Read your mail

Mail is an inbox built into ClinikEHR — folders, search and keyboard shortcuts — so front desk, billing, the lab and everyone else can read their mail without leaving the app.

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What you’re looking at

A folder list down the left on a wide screen, and the conversation list filling everything else. Opening a conversation replaces the list rather than squeezing it into a column — Back returns you to it. On a narrower screen the folder list is not shown at all; the folder chooser moves into the toolbar above the list. The folders are Inbox, Sent, Drafts and Outbox, with Spam and Trash tucked behind More at the bottom of the list. Below them sits an Important only filter — Important is not a sixth folder, it is a flag you can put on any message wherever it lives, the same way starring works elsewhere. Each folder shows an unread count. Above the conversation list sit a search box, a Filter button and a Compose button. Each row in the list shows the sender, a snippet of the message, whether it has an attachment, and how long ago it arrived; an unread conversation is bolded. On a phone the toolbar keeps to a single row so the conversation list gets the screen: Refresh moves into the More mail options menu (the ⋮ button) rather than sitting on the toolbar, and the folder chooser is narrower. Everything is still there, and the buttons are the same size your thumb expects. Mail arrives on its own. The conversation list updates as messages come in, and so does a conversation you have open — a reply that lands while you are reading appears at the bottom of the thread without you leaving it or pressing anything. A brand-new mailbox shows No messages in Inbox yet in the list, with New mail sent to this mailbox will appear here. underneath. A search that matches nothing shows No messages match this search instead, and a mailbox that will not load says We could not load your mail.

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Read a conversation

A message marked AI-assisted was drafted or edited by one of your workspace’s AI agents. The badge stays with the message for good — it cannot be cleared — so anyone reading the thread later can see what a person wrote and what a machine did. Remote images in a message are blocked by default — you will see a placeholder with an option to load them for that sender. This is deliberate: loading a remote image can tell the sender you opened their mail, and for a hospital that is worth a deliberate choice rather than an automatic one.

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Write a message

Select Send and the message goes to Outbox first, where you have a moment to undo it before it leaves.

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Organize your mail

• Search the box above the list. It looks at the sender, the subject and the message text of the folder you are in, and the folder shows as a chip under the box so the scope of what you are looking at is always something you can read. To look wider, open Filter and set Search in to All mail — every folder except Spam and Trash, which are only searched when you are already standing in one of them. Results come back newest first, not by how well they match.
• Narrow it further with Filter: Read state, Label, Has an attachment, Starred, Received on or after and Received before. Everything you set appears as a chip under the box. Each chip removes on its own, and Clear all drops them together without moving you out of the folder you are in.
• Or type it. from:alice, to:, subject:, label:, has:attachment, is:unread, is:read, is:starred, after:2026-09-01 and before:2026-09-01 all work in the search box, and "quoted words" searches for that exact phrase. Typing and clicking are the same thing: a filter you type shows up as a chip, and a filter you click shows up in the box. Received before does not include the day you name.
• If you type something Mail cannot search for — in:sent, for example — it says so under the box instead of quietly returning nothing.
• A search with a great many matches stops after the first 500 messages and tells you the count is a minimum. Add a sender, a date or a folder to see all of them.
• Labels group conversations your own way, independently of folders — a conversation keeps its folder and can carry several labels at once. Select + beside Labels in the sidebar to create one, give it a name and optionally a colour, and rename or delete it from the same place. To put a label on a conversation, open it and select Label as; you can create a new label there too without leaving the message. Labels show against the conversation in the list, and Label in Filter (or label: in the box) narrows to them.
• Deleting a label removes it from every conversation carrying it, for everyone at your practice. The conversations themselves are untouched.
• Outbox holds mail that has left your hands but not yet left the building. A message you send waits there through the undo window and while it is being delivered, and it stays there if delivery fails — with the reason shown against it. Sent means sent: a message only moves there once it has actually gone.
• Archive (e) removes a conversation from Inbox without deleting it; Trash (#) moves it to Trash; Spam mail is held the same way.
• Archive only applies to the Inbox. Archiving means “keep it, but take it out of my Inbox”, so it is offered on Inbox conversations and declined elsewhere — there is nothing for it to do to something already in Sent, Spam or Trash. If you tick a mixed selection, the Inbox conversations are archived and you are told which ones were not, and why.
• Restoring puts a conversation back where it belongs, not always in the Inbox. Something your practice only ever sent goes back to Sent; a conversation you received goes back to Inbox.
• Your own sent mail cannot be reported as spam, and neither can a draft be moved into the Inbox. Both would file your practice’s own writing as though it had arrived from outside.
• Report spam, and tell us about the sender. Tick one or more conversations anywhere outside Spam and select Report spam. They move to Spam, and the address they came from is added to your practice’s blocked list — so the next message from that sender goes straight to Spam without asking you again.
• Not spam does the opposite. Tick a conversation in Spam and select Not spam: it moves to your Inbox, and that sender is added to your safe list so their mail is never filtered again. This is how you rescue a patient or a supplier the filter got wrong, permanently, in one action. It applies to conversations that are actually in Spam — a sender is only added to your safe list for a conversation that moved.
• Both work on the exact address, never the whole domain. Marking one message from a gmail.com address as spam does not bury every other patient using Gmail.
• A sender can be on one list or the other, never both — the newer decision replaces the older one. Both lists are shared by everyone at your practice, and only apply to your practice.
• Deleting is not erasing. Email in a clinic is part of the clinical record, so a deleted message is retained for seven years to meet record-keeping rules — it is out of your way, not destroyed. Emptying Trash cannot shorten that.
• Spam and Trash tidy themselves. Anything left in either for 30 days comes out of view on its own and stops counting toward storage. The 30 days run from the day it was moved there, so something old moved to Trash today still gets the full month. It is not erased — the seven-year retention above applies to it exactly as it does to anything deleted by hand.

