Hand Hygiene setup guide

Setting up Hand Hygiene takes eight phases, in order: set up Kio Cloud, install the gateways and room sensors, create Dispenser Types, configure Hand Hygiene, add staff and assign their Smart Badges, install the Dispenser Beacons, validate with Test Mode, and roll out to staff. Each phase depends on the ones before it. Locations must exist before devices can be assigned to them, Dispenser Types must exist before a Dispenser Beacon can be installed, and Test Mode needs a staff member wearing an assigned badge.

This guide is for Hand Hygiene administrators and deployment leads. Installers follow the device installation articles linked in Phases 2 and 6.

Before you begin

• A Kio account for your organization. Kontakt.io provides the sign-in URL: https://[Tenant ID].app.cloud.[us or uk].kontakt.io.
• Network requirements for Portal Lights are met. Confirm them with your IT department. If your deployment uses Bluetooth-compatible Wi-Fi access points instead, Kontakt.io confirms that infrastructure is ready.
• Kio Setup Manager on the installer's mobile device (iOS or Android). Installers use it to install and configure the gateways, room sensors, and Dispenser Beacons. Bluetooth must be on, and the device needs an internet connection (Wi-Fi or cellular).
• Kio Entity Manager on a mobile device, for assigning Smart Badges to staff in Phase 5.
• The decisions to make first:
  • Which rooms need the hand hygiene reminder. It has to be set up room by room during Phase 6, so give the on-site team the list before they start. See About Hand Hygiene.
  • Your department naming standard. Staff are matched to their department by its exact name in Phase 5.
  • Which dispenser models you have, which decides the Dispenser Beacon for each one. See Phase 6.

Roles for the setup team

Assign these roles in the Users app before you start:

• Hand Hygiene Administrator, for configuring Hand Hygiene
• Smart Location Administrator, for the location hierarchy and departments
• User Management Administrator, for creating users and assigning roles
• Device Management Administrator, to claim the Kontakt.io order
• For each installer, a Device Management role that allows device installation in Kio Setup Manager: Administrator, Editor All, or Editor. See About user access to Kio Setup Manager.

Manage users directly in the Users app or through your SSO identity provider.

Phase 1: Set up Kio Cloud

The Kio Cloud apps are the shared foundation Hand Hygiene depends on. Open them from the Kio Cloud section of the Kontakt.io Launchpad, and complete these tasks in order.

Phase 2: Install gateways and room sensors

The on-site team installs these with Kio Setup Manager and assigns each one to its location.

• Gateways: Portal Lights or Bluetooth-compatible Wi-Fi access points. Receive data from Smart Badges, room sensors, and Dispenser Beacons and send it to Kio Cloud. Portal Lights plug into wall outlets and are installed with Kio Setup Manager. Bluetooth-compatible Wi-Fi access points may already be deployed in your facility. See About the Portal Light.
• Room sensors (Beam Mini or Portal Beam). Mount one in every patient room and along the hallways and corridors between rooms, so staff movement from room to room is captured. A patient room without one produces no visits, and therefore no opportunities and no compliance data. See About the Beam Mini 2 and About the Portal Beam.

Phase 3: Create Dispenser Types

In Hand Hygiene, go to Settings > Dispenser Types and create one Dispenser Type for each physical dispenser model at the site. A Dispenser Beacon cannot be installed until its dispenser's type exists. See Add a Dispenser Type.

• Name: say whether the dispenser holds soap or sanitizer, for example "GOJO FMX-12 Sanitizer" or "Ecolab Nexa Compact Soap".
• Dispenser capacity: the volume the dispenser holds when full, for example 750 mL.
• Dispense amount: the volume released each time the dispenser is used, for example 0.7 mL. Contact Kontakt.io for the exact amount for each supported dispenser model rather than estimating it.

You do not add the dispensers themselves here. Kio Setup Manager creates each dispenser when its Dispenser Beacon is installed in Phase 6, and fills in the dispenser's capacity from its Dispenser Type. See About dispenser management.

Phase 4: Configure Hand Hygiene

Open Hand Hygiene from the Kontakt.io Launchpad, then go to Settings. Configure each item in this order.

