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API Query: Retrieving unique Patient Portal URLs for SMS questionnaires

  • February 25, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 49 views

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Hi,

We’ve been using the Dentally API to power Dentext (our custom external patient communication platform). It handles our SMS routing, custom templates, and automated messaging beautifully but we’ve hit a specific challenge. We want to automatically text patients a link to complete their Medical History questionnaire prior to their appointment, exactly how it behaves natively in Dentally's SMS system. To do this, we need to inject that patient-specific link directly into our Dentext templates.

Does anyone know how to retrieve or construct this unique link via the API? Is there a specific endpoint to request this token/link? Or is the URL structure predictable enough that we can build it programmatically using the patient_id or patient_uuid?

I know we can use the practice portal link from Portal Admin > Customise, but that behaves differently. It forces the patient to register first, whereas the native Medical History link goes straight to the questionnaire after a simple Date of Birth validation.

If anyone has managed to extract or generate these direct MH links via the API, I’d massively appreciate a pointer in the right direction!

Thanks in advance!

2 replies

Saymon
Community Manager
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  • Community Manager
  • March 2, 2026

Hey ​@sraman!

I don’t think this is something you can pull or construct via the public API. The “native” Medical History SMS link is a tokenised, patient specific link (DOB check → straight into the form), and I think Dentally only exposes it via the correspondence merge field (at least in the public API):

  • [patient_medical_link] (SMS/email templates): Dentally generates the unique link per patient automatically.

There isn’t a documented API endpoint that returns that token/link, and it’s not a predictable URL you can safely build from patient_id / patient_uuid, probably for security reasons.

Best thing you can try today is keep Dentext for your other comms, but let Dentally send that one message (or trigger a Dentally SMS template) just for Medical History using [patient_medical_link].

If you need to send it from Dentext, it’s probably a feature request for an API endpoint like “generate MH link / short-lived token”. I can have a chat with the API team if you’d like. Keep in mind we’re reworking a lot of stuff API-wise so it might be in scope for the future! 


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  • Author
  • Enthusiast
  • March 3, 2026

Hi ​@Saymon ,

Thanks for the explanation. I understand that the medical history link is tokenised. I would really prefer to send all my messages through Dentext. It keeps things much simpler for us.

Could you please speak with the API team about this? Having an endpoint that lets us "generate a medical history link"  would be a huge help. It would be great if this could be included in your upcoming API updates.

Thanks