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OutSmart Guide

Patients Filling Out A Smart Form

This article describes what your patients experience when they fill out a Smart Form V2. Written for clinic staff who want to know exactly what the patient sees before they ask “what does it look like on their end?”

Direct send flow (you sent it to a specific patient)

  1. Email arrives. From your clinic, with the practitioner’s name in the From field, your clinic logo in the header, the form name in the body, and a Continue to Your Form button. The email leads with “Please complete this form before your visit” and shows the calendar deadline with a day count underneath. See Expiries And Link Timing for the exact timing rules.
  2. Patient clicks the button. The form fill page opens in their browser. No Patient Portal login, no access code — one click on the email button and they’re on the form.
  3. Form fill page. A header card at the top shows the practitioner’s name, credentials, photo, and the office name. The form title sits next to the practitioner card with the same two lines as the email: “Please complete this form before your visit” on top, and the calendar deadline underneath in smaller grey text.
  4. They fill the form. As they answer, a small Saved [time] indicator appears in the header — their progress is being saved automatically every couple of minutes and a few seconds after each change.
  5. They submit. The Complete button at the end takes them to a green thank-you screen.

The administering practitioner gets a notification email when the patient hits Complete.

  1. Patient opens the guest link — from your website, a QR code, an email blast, wherever you posted it.
  2. Landing page. Shows the practitioner’s name, photo, office name, and the form name. Below that, a short credentials form asking for first name, last name, email, and date of birth.
  3. They submit credentials. A confirmation page tells them to check their email.
  4. Email arrives. Same OutSmart-from-your-clinic email as the direct send, with a personal link back to their in-progress form.
  5. They click the email link. Form fill page opens — same as the direct send from step 3 onward.
  6. They fill and submit.

When they submit, the system matches their name, email, and date of birth against your patient list. If it finds a match, the submission lands on that patient’s record. If it doesn’t match, a new patient record is created with the name, email, and DOB they entered.

What if they don’t finish in one sitting?

Auto-save covers it.

  • As they type or click, their answers are saved every couple of minutes and again a few seconds after the last change.
  • If they close their browser, their progress is preserved.
  • When they open the link again, the form re-opens with their previous answers filled in.
  • They can keep going where they left off.

Once a patient has opened the form (or started one through a guest link), they have plenty of time to come back and finish it. The exact timing — and what you can do when a patient runs out of time — is covered in Expiries And Link Timing.

What patients see as the deadline approaches

For most of the time the form is open, there’s no deadline banner — just the calendar deadline in small grey text in the header.

When the patient is inside the last hour of their fill window, a coloured banner appears at the top of the form:

  • Orange “Almost out of time” with the minutes remaining, while there’s still time on the calendar clock.
  • Red “Past the deadline” with the hours of grace remaining, after the calendar deadline has passed but during the 48-hour grace window that lets them keep saving and submitting.
  • Deep red “Time is up” once the grace has also run out and the page won’t accept any more changes — this only appears if the patient was on the page when grace ran out.

The banner also includes an “I need more time” link the patient can click once per form to add an extra day to their deadline themselves, without calling the clinic. After they’ve used it, the link is replaced with a note: “You have already used your one-time extension. If you need more time, please contact your clinic. Please still submit before your visit.” See Expiries And Link Timing for the full timing model.

Returning guest — they already started a form

If a patient revisits the public guest link after they’ve already started a form (same name, email, and date of birth), they see a choice screen:

  • Continue — sends them an email with a link back to the in-progress form. We don’t show the link directly in the browser, for security.
  • Start Over — abandons the in-progress form and starts a fresh one.

Already submitted

If a patient revisits a personal link after they’ve already submitted the form, they see a notice that the form has already been submitted. No further action.