Controlled Documents can be emailed to any Contact or Distribution List already added in the Laboratory Management area.  They can be emailed while they are in any state, from Draft to Superseded.  However, the 'Email Document' action is not offered for documents that have been set as inactive, and while the PDF conversion of a document is still running it shows as 'Email Document (disabled)' with the message 'Action Unavailable: PDF conversion in progress'.  The recipient gets a PDF copy of the document, with your specified cover page, watermark, footer and spine information.

Only documents which can be previewed within iPassport can be emailed.  Documents with source files such as Excel™️ files cannot be emailed with this tool.  Only documents whose source file is a PDF (.pdf), Word (.doc or .docx) or Rich Text (.rtf) file can be emailed.

Emailed documents can then be monitored by navigating to 'Administration > Sent Documents'.  Information about this area can be found in the article, Sent Documents.

Sending Documents by Email to a Contact

When documents are emailed to a contact, the recipient will get a link to download a PDF copy of the document, processed to appear as a preview print.  The link can be disabled or scheduled to expire on a certain date.  There are permissions and settings to consider before looking at the process, which is very simple.

This article covers:

• Permissions
• Settings
  • Disable emailed documents upon download
  • Set the Cover Page, Watermark, Footer and Spine Information
• Emailing a Document

Permissions

There is a specific permission to allow emailing documents (<Doc Type>:Email <Doc Type>) but there are different ones for different document types:

• Documents:Email Documents
• Policies:Email Policies
• SOPs:Email SOPs
• COSHHs:Email COSHHs
• Health And Safeties:Email Health And Safeties
• Job Descriptions:Email Job Descriptions

The permissions for COSHH documents, Health And Safety documents and Job Descriptions are displayed as '<Type>:Email Document' when editing roles.

External Documents cannot be emailed, since they have no source file from which to produce a copy.

Settings

Disable emailed documents upon download

There is a general security setting which ensures that emailed links can only be used once to download a copy of the document - 'Disable emailed documents upon download'.  It's found by navigating to 'Administration > Settings > System Preferences > Miscellaneous Settings'.  To only allow using links once, tick the checkbox next to the preference, scroll down and Save.

Set the Cover Page, Watermark, Footer and Spine Information

The cover page applied to the emailed copy will be the one specified in the 'Cover Pages' section of the Organisational Unit Preferences in the OU where the document resides.

The watermark, footer, and spine information will be those specified for 'Preview' prints in the 'Watermarks' section of the Organisational Unit Preferences, for the corresponding document type and OU.

Emailing a Document

You must first create the contact or distribution list to whom a document will be emailed.  These are managed in the Laboratory Management area.

To email a document:

1. Open the document
2. Select 'Email Document' from the Actions dropdown menu and click 'Go'
3. In the pop-up window, click the 'Send To' field and select 'Contact' or 'Distribution List'
4. Click 'Next Step'
5. Select a 'Contact' or 'Distribution List' from the dropdown menu provided
   1. For a Contact, you can start typing the item you are searching for and matching items will be suggested
   2. For a Distribution List, select it from the dropdown list of all distribution lists
6. Click the field 'Link Expiry Date' to invoke a calendar where an expiry date (in the future) can be set for the link
7. 'Comments' are required and this text will be included in the email body
8. Click 'Send Link' to finish
   1. When sending to a Distribution List, a separate record and individual link is created for each person on the list
   2. The link cannot be sent if the chosen contact has no email address ('This contact does not have an email address') or if the Link Expiry Date is in the past ('cannot be in the past')

A record will be created in the 'Administration > Sent Documents > List Document Downloads' tab.  Please click this link to find out more: Sent Documents.