1. Staff Roles. Create a Staff Role for each kind of badge wearer, such as Nurse, and any other clinical roles that will wear badges. See Add a Staff Role.
2. Room Types for patient care spaces. Create a Room Type for each kind of patient-facing space, such as Patient Room, Patient Exam, or Surgical. You need at least one patient room type. For each Staff Role, add a Staff Type Rule with a status in the Utilized group, such as With Patient, which starts an opportunity when the staff member enters.
3. Room Types for non-patient care spaces. Create a Room Type for each kind of space that is not patient-facing, such as a corridor, nurses' station, or break room. For each Staff Role, add the Staff Type Rule Available, On Shift, which describes the staff member's status outside patient care. The opportunity itself ends when the room sensor detects the staff member leaving the patient room.
4. Room Matching. Match each Smart Location room to its Room Type. This is what lets a visit be attributed to the right kind of space, and incorrect Room Matching is the most common cause of unexpected compliance data. See Manage Room Types & Room Matching.
5. Opportunity Configuration. On the Settings page, set the Minimum Visit Duration, Valid Wash-In Period, and Valid Wash-Out Period, and the Compliance Thresholds that set the Needs Work, Okay, and Good zones. The wash-in and wash-out periods give staff a little time to wash just before they enter and just after they leave. See Opportunity configuration (system-wide).
6. Dispensers Configuration. On the same page, set the Low Refill Threshold: the refill level, as a percentage of full capacity, below which a dispenser is flagged as low. It ranges from 0 to 100% in steps of 5, and the default is 25%.
7. Alert Rules. Go to Settings > Alert Rules and create a Refill level rule, so the staff who refill dispensers are notified when one gets low. The rule's refill level is set separately from the Low Refill Threshold: the threshold decides when a dispenser is flagged, and the rule decides when an alert is triggered. See Create a Refill level Alert Rule.

Phase 5: Add staff and assign Smart Badges

1. Add a staff profile for every badge wearer. Each record needs a Staff ID, a Staff Role, and an Assigned Home Location (their department). For more than a few staff members, use the Import Wizard. See Add multiple staff at one time (bulk import).

   Important: The Assigned Home Location must match the Smart Location department name from Phase 1 exactly, including case, spacing, and punctuation. A mismatch silently breaks the link between a staff member and their department, and they are left out of department rankings and the Team Dashboard.

2. Assign a Smart Badge to each staff member with Kio Entity Manager, and confirm the badge is powered on. See Provision a badge to staff.

3. Give sign-in access only to staff who need it. A staff profile is not a user account, and most badge wearers never sign in. For those who do, create a user with the right role, and set the user's Unique Ext. ID to match their Staff ID so the account is linked to their badge data. See Link staff profiles to user accounts and About user access to Hand Hygiene.

Phase 6: Install Dispenser Beacons

The on-site team installs each Dispenser Beacon with Kio Setup Manager, on iOS or Android. For each Dispenser Beacon, the installer:

1. Scans the Dispenser Beacon, or enters its ID.
2. Confirms the Dispenser Model. For an ES8 or ES10 it is set automatically. For a Universal Dispenser Beacon, the installer selects the exact dispenser model, which decides how the Dispenser Beacon detects a dispense.
3. Selects the Dispenser Type from Phase 3, and enters the Dispenser Name and ID.
4. Selects the room. The room must belong to a department.
5. Sets up local buzzing, the hand hygiene reminder. When the app asks Pair Portal Light, for a dispenser in a room on your reminder list, the installer selects Yes, pair a Portal Light and links the Dispenser Beacon with the room's Portal Light and room sensor. Otherwise, the installer selects Skip. If either device is not installed yet, the app offers to install it on the spot.
6. Places the Dispenser Beacon on the floor map and completes the install.
7. When the app asks for one, performs a Test Dispense and confirms the Dispenser Beacon's LED blinks.

Kio Setup Manager creates the dispenser in Hand Hygiene, or updates it if the Dispenser Beacon was installed before. Local buzzing is optional and can be skipped for dispensers in hallways and other non-patient areas. To add it later, install the Dispenser Beacon again in Kio Setup Manager. If a Portal Light is already linked to another Dispenser Beacon, the app warns that local buzzing will be turned off for this one.

