Attachments

You can attach any sort of document, text, imaged, picture, word document etc. to the animal record card using the 'Attachments' option (Write) on the management card.

The supported document types are configured by the practice, so you can fine tune the options available to suit your needs, and will be explained in the next section.

When 'W'rite is pressed the menu will show:

• Look at letter file

  This will access the 'primary letter file' which can be used for notes and important information about the animal. It has it's own menu option to make it quick to access. This should be a 'text/plain' document type to allow it to be viewed on every screen type.

• Search and display attachments

  The system will scan the existing attachments for this animal, display them in a window and let you select via arrow keys the document you require.

  Once you have selected a document the details will be displayed at the top of the screen with the options:

  • View - Display the document
  • Print - Print (if available with this type) the document
  • Delete - Remove it from the system
  • Send - Send the attachment to the floppy disk, another application, somewhere else on the disk or via e-mail. You will be prompted for the appropriate details.

• Add a new attachment

  You many have a document you have scanned, received via mail or copied from a floppy - this option associates that document with the animal.

  Work waiting to be added to records should either be stored in 'Vetdata'/sheets/new or if you have a shared area on one of your filesystem, set the Enviroment Variable WINDUMP to point to it, this will take priority over the sheets/new location. You should map via visionFS your shared area to make it easier to access.

  A list of all files waiting to be attached will be displayed, select as required. An attempt will be made to match the document type based on the file suffix otherwise you will be asked to select the document type from a menu. It will then be added to the animal's record.

• Create attachment

  Manually add an attachment. You will be asked document type and filename, then the appropriate viewer/editor will be called. If you select 'Web Location' then this will be treated as a document on a remote server, as such the document will NOT be stored locally.

• Image of Animal

  This will allow you to edit/view the image that either automatically 'pops-up' when the card is accessed or when the 'X' option is used. As with the 'Add a new attachment' option above you will be presented with the list of documents waiting to be attached, select as required.

  If User Access option 110 is set to yes then the document will automatically 'pop-up' when the card is accessed.

Documents attached to record cards are give a 'Document Type', this is based on the MIME attachments you may be familiar with if you use E-Mail. Some of the file type are:

      audio/mpg          ;  An MPG audio file
      audio/wav          ;  A .WAV audio file
      application/msword ;  Microsoft Word Document
      application/msexcel;  Microsoft Excel
      application/pdf    ;  Acrobat PDF file
      text/html          ;  HTML Document
      text/plain         ;  Vanilla Ascii text
      graphics/view      ;  Graphics image
	  

Up until now the only document type supported has been text/plain which is the documents generated by the vet system and the editors that are included.

Note: With Anita version 5, the document type is not required. You should however use it as it is needed for other emulators.

The document type are contained in a text file called 'filecap' in various locations. These files can be customised as required. The format is:

   application/msword ; \
      "C:\Program Files\MicroSoft Office\Office\word.exe" %s ; \
       test windows
   text/html ; "C:\Program Files\Internet explorer\iexplore.exe" %s ; \
       Description="Hypertext Markup" ; test windows
   text/html ; lynx %s ; Description="Hypertext Markup" 
   text/plain ; C:\Windows\Notepad %s ; Description="Notepad Files" test windows
   text/plain ; ste %s ; Description="Text Files" ; print lp -s -c %s 
   

There should be an entry for every type you wish to be supported.

Each 'section' (field) is separated via a semi-colon (;) and lines can be continued if they end with a back slash (\).

The 1st two fields are mandatory and they should be:

Document Type

The mime type this line refers to

Command

Command to use to display this type.

Looking at the application/msword entry above the type is 'application' + 'msword' the command is the Windows location for word. The %s is used to indicate where the filename should appear, if not present the filename will be appended to the command line.

The other fields can appear in any order:

Description

Text to describe the file type

print

The command to print the type, this only needs to be specified if the application does not not provide native print routines.

test

This 'test' option is used to determine if the line is valid for the screen/system you are on. e.g. there is no point in offering MicroSoft Word if you are on a Wyse terminal!!.

The test options supported are:

windows

You are using a supported Windows terminal emulator

xwindows

You are running the Unix graphical screen

unix

You are NOT running Windows

Look at the 'text/html' options above, there are two lines, one if you are running windows (test windows) and will call the Windows Web Browser (IE4) and the other will call the unix character based browser 'lynx'.

If no test option is present then the document type will be included for all screens.

Edit/Add entries as required, there is no hard and fast rule for naming file types, you could have vet/legal if you want. As long as there is a corresponding command in filecap so the system knows what to do with it.

To allow you to automatically adjust the settings for you, your terminal and your location the file 'filecap' is checked for in the following locations:

Your Home directory	e.g. /u/tom/filecap
Vet System + your name	e.g. /u/vetdata/filecap.tom
Vet System + Terminal	e.g. /u/vetdata/filecap.3
Vet System	e.g. /u/vetdata/filecap

The earlier entries WILL take precedence over the later ones. That is, if 'text/plain' is mentioned in both filecap.tom and filecap then the one in filecap.tom will be used, the other ignored.

To enable documents to be automatically attached to record cards e.g. lab results, e-mail messages etc. a new stand alone option can be used to automate this.

vet -p attach Original_name Animal_number Premvet_name Type

The 1st two options are mandatory and should be the location of the attachment and the 2nd is the animal record number. The other options are optional:

Premvet_name is whatever you want to call the document
Type: Defaults to text/plain

So to attach the document /tmp/lab.txt to record 100 you would specify:

              vet -p attach /tmp/lab.txt 100
			

or a PDF Cardiac report to the same client.

              vet -p attach /u/windows/xyz.pdf 100 cardiac.pdf application/pdf
			  

(Note: The Original_name and Premvet_name cannot contain spaces and original name must be readable by user 'vet')

See also: The FAQ - Attach Lab Results

Normally vet -p attach will give the attachment the description 'Automatic Attachment'. If the environment variable 'Attach' is set then the text contained in it will be used instead.

There may be times where you wish to add a clinical comment to an animal's card whenever you use the stand-alone attachment utility. You can use the script /u/source/scripts/attach.sh.

You pass a few arguments to attach.sh and it will automatically add the required text. The arguments are:

       
      Usage:   attach.sh Update Client Analysis Text text Text ..
                           $1     $2     $3      $4   $5   .. ..

If

$1	If this is set to Update then call vet -p integrate to force the integrate
$2	Client number
$3	Analysis Code
text	Text to add

So to add the text 'Lab work - See W option' to animal 12 with analysis code 100 and force an update you would use

 /u/source/scripts/attach.sh Update 12 100 "Lab Work - See W Option"

If you want to wait until a later time to integrate the lines (you may have multiple attachments to do) change the word 'Update' to anything else - do not leave it blank.

Note: This option may not work on the older versions of OSR 5. Will work on OSR 5.0.5 and higher.