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OutSmart Guide

Uploading and Managing Documents

How to Upload Documents

Documents can be uploaded by dragging and dropping files or folders anywhere into the Documents Module. You can also click the ‘Upload Documents’ button in the Top Toolbar.

It’s important to note that documents will be uploaded to the current Document View and automatically take on the labels of the current Document Path. Always ensure you are in the correct view before uploading, especially for private patient information.

Key areas to consider when uploading documents.

Who Owns a Document You Upload

When you upload a document, you become its owner (its custodian, for compliance purposes). That stays true regardless of which patient the document is associated with or where in the module you uploaded from.

  • If you’re logged in as a practitioner and you upload a document, you are the owner.
  • If you’re logged in as admin staff, the owner is the practitioner whose view you’re currently in — by default, the clinic’s principal practitioner. To upload as a different practitioner, switch your view first using the drop-down at the top. See The Practitioner Drop-Down.

When to change the owner after uploading

In a single-practitioner clinic, the owner is always you, so there’s nothing to change.

In a multi-practitioner clinic, your clinic may have a convention about which practitioner holds documents long-term. If your clinic wants to centralize document management — so admin staff can manage documents from one place, and so documents stay with the clinic when individual practitioners leave — then practitioners are typically asked to change ownership of their uploads to a central practitioner account right after uploading. See Document Ownership in Multi-Practitioner Clinics for the details and when this is the right pattern.

If your clinic doesn’t follow that convention, leave the ownership as-is.

Changing a Document’s View

If you accidentally upload a file to the wrong view (e.g., patient labs to the All Documents View), you can correct it.

  1. Find the document in your list.
  2. Click the blue ‘More Info’ button (a down arrow icon) to the left of the document name.
  3. In the Document Properties, change the patient association as needed. Removing a patient will move the document to the All Documents View, while adding a patient will transfer it to their Patient Workspace.

Associating an uploaded document to a patient record.

Troubleshooting

My file got renamed to something I didn’t type

When you rename a document, always keep the file extension (.pdf, .jpg, .docx, etc.) at the end of the new name. The rename field treats anything after the last . as the file extension, and if the new extension doesn’t match the original, the system replaces it with the original extension to keep the file openable.

Worked example. A document is uploaded as Joe Smart.pdf. You rename it to Joe Smart (RX.MISC). The system reads everything after the last . as the extension — sees .MISC) instead of .pdf, decides you didn’t mean to change the file type, and replaces .MISC) with .pdf. You end up with Joe Smart (RX.pdf — not what you wanted.

The fix is to include the .pdf (or whatever the original extension is) explicitly. So in the example above, Joe Smart (RX.MISC).pdf would save as that exact name with the .pdf intact at the end.