Email Documents to Contacts

Modified on Thu, 11 Jul at 11:11 PM

Controlled Documents can be emailed to any Contact or Distribution List already added in the Laboratory Administration area. They can be emailed while they are in any state, from Draft to Superseded. 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.

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

Only Site Admins can email COSHH documents, Health And Safety documents, or Job Descriptions.

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.

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.

Example - Setting a Cover Page

To adjust the cover page settings for a document of the type 'Policy', which is stored in the 'Admin Office' OU:

Go to 'Administration > Settings > Organisational Unit Preferences'
Select 'Admin Office' from the dropdown list of the field 'Organisational Unit:'
Click the row/tab 'Cover Pages' to open it
Click the field labelled 'Policies' and select a cover page from the dropdown menu
Scroll down and click 'Save'

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.

Example - Setting a Watermark for Emailed Documents

To adjust the watermark settings for 'Preview' prints of an authorised document of the type 'Policy', which is stored in the 'Admin Office' OU:

Go to 'Administration > Settings > Organisational Unit Preferences'
Select 'Admin Office' from the dropdown list of the field 'Organisational Unit:'
Click the row/tab 'Watermarks: Policies' to open it
Scroll down to the section labelled 'Watermark'
1. The Footer and Spine Information sections precede it, and can also be adjusted here.
Click the field labelled 'Authorised Policy - Preview - Watermark' and select a watermark from the dropdown menu
1. Notice there are fields for the different states of documents (draft, superseded, etc.) and for the kind of print (controlled, preview, uncontrolled)
Scroll down and click 'Save'

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 Administration area.

To email a document:

Open the document
Select 'Email Document' from the Actions dropdown menu and click 'Go'
In the pop-up window, click the 'Send To' field and select 'Contact' or 'Distribution List'
Click 'Next Step'
Select a 'Contact' or 'Distribution List' from the dropdown menu provided
1. You can start typing the item you are searching for and matching items will be suggested
Click the field 'Link Expiry Date' to invoke a calendar where an expiry date (in the future) can be set for the link
'Comments' are required and this text will be included in the email body
Click 'Send Link' to finish

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