Client announcements provide a secure and HIPAA compliant communication method, letting you send read-only messages regarding practice-wide information such as policy changes, unscheduled interruptions in clinician availability, updates to accepted insurance plans, or widespread changes in services and rates.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• Enabling client announcements
• Sending announcements
• Understanding team member permissions
• Accessing past announcements
• Removing announcements
• Viewing announcements in the Client Portal
• FAQs

Important: Client announcements should never contain protected health information (PHI) or personally identifiable information (PII) about specific clients. If PHI or PII is accidentally shared, remove the announcement immediately.

Enabling client announcements

Client announcements are available for customers on the Plus plan that have the Client Portal enabled for their practice.

You can access client announcements by clicking the megaphone icon in the top navigation bar of your account.

Important: If the Client Portal is turned off for your practice, the megaphone icon won’t appear. To access announcements, first enable the Client Portal, then refresh your page.

The megaphone icon appears when the Client Portal is enabled for your practice, but you can only send announcements after at least one client has signed into the portal.

For more information, see Inviting clients to the Client Portal.

Sending announcements

After enabling client announcements, you can create an announcement from the top navigation bar. To do this:

• Click the megaphone icon
• Select the pencil icon

• If it’s your first announcement, you can also select Create announcement

• Select All active clients or My active clients
  • If you’re a clinician with billing or basic access, this announcement can only be sent to your active clients, not all active clients in the practice. See Understanding team member permissions below for more details

• Enter a Title and Message
  • The Title can be up to 128 characters, and the Message can be up to 5000 characters
• Click Send

• When finalizing an announcement, you’ll see how many clients it’s being sent to 

• • If you open the same announcement later and see that the number of recipients is higher, it’s due to contacts being included in the total count

• Select Send now

Note: All contacts with access to the Client Portal are notified and able to view announcements when they are sent.

Discarding an announcement draft

If you don’t want to send a drafted announcement, click Cancel and then select Discard.

Important: If you notice any client details or PHI in an announcement after you’ve sent it, remove the announcement immediately.

Understanding team member permissions

Team member roles determine which clients clinicians can send announcements. Based on your role, you can send announcements to all active clients in the practice, or only your active clients.

If you’re a practice scheduler, practice biller, or supervisor with no clinical role, you won’t have access to clients announcements. For more information on roles in a group practice, see Team member roles and access levels. 

To check if you’re listed as a primary clinician for a client, you can navigate to the client’s Overview page and click Edit. Within their Client Info tab, you’ll see a Primary clinician dropdown.

For more information on granting clinicians access to clients in a group practice, see Sharing clients.

Accessing past announcements

To view a past announcement, click the megaphone icon in the top navigation bar. You can click a past announcement in the flyout to see additional information such as the recipients, sender, time the announcement was sent, and entire message.

Account Owners, clinicians with entire practice access, clinicians with full client list access, and practice managers can see announcements sent by anyone in the practice and the entire recipient list. 

This also applies to viewing announcements within Account Activity, where only the title, sender, and number of recipients are shown.

Clinicians with billing access or basic access can only view announcements they’ve sent themselves, or announcements sent to clients for whom they’re listed as the primary clinician. The recipient list for both roles will only include clients for whom they’re listed as a primary clinician.

Removing announcements

If an announcement was sent accidentally or is no longer relevant, you can remove it. To do this:

• Click the megaphone icon in the top navigation bar
• Select the announcement you want to remove
• Click the red minus circle in the top right corner

• Select Remove

Note: Clinicians with billing access and clinicians with basic access can only remove announcements they’ve sent themselves. Account Owners, clinicians with entire practice access, clinicians with full client list access, and practice managers can also remove announcements that other team members have sent. 

Clients can see that an announcement has been removed, but will no longer be able to see the content of the announcement.

For clinicians, removed announcements will have a note about their removal status.

By clicking the announcement, team members can still view the entire message and additional details, such as who removed the announcement and when.

Note: Client announcements are not included in data exports at this time. Current and removed announcements can only be accessed by clicking the megaphone icon in the top navigation bar.

Viewing announcements in the Client Portal

All clients and contacts with Client Portal access will receive an email when a new announcement is available. If a client or contact has access to multiple profiles, they can select the applicable profile for viewing the announcement. 

If the same announcement is sent to multiple of their profiles, they’ll only receive one notification for the announcement. However, they can see the announcement in all applicable profiles. 

Note: Contacts who are added after an announcement is sent won’t be able to see past announcements.

To view the announcement on the web version of the Client Portal, clients and contacts can:

• Click Sign In in the email

• Select Announcements in the upper right corner of their Client Portal
  • The newest announcement will be listed at the top

Reviewing mobile push notifications

Clients can also receive mobile push notifications for new announcements in the Client Portal mobile app. To enable this, they can:

• Open the Client Portal mobile app
• Click the three lines in the top left corner
• Select Notification settings
• Toggle New announcements on
  • This is toggled off by default

If they receive a notification, they can view the announcement in-app by tapping the megaphone icon in the top right.

For more information, see Push notifications. 

Note: If clients or contacts don’t open an announcement when they receive a notification, no additional notifications will be sent.

FAQs

• Can I customize which clients receive announcements?
• Can clients opt out of receiving announcements? 
• Is it possible to see which clients have viewed the announcement?
• Can I schedule announcements for future delivery? 
• Can I attach images or files to an announcement?
• Are client announcements included in data exports?

Can I customize which clients receive announcements?

Currently, there isn’t a way to select specific clients as recipients for announcements.

If you’d prefer to only message specific clients, you can use Secure Messaging.

Can clients opt out of receiving announcements?

Clients can’t individually opt out of receiving announcements. All clients with Client Portal access will be alerted when a new announcement is sent. 

While email notifications can’t be turned off, clients who don’t wish to receive mobile push notifications can turn off push notifications for announcements within their Client Portal mobile app.

Is it possible to see which clients have viewed the announcement? 

Currently, there’s no way to view which clients have seen your announcements. If it’s important to which clients have seen your message and when, you can send a Secure Message instead. If clients have questions about an announcement, this is also how they can reach back out to you.

Can I schedule announcements for future delivery?

Client announcements can’t be scheduled in advance. You can use announcements to send alerts and updates to clients in real-time. 

If you’re updating clients about when you’ll be out of office, you can set an away message for Secure Messaging or use out of office blocks on your calendar to alert clients that you won’t be available.

Can I attach images or files to an announcement?

Currently, client announcements are designed to be text-only messages and don’t support attached files or images. 

This allows announcements to load faster for clients, keeps messages concise, and helps to prevent the accidental sharing of incorrect documents. 

If you’d prefer to share files or documents with specific clients, see Sharing a form, document, or uploaded file with a client or contact.

Are client announcements included in data exports?

Client announcements are not included in data exports at this time. Announcements can only be accessed by clicking the megaphone icon in the top navigation bar of your account. 

Note that team member roles affect who has access to the announcements that are sent in a group practice. For more information, see Understanding team member permissions.