is its administrator.
3. 3

   Set up your own 2FA

   Rounds takes you straight to two-factor authentication setup — every account needs it. Scan the QR code with an authenticator app and enter the code. Do this before anything else.
4. 4

   You land on the chat workspace

   Once 2FA is verified, Rounds opens the chat workspace. From here the top-right Settings link is your hub for inviting staff and configuring the agency.

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2. Invite your staff

Staff don't sign themselves up — you invite them. Each invitation goes to a person's work email and contains a single secure link that brings them into your agency.

Inviting happens in the Team panel — and the Team panel isn't the screen you land on. After registering you're on the chat workspace; the Team panel lives inside Settings, a couple of clicks away. Here's the path:

1. 1

   From the chat workspace, click Settings

   In the top-right navigation bar, click Settings. This opens your account settings page.
2. 2

   Scroll to the Team panel

   On the Settings page, scroll down to the Team section. It's badged Admin and only appears for agency admins — it's where staff invitations are sent.
3. 3

   Send an invitation

   Enter a staff member's work email in the Staff email field and click Send invitation. They receive an email with a secure, single-use link.
4. 4

   They set up their account

   The link walks them through choosing a password and setting up 2FA — the flow described in getting started. You don't need to do anything while they do this.
5. 5

   Re-invite if a link expires

   Invitation links are time-limited for security. If someone's link no longer works, return to the Team panel and send a fresh invitation.

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3. Create channels

Channels are where the work happens. Set up a sensible starting set so new staff have somewhere to go on day one. Rounds has three conversation types — see channels, DMs & announcements for the full picture.

Channels are created from the chat workspace, not from Settings — the row of icons at the top of the channel list is where every new conversation starts.

1. 1

   Go to the chat workspace

   Click the Rounds wordmark in the top-left of the nav, or visit /chat. Find the Conversations header at the top of the channel list on the left.
2. 2

   Create a group channel

   Click the people icon in the icon row to open the New group panel. Name the channel, add members, and click Create group.
3. 3

   Create an announcement channel

   As an admin you also see a megaphone icon at the end of the icon row. Click it to open the New announcement channel panel — covered in step 5 below.

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4. Channel leads

Every group and announcement channel has exactly one lead — the person accountable for it, and the person who receives private-to-lead escalations for that channel. The lead is named in the channel header, just under the channel name.

1. 1

   The lead defaults to the creator

   When you create a channel, its lead is automatically set to you — the person who created it. There's nothing extra to do at creation time.
2. 2

   Check the lead in the channel header

   Open any channel and read the header: the line "Lead: …" shows who currently holds it. Use that to confirm the right person is named.

When the lead needs to change — someone moves teams, or the channel was created by the wrong person — an admin reassigns it from the channel's Members panel. You don't land on that panel; you reach it from inside the channel. Here's the path:

1. 1

   Open the channel from the chat workspace

   In the chat workspace, click the channel in the conversation list to open it. The Members panel belongs to one channel, so start by opening the one whose lead you want to change.
2. 2

   Click the Members icon in the channel header

   At the top-right of the open channel, next to the notification bell, is a people icon — that's Members. Click it. (It shows on group and announcement channels; direct messages have no lead, so they have no Members icon.)
3. 3

   Find the person and click Make lead

   The Members panel lists everyone in the channel; the current lead is badged Lead. Find the member who should take over and click Make lead next to their name, then confirm.
4. 4

   The change takes effect immediately

   The header's "Lead: …" line updates at once, the Lead badge moves in the panel, and the reassignment is written to the audit log. Existing private-to-lead messages follow the new lead automatically.

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5. Set up announcement channels

An announcement channel is how you reach the whole agency with something everyone must see but no one needs to reply to — policy changes, schedule updates, all-staff reminders.

1. 1

   Click the megaphone icon in the chat workspace

   In the chat workspace, the megaphone icon at the end of the Conversations icon row opens the New announcement channel panel. It only appears for agency admins.
2. 2

   Name it and add members

   Give the channel a name and short description, and add the staff who should receive its notices — typically everyone. Click Create announcement.

• Posting is limited to designated people, so an important notice can't be buried under replies. Decide who those posters are and keep the list tight.
• Encourage staff to take follow-up to a relevant group channel or a direct message — announcement channels are deliberately read-only for most.

6. Configure on-call, escalation and integrations

The clinical-messaging features — on-call scheduling, escalation policies, user groups and the integration API — are all configured from one place: the Agency administration panel inside Settings.

1. 1

   Open Settings

   From the chat workspace, click Settings in the top-right navigation bar.
2. 2

   Scroll to Agency administration

   Below the Team panel, the Agency administration panel (badged Admin) gathers every agency-config surface in one grid of cards.
3. 3

   Pick the area to configure

   Each card opens its own page: On-call schedule and Clinical roles for scheduling, Escalation policies for escalation, User groups for standing teams, and Integrations for the integration API.

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7. Designate safety contacts

Rounds has a lone-worker safety check-in feature: field staff arm a timer before a solo visit, and if they don't confirm they're safe — or if they hit Panic — Rounds raises an alert. As the administrator, you decide who that alert reaches by designating safety contacts.

1. 1

   Open Settings

   From the chat workspace, click Settings in the top-right navigation bar.
2. 2

   Scroll to Agency administration

   In the Agency administration panel (badged Admin), find the Safety contacts card.
3. 3

   Open Safety contacts

   Click the Safety contacts card. It opens the safety-contacts page at /settings/safety, listing every staff member in your agency.
4. 4

   Toggle the staff who should respond

   Switch on the toggle next to each staff member you want to receive lone-worker alerts. Pick people who can act on an alert — reach the colleague, send help, follow your agency's safety procedure.

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Click to enlarge

8. Ongoing administration

• New staff: invite them as they join; remove access promptly when someone leaves the agency.
• 2FA recovery: when a staff member loses access to their authenticator — a new phone, a lost device — you're the person who helps them re-establish it. See two-factor authentication.
• Channel housekeeping: keep channel names and descriptions current so the channel directory stays easy to navigate.
• Keep coverage current: review the on-call schedule so every clinical role has someone assigned, and update user groups as your teams change.
• The audit trail: Rounds records access to PHI — channel views, message reads, file downloads, and visibility changes — giving your agency the immutable record HIPAA reviews expect.