After this week’s release, it will be possible for professionals in a team to assign and archive messages within Patients Know Best.
We have created these features to allow professionals to organise their inbox and to avoid members of the same team duplicating work by actioning the same message. We understand that as a team expands their use of Patients Know Best, more messages will be sent to professionals, so we wanted to provide a useful solution for professionals to help keep the most relevant messages easily accessible.
This blog will give an overview of these new features however, more detailed information can be found in our manual. You can also contact your Success Lead if you would like to discuss how these new features could be used within your organisation.
Filters
The first change we have introduced is adding new filters to the professional’s ‘Messages’ page.
As messages can now be archived and assigned, we have added three filters to the inbox:
- Active – these are messages that have not been archived or assigned to anyone in your team (and this is the filter that displays by default)
- Assigned – messages that have been assigned to a professional within your team
- Archived – messages that have been archived by your team.
Archive
The archive feature is for messages that a professional deems as ‘done’ i.e they are not expecting a response back or they have completed everything required in the message.
A message can be easily archived by clicking ‘Archive’ at the top of a message thread.
By marking the message as ‘Archived’, the system will add an [Archived] label in front of the subject so that all other professionals in that team can see that the message is archived and requires no further action.
Messages can be ‘unarchived’ by any participant replying to the message or by a professional clicking the ‘Move to Active’ button.
Assign
The assign feature is to allow one professional on a team to take ownership of a message that has been sent to multiple professionals within the same team.
To assign a message, the professional can select the button ‘Assign to me’.
This will add an [Assigned to Professional’s Name] label in front of the subject so that everyone else in the team can see that a colleague is already dealing with the message.
It will also move it to the assigned section of their inbox.
Any professional in the team (who is a participant of the message) can remove the assigned label by clicking the button ‘Assign to none’. This will remove the Assigned label from the message. So if the assigned professional unexpectedly becomes unavailable, their colleagues can unassign the message from the professional allowing the inbox to always reflect who is actually dealing with the message.
Who can use this functionality?
These features only work for professionals in a team.
In the case where multiple teams’ professionals are involved in a message, when a professional archives or assigns a message, this will only take effect for the professionals within their team. Professionals from different teams will be able to archive or assign the message for their own team, should they want to.
If a message becomes unassigned or unarchived, again this will only take effect for professionals within the same team.
Patients, carers and non-institutional professionals will never see that a message has been archived or assigned. If you want to inform a patient that someone is picking up a message, the best thing to do is to add a reply to the thread which will send the patient an email notification.