Contents for recall postcards may not be good for emails

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brentwood
Posts: 144
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2008 4:04 pm

Contents for recall postcards may not be good for emails

Post by brentwood » Mon Sep 22, 2008 4:23 pm

In version 6.0, we will have the recall email function. I like the idea. But in the user manual, it says that the email content will be from the content for postcards. I don't think the same content may be good for both.

The email setup of Open Dental cannot set the sender name or signature. So if we apply the same content for postcards to be email body, then it will be confusing to patients. For example, the content for postcards may be

You are due for your regular dental checkup on xx/xx. Please call our office to schedule an appointment.

The postcard clearly shows the phone number and the name of the dental office. There is no need to put them in the postcard message body.

But for emails, there is no way to set the sender name. Patients will receive an email from, e.g. "info@brightdental.com" instead of "Bright Dental", with the above content. There is really a need to put office name and phone number in the body. How about the subject line? If would be great if we can set that, too.

It seems to me that this function calls for setup for sender name and signature of emails. All the emails will benefit a lot with those additions. Otherwise, emails rely purely on the meaningfulness of the email address to identify the sender. Thanks.

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jordansparks
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Re: Contents for recall postcards may not be good for emails

Post by jordansparks » Mon Sep 22, 2008 5:50 pm

Sounds great. You can put it into the request system.
http://www.open-dent.com/manual/featurerequests.html
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

sparkly
Posts: 149
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2007 8:13 pm
Location: IL

Re: Contents for recall postcards may not be good for emails

Post by sparkly » Thu Sep 25, 2008 12:28 pm

office name and info can be typed into the default email message box and will be included in each email then. (i guess this would be convenient only if you use email exclusively for recare and never use postcard printing.)

one problem i see in use is that you can't 'email' a family postcard. if you select a mom and 2 kids as the family that's due, an email is generated for mom only (becuase she's the only one with a listed email address). and, moreover, this emails the 'single recall' message, not the family message that lists patient names and due dates.

most ideally, another active variable (currently ?due date and ?family list are the only listed ones) like ?firstname would be instert-able into the email text.
when Joe gets a 'single person recall' email, it generates: "Joe, You are due for your regular dental checkup on xx/xx. Please call our office to schedule an appointment."

and when Mom gets a "family recall" email, the generated email reads, "Mom, You are due for your regular dental checkup on xx/xx. Please call our office to schedule an appointment. Others are also due: ?family list."

is this doable?

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