Custom Action Buttons

Custom Buttons allow practices to offer 'Forms' or 'URLs' to patients in addition to the existing ‘NHS self help’ or ‘Consult your GP’ options:

The choices offered to patients are in complete control of the practice and enable the Title, Icon, Position and various behaviours of the chosen activity to be customised by you.

Creating a new Custom Button

To create a new button, start by clicking 'Settings' and then 'Custom Actions':

You will be taken to the following screen, where you can view and manage any existing buttons, or create a new one.

To create a new button, click the '+' icon at the bottom of the screen:

At this point, the steps to create either a 'Form' or a 'URL' button, differ slightly:

Forms

In the case of forms, practices can add new buttons to the patient screen, configure the icons and labels shown to patients and select a form to be associated with the button (e.g. a sick note request, PHQ9 etc). 

Requests submitted using this route can be configured to have tags applied or be automatically sorted to a specific user, or group. 

Practices may also choose whether to make forms available to patients while the service is otherwise closed, e.g. to allow administrative requests to be submitted while the system is closed to new clinical requests.

When creating a new 'Form' button, you will be presented with the options below:

• Title - The title for the button that will appear for patients to select
• Position - Indicates the order in which the buttons appear for patients on their 'New request' screen, 1 means the button will appear at the top, 2 just below it etc
• Icon - Use the search field to find an appropriate icon to display on the button for the patients
• Custom Action Type - Allows you to specify whether the button will be a form, or a URL link
• Form - Allows you to select the form to make available to patients, from the library of forms currently available within askmyGP
• Automatically assign requests to - When a patient completes the form, you can specify a user, or group to automatically assign the request to
• Automatically tag requests as - When the form is submitted by the patient, you can select a request 'Tag' from the list that you have already created, to automatically apply to the request, such as 'Sick note' or 'GAD-7' etc (Please see this article for more information on creating these Tags)
• Allow when closed - You may wish to make the form available to patients, even when the 'Consult your GP' option is closed to new requests. Note: if the system is switched 'OFF' via the switch in the system settings screen, that will override this option.
• Preview - Allows you to see how the button will appear to patients on the 'New request' screen before you click 'Update' to save it

URLs

For URL (links) buttons, the configuration process is very similar to the above, the main difference being that it will not create a new request within askmyGP and is instead intended to sign post patients to useful external websites, such as local services. Again, the practice can choose if these buttons are displayed while other services are unavailable.

When creating a new URL button, you will be presented with the options below:

The various fields 'Title', 'Position', 'Icon', 'Custom action type', 'Allow when closed' and 'Preview' all work in the same way outlined above, the 'URL' field being the main difference here and this is where you would enter the URL that you wish your button to link the patient to.

Unread message icons

To help ensure pre-sorted requests are not missed, unread message notification icons have been added to the request screen.

For more information on how these work, please read this article.