Patient Letter with PDF attachment

Submitted by gretalloyd on Tue, 24/05/2022 - 14:36

General User's Discussion

Hi,

I would like to add a PDF to a patient letter document template, but it's saying that document type is not supported. How can I get around this?

The document is our cremation brochure. I have an email template to the client and the brochure then attaches to the email so they can look through it in their own time and reply with their receptacle choice.

What I have done in the past is screenshot the pdf into an open office document and attach it this way, but it makes the file size very large and slows down each document creation and email.

Re: Patient Letter with PDF attachment

Submitted by tanderson on Thu, 26/05/2022 - 17:22.

There is no support to use a PDF in a Document Template at present. These don't support static content such as PDF or images, as they are intended to be merged with data. Your workaround is the way to do it.

Another approach would simply be to provide a link to the brochure on your website or that of the company that provides the service.

A possible enhancement would be to allow Email Templates to have their own PDF attachments to support brochures etc such as the above. These wouldn't appear in patient history.

Re: Patient Letter with PDF attachment

Submitted by gretalloyd on Fri, 27/05/2022 - 12:01.

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the reply. The possible enhancement of attaching a PDF for Email Template would be good for us. We don't need the document saved in the patient history.

Let me know if this is possible and needs funding.

Thanks,

Greta

Re: Patient Letter with PDF attachment

Submitted by Ben_Charlton on Mon, 30/05/2022 - 12:47.

Hey Greta,

Can I strongly suggest that you place the document on a website rather than embedding it in the patient history. I have been watching databases sizes over the past few years and I have come to the conclusion. The volume of documents we are embedding is causing our database sizes to grow exponentially, inevitablly this will affect performance.

Perhaps the solution here is the ability of a template to attach a document from a URL but not store it...just note that it was attached in the log.

Regards

Ben

OpenVPMS Installer and Helper

Ph: +61423044823

Email: info[at]charltonit.com[dot]au