The Inbox is where all incoming patient requests and interactions land for your practice to manage. It's built around a model of episodes, each one representing a single patient interaction from start to finish. This article explains how episodes and tasks work and what you can do with them.
When a patient submits a request through a care navigation pathway, an episode is created in the Inbox. Think of an episode as a case for that interaction. Everything connected to it lives in one place: the original submission, messages you send to the patient, their replies, any appointments booked, questionnaire responses, and notes your team adds along the way.
Opening an episode gives you a complete, chronological view of the interaction, so you always know exactly where things stand without having to chase down separate pieces of information.
When you open an episode, you'll see a message input panel at the bottom of the screen. This is the message builder, and it has two tabs: Message and Internal Note.
The Message tab is for communicating with the patient. You can write free text, choose how to deliver it (SMS, email, or both), and embed action links for the patient to follow up on. You can also add attachments, select a signature, and use saved templates to speed up common responses. A Save to record toggle lets you write the message content to the patient's EHR in EMIS or SystmOne at the same time.
When composing a message, you can include links that prompt the patient to take a specific action:
A booking link directs the patient to book an appointment of a type you choose. When they confirm, a new linked task is created in the episode and assigned to whoever you specified.
A questionnaire link sends the patient a form to complete. When they submit it, their response arrives as a new linked task on the same episode.
A patient reply link allows the patient to send a free-text response back to you securely. Their reply creates a new task on the episode, assigned to the person you set when composing the message.
For all three link types, the assignee defaults to whoever is currently assigned to the episode, you can change this before sending if needed.
The Internal Note tab in the message panel lets you write staff-only notes on an episode. Notes are never visible to the patient and are never written to EMIS or SystmOne — they exist purely for internal coordination.
To add a note, click the Internal Note tab, write your note, and click Add note. It will appear in the episode timeline with your name and timestamp. Everyone with access to the Inbox can see notes on an episode, making them useful for handovers, triage comments, or flagging that you're waiting on something.
Once you've resolved an episode and closed it, it can reopen automatically if the patient takes a further action — for example, if they book from a link you sent them, or submit a questionnaire. When this happens a new linked task is added to the episode and it surfaces back in the relevant inbox. This prevents patient responses from being missed when they arrive after a ticket has been closed.
The Inbox has three views at the top of the task list: My Inbox, All tickets, and Unassigned.
My Inbox shows all tasks assigned to you or to a team you belong to — this is the default view when you open the Inbox. All tickets shows every task across the practice. Unassigned shows tasks not yet allocated to anyone, which is a useful prompt for tasks that need picking up.
