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Practice Email

The Unified Inbox can send and receive email as your practice's own domain — messages to patients come from office@example.com rather than a generic system address, replies arrive back in the inbox threaded with the conversation, and your mail is authenticated as your own domain (SPF/DKIM), which improves deliverability.

Email identity is configured together with IntelliPract support. This page explains the concepts so you can choose the arrangement that fits your practice; practices that use Google Workspace should also read the Google Workspace Setup Guide.

Three arrangements​

  • Shared address (default). With no setup at all, the practice sends from a system-provided address. Replies still reach the inbox. Simplest, but the From address is not your domain.
  • Your domain, PatientConnection as the mailbox. Your domain's mail (or a dedicated reply subdomain) is delivered directly to PatientConnection. Best when the practice does not keep a separate mail system for these addresses.
  • Your domain, keeping Google Workspace as your mailbox (recommended for Workspace practices). Your Gmail/Workspace mailboxes stay exactly as they are — mail delivery, spam filtering, and your existing mail apps are unchanged — and a routing rule sends a copy of your mail to PatientConnection so conversations appear in the inbox too. Staff can reply from either place: inbox replies come from your real addresses, and replies patients send land in both your mailbox and the inbox thread.

Handled mailboxes​

A domain that has been in use for years receives a lot of mail that does not belong in a patient-conversation inbox — newsletters, receipts, old aliases. Your practice can list its handled mailboxes (for example office, amber, daisy): only mail to or from those addresses is brought into the inbox. Everything else stays in your regular mail system, untouched. Group addresses that distribute to staff (an office@ group, for instance) should be included in the list.

Unknown senders​

When email arrives from someone not yet in your records, the practice can choose:

  • Keep a log only — the message is stored but does not appear in the inbox until the sender is known.
  • Create a contact — the sender becomes a contact automatically and the conversation appears in the inbox, ready to answer. This is how a prospective patient's first email becomes a conversation you can simply reply to. Automated and bulk mail (newsletters, auto-replies, delivery notices) never creates contacts.

Per-user sending addresses​

Each staff member can send inbox email from their own mailbox on the practice domain — see Sends Email As in Managing Staff Access. The address must be a real mailbox on your domain (patient replies are delivered to it), which is also why it should appear in the handled-mailboxes list.

note

The practice's email settings include an automatic configuration check that reviews the setup and flags anything inconsistent — for example a sending address that is missing from the handled list. IntelliPract support reviews it with you during setup.