Results publication notifications and reporting

[xispa]

Current behavior

A this moment, the publication preferences in Client's contact are confusing.

By default, if "Email" option is enabled, the system will send an email to the Client contact assigned to a given Analysis Request, with the results report embedded as HTML. If PDF is enabled, the system will send an email with the PDF attached, but not embedded as HTML. If "Results attachments permitted" is selected, the system should send the files that have been assigned to either the AR or Analyses as attachments, but only if "Email" option is selected.

If neither Email or PDF are selected, the Client Contact will not receive any notification.

The notification will be sent to those "Contacts to CC" that are selected, but following the publication preferences (Email + PDF + Results Attachments permitted) they have assigned.

Suggested approach

We suggest to make the configuration options more clear:

"Send a notification SMS.." would only be displayed if a SMS Gateway has been correctly configured in the system and the client contact has a valid cellular phone number set.

In "Results report delivery preferences", option "Send an Email with a link to download the results report in PDF (requires user authentication)" would only be displayed if access to the system has been granted to this client contact.

All options in which "Email" is involved would only be visible if this contact has a valid email address.

Only contacts of the same client that have a valid email address will be displayed.

An additional view inside Laboratory Setup would be added, to allow the labman to set the text to use in either notifications and results delivery messages.

If "Do not send results" is enabled, a reminder should appear once the report is generated to inform the labman that the report must be printed and e.g. sent by post mail to the contact.

The attachment of images (or other files) in results report is something that can be defined in the results report template itself. I also believe that in most cases, files attached to analyses are only for laboratory internal usage. In addition, there is a free text area in Analysis Request view that allows the labman to add formatted text and also images to be included in the results report. For these reasons, I think there is no need of "results attachment" option here.

[grulisco]

Very useful suggestions! I support rendering of reports as PDF only, as this is the only reliable way anyway.

A HTML-Mail can't be considered as a real document IMO, because it will be rendered by every mail client differently. And the differences to the current PDF are obvious, so that we shall not do double work. In addition HTML-Mails might be supressed or filtered in some enterprise networks by security reasons. Although I found them very beautiful, when I saw them first. To be honest, communication etiquette in mind, I think the body of an E-Mail should contain a humble salution and the notification of the attached report.

Regarding attachments: I agree that images etc. should be part of the report itself. We have few clients that prefer the original image files (sem photos and spectra) for their own final reports. So this is still a useful feature.

[lemoene]

Email addresses to recipients of CSV 'COAs' that are not Client Contacts needs consideration please.

Including the Client's own to be included at publication these could be any of

• Client specific formats for importing in their down stream systems, work books etc. SAP is a popular one

• Results to Regulatory bodies This could be considered a global setting, but they are published in the same action with the COA They could differ per Client and Contact (they normally want copies themselves) but Wine Clients say from different regions fall under different jurisdictions. Cannabis is the first in the sights now.

Their addresses will be something like [email protected], not a Contact at the Client itself.