Open Dental Forum

I finally set up an email address specifically to be used by the team within Open Dental. My initial goal was to be able to easily send referrals to specialists via OD, and perhaps some post-op instructions for various procedures. I was just curious how most people are using this feature. I am hoping we can create a general dialog with recommendations for general usage to improve (and EASE) patient and team communication and experiences.

-Is there a way within Open Dental to setup an AUTO-REPLY so that patients and specialists are aware that it's not exactly a primary/monitored email address? Currently each staff member has their own separate email address outside of Open Dental's software that we use in various manners. I guess I'd be willing to change the way we currently use our emails and get them all into OD, but without IMAP, I worry this could create quite a mess so am open to any suggestions.
-Any pointers and/or recommended from those who have replaced a service such as Lighthouse360?
-Anyone willing to provide some examples of general templates I should consider creating, and specific events for which automated or frequent emails are used? (for example, I did note some options from the OD Templates page such as:

• Cancellation Confirmation
  Current Account Balance
  Event Info
  Follow-Up - Extraction
  Follow-Up - First Visit
  Insurance Detail Verification
  Promotion - Exam
  Promotion - Whitening Offer
  Prospective Patient
  Referral - General
  Referral - Oral Surgery
  Referral - Ortho
  ETC

-And even better, is anyone willing to provide some actual examples of their templates they've created? I can see me spending ages trying to configure all this to my satisfaction, so any help is extremely appreciated!

I've searched the forum the best I could and couldn't really find much discussion regarding email usage, so if I missed something, please show me the way.

Also, is there a way to specify the name that shows in the recipient's inbox?

For example, if our general email is contact@"officename.com", the name currently showing is "contact" when I'd prefer it to be something like "Our Office Name".

At minimum, does anyone know if it is possible to do an auto-reply through Open Dental?

I suppose as an alternative I could set it up through the google side since our email are through G Suite. This may be better anyway so auto-replies don't clutter the OD charting and inbox?

Third Coast wrote:At minimum, does anyone know if it is possible to do an auto-reply through Open Dental?

I suppose as an alternative I could set it up through the google side since our email are through G Suite. This may be better anyway so auto-replies don't clutter the OD charting and inbox?

Most email service providers give a way to set up auto-reply so no one has asked for this before. If they don't provide one or it is too hard for you to find / set up then you could be the first to request it in our feature request system:
https://www.opendental.com/manual/featurerequests.html

Third Coast wrote:Also, is there a way to specify the name that shows in the recipient's inbox?

For example, if our general email is contact@"officename.com", the name currently showing is "contact" when I'd prefer it to be something like "Our Office Name".

Email address of sender (optional): Enter an email alias that will appear in the From address instead of the Username. Not all email providers recognize an alias. When sending encrypted email, this field is ignored.
Alias format: If Sparkly Dental <bob@gmail.com> the recipient will see Sparkly Dental as the sender instead of bob@gmail.com.
https://www.opendental.com/manual/emailsetup.html

Thanks Jason, I guess I misunderstood the function of that setting, and assumed it had to be the email address verbatim.