Todo lists & queued messages

One list for everything you can’t do right now

The Todo list is a panel that slides in from the right edge of Hero EMR (its default — you can also float or pin it, see Open & close), on top of whatever you’re doing — the calendar, a chart, a half-written note. It’s built for the reality of clinic work: things come up mid-visit that can’t be handled mid-visit. Press one key, capture the task, and get back to the patient.

The panel has two tabs:

• Tasks — your todos: quick capture, patient links, priorities, shared color tags, checklists, due dates, snooze, and delegation to anyone on your team (see Create todos).
• Queued — messages you’ve scheduled to send later from the Inbox, a patient thread, or Care Team Chat, with full control until the moment they send (see Send a message later).

Todos are private to the people involved: only the person who created a todo and the person it’s assigned to can see it. Tags, on the other hand, are shared practice-wide, so a Billing tag means the same thing on everyone’s list (see Organize your list).

The backtick ` key and the magic wand

There are two ways in, and both work from anywhere in the EMR:

1. Press ` (backtick). The unshifted key just above Tab toggles the panel open and closed — on its own, with no Shift, Ctrl, or Cmd. (Shift+`, the tilde, deliberately does not open it.) The shortcut stays out of your way while you type: pressing it inside a note or any text field just types the character. Press Esc to close the panel.
2. Hover the magic wand. Rest your cursor on the wand button in the bottom-right corner and its menu of assistant actions appears. Click the Todo list row — the checklist icon — to open the panel.

The badge

The red badge on the wand’s Todo list row is a count of open todos that need you today — everything overdue, plus everything due at any point today on your practice’s clock, plus anything that has woken from a snooze. A todo due at 5 PM badges all day, not only once the hour passes. Snoozed todos never count, which is the point of snoozing. No badge means nothing is waiting on you; it is not a count of your whole list. For the alert that fires at the exact due minute, see Reminders.

Dock it, float it, pin it

The controls in the panel header change how the window behaves, and Hero remembers your choice:

• Docked — the default right-edge slide-over, over a dim backdrop that closes the panel when you click away.
• Floating — a free window: drag the title bar to move it, drag any edge or corner to resize it. There is no backdrop, so the chart underneath stays live. The line under Todo list in the header swaps to Drag to move · drag edges to resize while you are in this mode.
• Pinned — drops the backdrop and ignores Esc, so the panel stays put over the chart while you work. Only the X (or the toggle key) closes it.
• Opacity — dials the window back while it sits idle; hovering, focusing, moving, or resizing it makes it fully opaque again.

A reset control in the same group puts the window back to the docked default.

Quick-add, with a patient attached in one tap

The quick-add row at the top of the Tasks tab is the fastest path: type the task and press Enter. That’s a complete todo. The small icons inside the row let you attach more before you save — a priority flag, a due date, tags, a patient, or an assignee — and anything you set shows as a small chip under the row until you press Enter.

Linking a patient

A todo like “call about the cholesterol results” is only useful if it knows which patient. Click the person icon in the quick-add row and you get two paths:

1. Pick from recent patients. The popover lists patients whose charts you’ve opened recently — for the common case where the patient you need is the one you just saw. One click attaches them.
2. Search everyone. Search patients… opens the full patient search — the same one used everywhere in Hero EMR, searching by name, MRN, or date of birth. The panel steps aside while you search and returns on its own with the patient attached; your half-typed todo is preserved through the round trip.

On a saved todo, the patient shows as a green chip. Clicking the chip opens the chart — so “call about lab results” and the labs themselves are one click apart. You can also attach or change the patient later from the todo’s expanded editor.

Priorities, tags, due dates, checklists & snooze

Open any todo by clicking its title and the row expands into a full editor — title, notes, a checklist, and chips for the due date, priority, tags, patient, and assignee.

The pieces

How the groups work

The Tasks tab sorts itself so the top of the list is always “what needs me now.” All dates are read in your practice’s timezone — the same clock as your schedule — not the timezone of whatever computer you happen to be on:

Snooze & complete

The clock button on any row snoozes it — presets for Later today (+3h), This evening 6:00 PM, Tomorrow 8:00 AM, and Next week Mon 8:00 AM, or any custom time. Snoozing is how you tell a todo “not now, but don’t let me forget” — it disappears into Snoozed and resurfaces in Today at the moment you chose.

