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OutSmart Guide

Fax History

The Fax History view lists every fax that has been sent through your clinic’s fax accounts, along with the status of each one. Use it to confirm a fax went through, look up a past send, or retrieve a copy of the fax as it was sent.

Opening Fax History

  1. Open the Documents Module by clicking the Documents icon in the top menu bar.
  2. Click Fax History in the documents toolbar.

The Fax History panel opens with the most recent faxes at the top.

What You See

Each row in the history represents one outgoing fax, with:

  • Date and time the fax was sent
  • Sender — the practitioner or admin who sent it
  • Fax account used
  • Recipient — the recipient name from the address book, or the typed-in fax number
  • Patient — the patient the fax was attached to (if one was selected on send)
  • Status — Sent, Sending, Failed, and similar
  • A Cover Letter preview with a View full cover letter link when the letter was long
  • A View Sent Fax action to retrieve the actual fax that was sent (covered below)

What Each Role Can See

Fax History is scoped to who you are and which fax accounts you have access to.

RoleWhat appears in Fax History
Office adminEvery fax sent from the office, across every fax account used at the clinic
Fax-account owner (the practitioner who owns the fax account)Every fax sent through their account, including faxes sent by other practitioners or admin staff using that account
Practitioner using another practitioner’s fax accountOnly the faxes they themselves sent through that account

This scoping protects sender-specific records — for example, an invited practitioner using a shared clinic fax account sees only their own outgoing faxes, while the account owner and admins see everyone’s.

Filtering and Searching

Use the filter bar at the top of Fax History to narrow the list:

  • Date range — restrict to a window of sent dates.
  • Status — show only Sent, only Failed, and so on.
  • Sender — restrict to faxes sent by a specific practitioner or admin (visible to admins and account owners).
  • Patient — restrict to faxes attached to a specific patient.
  • Search — free-text search across recipient name, fax number, and the cover-letter text.

Results are paginated. Use the page controls at the bottom of the list to move through older history.

Viewing the Cover Letter

The cover-letter column shows the first part of the letter inline. If the full letter was long, a View full cover letter link appears — clicking it opens the complete letter in a panel.

Retrieving a Copy of a Sent Fax

You can pull down a PDF copy of any fax that was sent through OutSmart, exactly as the recipient received it, including the branded cover page and every attached document.

  1. Find the fax in Fax History.
  2. Click View Sent Fax on that row.
  3. OutSmart fetches the PDF from the fax provider and saves it into your Documents Module.

The saved PDF is named with the send date, time, and recipient — for example, Sent Fax - 2026-05-27 14-30 - to Dr Smith.pdf — and gets the Sent Fax system label applied so you can find it later under that label.

The first time you click View Sent Fax for a given fax, the retrieval takes a few seconds while the PDF is fetched and saved. After that, the saved PDF lives in your Documents Module like any other document — you can re-open, share, or re-fax it.

Who can view a sent fax

Each saved sent-fax PDF has one custodian — the practitioner whose copy it is. By default that’s the sender of the fax. Office admins can see every sent fax through the standard admin document-access rules; other practitioners only see the sent fax if it was sent from their account or shared with them.

Troubleshooting

A fax shows as Failed — what now?

Common reasons a fax fails:

  • Wrong number — re-check the recipient’s fax number and try again.
  • Recipient line busy or out of paper — re-send after a few minutes.
  • File format not supported — most modern formats work, but unusual file types can fail. Convert to PDF and re-send.

To re-send, open the documents that were originally faxed, select them, and run a new Send Fax with the corrected recipient.

Why don’t I see a fax I know was sent?

Fax History is scoped by who sent it and which fax account was used. If you’re a practitioner using a shared fax account, you see only your own sends. If a colleague sent the fax in question, ask them — or ask the account owner or an admin, who can see the full history.