Choose the Dispenser Beacon for each dispenser

The dispenser decides the Dispenser Beacon: GOJO PURELL® ES8 dispensers take the ES8 Dispenser Beacon, GOJO ES10 dispensers take the ES10, and every supported dispenser beyond those takes the Universal Dispenser Beacon. Many sites have a mix, so expect to install more than one model in the same building. The Kio Cloud side is identical for all three.

ES8 Dispenser Beacon

Fits inside a GOJO PURELL® ES8 dispenser, soap or sanitizer, and no other dispenser. It is not visible once the dispenser is closed. For compatible models, see About the ES8 Dispenser Beacon. Because it connects to the dispenser's own module, it can report dispenser error codes as well as dispense events.

See Install an ES8 Dispenser Beacon.

ES10 Dispenser Beacon

Fits inside a compatible GOJO PURELL® ES10 dispenser, connecting to the dispenser's module in the same way as the ES8. Also reports dispenser error codes.

See Install an ES10 Dispenser Beacon.

Universal Dispenser Beacon

Mounts on the outside of a supported dispenser, manual or automatic, using an adhesive flex-rack. It has no connection to the dispenser at all — it detects a dispense from the vibration it senses through the dispenser housing.

Two consequences for planning:

• Mounting position is not adjustable. The Dispenser Beacon's detection is calibrated per dispenser model and for one specific mounting position. Installing it higher, lower, or on the wrong side causes missed dispenses or false ones.
• It cannot report dispenser error codes. Having no connection to the dispenser, it reports dispense events and errors about the Dispenser Beacon itself only. Dispenser error codes come from the ES8 and ES10 models only.

See Install a Universal Dispenser Beacon.

After the Dispenser Beacons are installed

Kio Setup Manager sets each installed device's deployment status to Deployed, which turns on Device Health monitoring for it.

Phase 7: Validate with Test Mode

Test Mode lets you confirm the system is producing the data you expect before staff rely on it.

1. Go to Settings > Test Mode.
2. Have a test user wear an assigned Smart Badge and walk through several rooms covered by Room Matching.
3. Have the test user use the dispensers installed in Phase 6.
4. In Test Mode, confirm that room entries and exits, dispense events, and opportunity matches all appear as expected.

If signals are missing or rooms are misidentified, go back to the phase that sets up the missing piece before going live. See Validate and troubleshoot with Test Mode.

Phase 8: Roll out to staff

• Hand out the Smart Badges assigned in Phase 5, and share the About Hand Hygiene for nurses and badge wearers before staff start wearing them.
• Brief the staff who refill dispensers. On a Universal Dispenser Beacon, they triple-click the Dispenser Beacon's button after each refill to record it. ES8 and ES10 dispensers record refills on their own.
• Optional: set up rewards. If you plan to deploy Kio Nurse Assistant to nurses, add prizes to the Raffle in Settings > Rewards before nurses open the app. See About Rewards.
• Optional: deploy Kio Nurse Assistant. Nurses install it on their phones for a private view of their own compliance, plus the Race and Rewards tabs. See About Kio Nurse Assistant for Hand Hygiene.

What success looks like

Within a few hours of going live, the Compliance Analytics page and All Opportunities begin showing data. Dispense events appear with timestamps and rooms, and compliance rates fill in at the campus, department, and unit levels.

If data does not appear within a day, go back to Phase 7 and confirm that signals appear in Test Mode. If they appear in Test Mode but compliance does not appear, the issue is usually in Room Matching or Opportunity Configuration.

After setup

Two ongoing platform activities keep your Hand Hygiene deployment healthy. Both happen in Kio Cloud, outside the Hand Hygiene app.

• Device Health: create alert rules. Set up alert rules so you are notified when a Portal Light goes offline, and when a room sensor or Dispenser Beacon battery is low. These cover the Kontakt.io devices and are separate from the Hand Hygiene Alert Rules set up in Phase 4, which cover a dispenser getting low on soap or sanitizer. Most deployments need both.
• Device Management: keep firmware up to date. Apply Kontakt.io firmware updates to your devices as they are released.