Ticking the circle completes a todo, and a brief Undo toast appears in case you caught the wrong row — one click puts it back exactly as it was.

Reminders

A todo assigned to you rings at the minute it comes due. An amber bell jumps beside the magic wand, and an amber strip appears at the top of the Tasks tab reading Reminder due: … (or N reminders due when several are up), with a Clear / Clear all button. Each ringing row also carries its own bell, so you can clear one and leave the rest.

Clearing a reminder is not completing the todo — it silences the alert and leaves the task on your list. Unlike the wand’s count badge, which covers the whole day, the bell is exact-instant: it fires at the time you picked and stays up until someone dismisses it. Snoozing a todo stops it ringing until the snooze expires.

Limits worth knowing

A few caps you would otherwise meet as an error: 10 tags per todo, 50 checklist items, a 500-character title (notes run to 10,000), 1,000 open todos per person, and 200 tags for the whole practice.

Reorder or delete

The overflow menu (…) on any row holds Edit details, Move up / Move down for hand-ordering a group, and Delete for a todo that should never have existed — distinct from completing one, which keeps it in Completed for 30 days.

Hand a todo to someone on your team

Any todo can be assigned to another person in your practice — a physician finishing a visit can hand “fax the records to cardiology” to the front desk without leaving the panel, and the task arrives on that person’s list with its patient link, tags, notes, and checklist intact.

1. Pick an assignee. Use the assign icon in the quick-add row (to delegate as you create) or the assignee chip in a todo’s expanded editor (to re-assign later). A searchable picker lists your practice’s physicians, admins, and todo-enabled staff.
2. Both of you can see it. A delegated todo stays visible to you and the assignee — and no one else. The row wears a small avatar; hover it to see Delegated to / Delegated by.
3. Track what you’ve handed off. The filter row switches between All, Assigned to me, and Delegated by me — the last one is your “waiting on others” view, showing when each handed-off task gets done. Two icons at the right end of the same row narrow it further: the tag icon filters to one tag (All tags clears it) and the flag icon filters to one priority (Any priority clears it). A ringing reminder still shows through an active filter.

“Send later” in every composer

Some messages shouldn’t send the moment you finish typing them — results you review at 10 PM are better delivered at 8 AM. A Send later button now sits next to Send in three places:

• the Inbox’s New Message window (see Compose & settings),
• the reply box on a patient thread (see Patient threads), and
• the Care Team Chat composer, for messages to colleagues.

1. Write the message as usual. Recipient, subject, body — nothing about composing changes.
2. Click Send later and pick a time. The popover offers presets — This evening 6:00 PM, Tomorrow 8:00 AM, Monday 8:00 AM — or a custom date and time, anywhere from a couple of minutes to 90 days out. Every time is your practice’s timezone, exactly as labeled at the top of the popover.
3. Done — it’s queued. The composer closes and the message appears on the Queued tab of the todo panel, where you can still reschedule, send it now, or cancel it right up until it sends (see The Queued tab).

Watch, reschedule, or cancel anything you’ve scheduled

The Queued tab lists your scheduled messages, soonest first — each with the recipient, a preview of the subject and body, the send time in your practice’s timezone, and a status pill. It shows only messages you scheduled; teammates each have their own queue.

While a message is scheduled

• Reschedule — the same preset/custom time popover as Send later.
• Send now — releases it immediately (delivery follows within about a minute).
• Cancel — withdraws it; nothing is sent.

Once a message sends, its pill flips to Sent and it moves out of the default view — tick History to see your sent and cancelled items. Delivered messages land in the normal thread exactly as if you’d pressed Send at that moment.

If a scheduled send fails

“Remind me to call Martha tomorrow at 9”

Todo capture is wired into Command Hero, so you can create a reminder without touching the panel at all — speak it to the voice assistant (F1) or type it into the command box (F2).

1. Say or type the reminder. Press F2 (or click Type a command in the wand flyout), then phrase it naturally: “remind me to review charts tomorrow at 9am”, “add a todo to call Martha about her labs Friday morning.”
2. Hero builds the todo. The reminder text becomes the title and the time you said becomes the due date, resolved in your practice’s timezone — “tomorrow at 9” means 9 AM on your practice’s clock. If you name a patient — or you’re working in a patient’s chart when you say it — the todo is linked to that patient.
3. The panel opens to confirm. The todo list slides in with the new item in place, so you can see it landed correctly — and add a tag or delegate it while it’s in front of you.