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Let an agent triage your inbox

If your workspace uses AI agents, one can work the inbox for you. Install the Inbox triage template from : it starts the moment mail lands in the Inbox, reads the conversation, files it with your own labels, raises Important on anything that needs a person today, and leaves a draft reply in Drafts for you to read and send. What it will not do, by design:

• It never sends. Every reply it writes is a draft. A person opens it, edits it if they want, and presses Send.
• It never moves or deletes anything. No Trash, no Archive, no folder change — not even for mail that looks like spam. A message you never learn arrived is worse than one filed in the wrong place, so it labels and leaves it where you will see it.
• It cannot invent labels. It uses the ones you created. If it wants one you do not have, it says so in its summary rather than adding it.
• It writes nothing clinical. A symptom, a result or a medication question gets a label, an Important flag and a nudge to staff — never a draft reply.

Anything an agent wrote is marked AI-assisted in the conversation, so you always know before you send it.

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Put a conversation on a patient’s chart

A message from a patient is part of their record, not just something in an inbox. Linking a conversation to a patient files the whole thread on their chart, where the rest of their care team will find it. Three things worth knowing before you rely on it:

• You link the conversation, not the message. Every reply that arrives afterwards is on the chart too, automatically — you never have to link the same thread twice.
• A conversation can be linked to more than one patient. Families share an address, and a message from a parent about two children belongs on both charts. Add each person in turn.
• It shows up wherever the chart does. The Mail tab is on the patient record, on the consultation chart and on the ward chart — the same list everywhere, reading the same links, so an admitted patient’s correspondence follows them to the bedside.
• Unlinking is a correction, not a deletion. Select the ✕ beside their name and confirm: the conversation stops showing on that chart, the mail itself is untouched, and the record that it was once linked is kept. You can link it again at any time.

Linking puts a patient’s correspondence in front of everyone who can open their record, so both linking a conversation and reading the chart’s Mail tab are written to the audit log.

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Keyboard shortcuts

Press ? anywhere in Mail to see the full list. The ones worth learning first: Shortcuts are disabled while you are typing in a field, so they never interfere with writing a message.

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Shared mailboxes

A mailbox is either personal — one person reads it — or shared, which is a single address a group of people all work out of: frontdesk@, billing@, referrals@. An owner or manager creates one in Settings → Communications & AI → Mail, under Mailboxes, by setting Type to Shared — a team inbox. A shared mailbox is only useful once somebody is on it. Under each shared mailbox is Who can open this mailbox, listing everyone who has it. Whoever created the mailbox is added automatically, so it works from the moment it exists. The list is what grants access, so somebody who is not on it opens Mail and sees You do not have access to a mailbox — the address exists and is collecting mail, they are simply not one of its readers. Nothing needs creating; they need adding. Two rules worth knowing before you plan around them:

• The last person cannot be removed while the mailbox is active. Mail would keep arriving with nobody able to read it. Add someone else first, or Suspend the mailbox if you are retiring the address — after which the last member can be removed.
• Leaving the hospital takes the mailbox with it. When someone is removed from the hospital, their access to every shared mailbox goes at the same time. If they were the only person on one, that mailbox says No one can open this mailbox until you add somebody — worth checking when someone leaves.

Personal mailboxes have no member list: they are read by the person they belong to.

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Storage

Every plan includes mail storage. The mailbox and domain counts alongside it exist to stop abuse, not to sell you more of them. A banner appears once a clinic passes 80% of its storage, and again at 90%. At 100%, sending pauses until space is freed or the plan moves up; freeing space takes effect the next time usage is measured, which happens hourly. Receiving never stops — a patient’s message never bounces because a mailbox is full, however full it is.

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Who can do this

Reading a mailbox and sending from it are kept as separate permissions on purpose — someone can be given access to read without being able to send in the hospital’s name. See Staff permissions.

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Check it worked

• A conversation you open shows the message body, and an older message in the thread expands when you select it.
• A conversation you archive with e leaves Inbox and still turns up in search.
• A message you write appears in Drafts with the text you wrote.

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Common issues

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FAQ