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Handling Lab Work via E-Mail

The following can send you laboratory results via E-Mail.

The system will automatically add a clinical note and attach the results to the card. You also have the option to have the system print the results as soon as they are received.

You do NOT need an Internet connection for this to take place. It takes place using your support modem.

Setting Up

There is a separate guide on this, however if you call support they will do this step for you.

Using

What is my mail address

If your server is called mercury, then the mail address you tell the labs would be lab@mercury.premvet.co.uk.

Any difference to submitting the test

When you submit the test to the Labs you MUST include the animal record number on the submission form - this should be within either curly brackets {} or within square brackets [] e.g. [12345] or {12345}.

The Lab should (must) send this back in the body of the mail message (if using plain text) or on the Subject line for PDF/HTML mail.

If the system receives a set of results with no client number it will still attach it (see below) and it will also sent the results to the default printer.

What else do I do

Nothing

There is nothing you really need to, when a mail message is received it will be processed by the system and the details added to the animal card.

Lab Oddities

Yes there are some 'oddities' with the way the lab's send the results - the system should handle them automatically. For your reference they are:

What Can I change?

There are a few options you can change to alter the way the system processes the attachments.

How Do I change Them

Use the Admin Login. The options are:

Admin Menu - > Edit System File - > Premvet Startup

Use the editor (it's vi), add/change the lines you require e.g.

In this case, the work will be added under Analysis Code 150, it will be printed out automatically to the printer called 'laser'.

There is no need to reboot or log in/out once the changes have been made.

I forgot to add the animal number

The system will still process the work, however, as there is no animal reference it will be added to the list of 'New' Attachments waiting to be added to records. To add it, select the Animal, Select 'W'rite followed by 'Add new Attachment'. e.g.

This will give you a list of all the attachments that have not yet been added to an animals records.

Use the Arrow keys to select the one you want.

Tip: Select it, use the 'View' option to ensure it is the correct one - you can always pick 'Quit' if not.

Give the attachment a Description, then select 'Attach' - this is now added to the animal's card. It will be removed from the 'New Attachment' list automatically.

The Results were added to the wrong card

It can happen where the lab has typed in the Ref Number wrong (or you submitted it with the wrong ref!!). It is possible to 'transfer' the results to the correct screen.

Bring up the attachment you want to TRANSFER,

Select 'Move'

then 'Enter the animal number to move to e.g. here it's 4567'

To remove the results from the wrong card, You (or someone authorised to do so) can use the 'Edit' option to remove the clinical line from the card it was added to by mistake. There is also a 'Delete' option on the attachment screen to allow it to be removed from there as well.

Note: Sometime, depending on the attachment type, this method will not work. If that is the case use the procedure below to transfer directly from a mailbox.

The Mail was sent to the wrong user

(or it never made it to any card)

The lab may have sent to results to the wrong user, or you may want to send the results from lab's mailbox to another card.

The E-Mail will have been sent to the users mailbox. In the case of lab, you access this by logging in as 'lab', using the password used when created (You can use the Admin Login to set a new one if it's been forgotten.).

If you are looking at your own mailbox you can access it either by typing mutt at the Vet> prompt or selecting the E-Mail option from System Management -> Other Applications.

This should automatically take you into the mail, the screen will resemble something like:

Select the message you want with the Arrow Keys (or J and K) as normal, pressing RETURN will display the mail message, select 'V' to 'V'iew the message parts,

With 'multi-part' mail messages there will be multiple lines shown, select the one labelled 'text/plain'. If there are multiple 'text/plain' then just highlite it, press Return, if not correct 'q' will take you back to try again until you find the correct part.

Enter the 'pipe symbol (|), you will be prompted with Pipe to:. Enter pva animal_number e.g. for animal 167 it would be:

Then use 'q'uit to quit back to the login prompt.

If you need to allocate a description or change the mime type use the 'E'dit option within the Write screen in Premvet - do not use any of the mailer options to change the attachment type.

The above examples were based on the 'mutt' mailer, it is not practical to use the system '/bin/mail' or the 'elm' mailer to handle this sort of task.

I want to use the same system for Hills/Referrals etc.

You can.

There are a few mail addresses that the system know about, these are handled automatically. You can add your own details:

When looking for what settings to use, it will look in the following files

/etc/default/premvet
The Default settings.
$HOME/email
If you have setup a separate account to process specific work then a file email in that directory will be processed. If you do have a separate account it will NOT have the Lab Processing software updated automatically. This is handy if you have a custom '.deliver' file in place.
$HOME/x'mail_domain'
The system will look at who has sent the mail, not the full sender but from what domain the user is from. The system will add an 'x' to the start and check for that file. E.g. mail from user@some.domain.com - the file xsome.domain.com will be looked at.

There are three extra options available to you:

The basic settings it will get, you only need to specify changes, so lets say we get a referral from Tom@bdsl1.com - we create in /u/home/lab the file xbdsl1.com as per: 

AAS="Referral" 
No_AAS="No" 
What="Referral from XYZ Vets" 
Lab_Analysis=123
Lab_Print="No"

This will alter the analysis code to 123, it will not print the report when received, It will add the clinical text 'Referral from XYZ Vets', the attachment will be tagged 'Referral' and it will NOT be scanned for lab sub-types.

You can have as many of these xdomain.name files as you need.