Using OD and Email

[savvy]

Greetings,
This is more a general question than an Open Dental specific question.
Of course I have personal email account. It is with MSN (....@msn.com).
I have other sources,( @comcast.net and @sbcglobal.net), as well as using another source like @gmail.com.
I would like to setup email with OD.
My question is:

How do other offices setup their office email?
Would you recommend the manner in which you set up your office, or do you think there was better way.
(Better, meaning currently possible using OD).

If you would, please explain it in reasonable detail, including how it actually flows within your office.

Thank you in advance.

[sparkly]

The email function is very primitive (still) in OD since there's only outbound mail capability (as of version 6.4). The only 'creative' thing to set up is the address that you want recipients to see (patients, referrals) when you generate an email from different parts of the program.

Your smtp server is smtp.comcast.net or whatever provider you'll use...as suggested in the setup box.
Username and password if that's set on your account.
Port is 587 or 25...as suggested in the setup box.
The email address the public will see.
There may be other ways to rig email capability (eg programming) via Outlook, Outlook express, or self-written programs but there's nothing in OD except what's above.

There's feature requests for inbound email to be programmed into OD as well as other specific email enhancements/capabilities eg for confirmations, recalls, etc. Hopefully voting will make it happen so you feel like you get more from the email function than is available currently.

Is this what you're asking?

[Nate]

We have an email exclusively for the front office that is also easily accessed on our web page. For example frontdesk@drsmith.com that can be used to send and receive emails regarding the practice. Any email that is dedicated to that simple task and allows you to both send and receive through outlook would work. I don’t think many of the free ones would work as well. For example I don’t believe yahoo allows you to send and receive through outlook, but sbc, time warner and other paid ones should be fine.

The front desk computer auto loads outlook upon start up. Any new messages are easily viewed first thing in the morning and pop up throughout the day. Simple questions can get simple replies and patients can easily use this method to reschedule appointments. Thus we utilize outlook for a majority of the email communications.

If a patients wants a treatment plan or statement or something in OD that can easily be sent from there we will use the built in feature that OD has to send the information. It was a simple set up (in OD guide on email) to use the same email account we use in outlook for OD. So it makes it very simple to click email treatment plan in a patients chart and send it from our primary email account.

I think in the future OD may allow you to send and 'receive' in OD. This may be advantageous to some but more cumbersome to others. It would basically be like incorporating an email client into OD and I don’t know how beneficial it would be when there are already programs like outlook available.

The only downside I see to the current set up seems to be that only one email account can be accessed and used in OD. So if you want to send an email from the doctor’s office through OD then it would still come from the front office email address. Basically any email from any computer on your network would show up as being sent by the front office email account. Because we have another email address dr@drsmith.com I would prefer to send email from this computer if I was in my office.

I just checked the feature request and found that 'Receive Email' is on the list with 55 votes already so others are interested in that. I did not see any feature request for ability to select from multiple email accounts when sending an email. It may be that it is already possible, if not I may add that on feature request.

Hope this helps, I am sure others have more info on how they use email in their office.

[savvy]

Both replies so far are a great help.
Thanks.

To those in the wings.......
Start flapping!!

I'm eager to hear all.

Cheers!!!

[sparkly]

I think in the future OD may allow you to send and 'receive' in OD. This may be advantageous to some but more cumbersome to others. It would basically be like incorporating an email client into OD and I don’t know how beneficial it would be when there are already programs like outlook available.

You're right, outlook, outlook express, etc are robust programs and provide more features than OD ever will. The one main advantage is that for offices that rely heavily on email communication, it's double entry to try and keep track of email responses. In other programs that have an email client incorporated, another feature is that incoming emails can automatically be filed to the appropriate patient's commlog. Outlook can't provide this kind of filing system by patient.

You also brought up a good point about having only one outgoing email (frontdesk vs dr). One suggestion in OD: when you click on a patient and email, you *can* just manually edit frontdesk@drsmith.com to dr@drsmith.com. Then your email does come from you personally. Of course if the patient replies, the dr@drsmith mailbox is the only one that will receive it. To cc the front desk, you'd have to manually resend/forward it.

[enamelrod]

DOes OD sync with outlook? Can it be done?