Manage Portal Messaging

Let's review how to enable the Patient Portal My Messages feature, which allows bidirectional secure messaging between assigned care team members and portal users to facilitate communication, increase engagement, and improve outcomes.

Enable My Messages

Users with the Manage portal settings role added to their user profile can enable the My Messages feature for your instance. Users in a master instance can selectively enable My Messages for individual locations or enable it for all. When enabling My Messages, you must also select which users are available for bi-directional messaging.

1. Click on your initials and choose Settings.
2. Open the Portal tab.
   • To access Portal Settings, a user must be assigned the Manage Portal Settings role. 
3. From the General section, toggle on My Messages to enable a single instance or all locations in a master instance.
4. Choose the Care Team only option in the drop-down if only want users in a patient’s care team to message the patient. Pick Selected users if you want any user with the permission of the portal message to communicate with portal users.
5. Click Save.
6. To select which locations should use My Messages in a master instance, click on Location Settings.
7. Click the Edit icon for the location you want to enable. 
8. Toggle on My Messages to allow or prevent messaging between care teams and portal users.
9. Select Care Team only or Selected users from the drop-down.
10. Then click Save.
11. Repeat for each location. 

Note
You only need to set up individual settings if you want a specific location to have different settings from those established in General. Alternatively, you may leave the General settings disabled and enable only one location.

Brand Portal Messaging by Location

By default, Portal invitations (and other Portal related messaging) is branded with company information. However, you can set up individual locations such that messaging sent from that location is branded with the location's information rather than the company's. 

1. To begin, click on your initials > Settings > Portal.
2. Then select Location Settings on the left-hand side, and click the edit pencil icon for the location you want to set up.
3. Make sure that the My Messages and Use Location Information toggles are slid to the left (on), and click Save.
   1. Note: The information displayed under Use Location Information is pulled from the Settings > Company tab. If there is data in the Alias field of the Location/Company settings, that text will be used here, regardless of the text in the Location Name field.

Assign Available for Portal Messages Role

Enable the Available for Portal Messages setting for each user who should have access to bidirectional messaging with portal users (patients, guardians, and guarantors).

1. Click on your initials and choose Manage Users.
   
2. Locate the user in the Active Users list and click Edit.
3. Check Available for portal messages from the Patient Portal roles section.
4. Alternatively, you can add the role to multiple users at once by navigating to Manage Users > Assign Roles.
5. Scroll down and select available_for_portal_messages from the Roles box on the left and choose the names of the users you wish to mark as available for portal messages in the box on the right. Then click on the Assign Selected or Assign All buttons.
6. You can remove the role from multiple users at the same time by clicking on available_for_portal_messages from the Roles box and then deselecting the desired names and clicking Unassign Selected or Unassign All.