Hi ​@LJW! 👋
The Inbox read/unread is a shared status for the site, so if anyone opens an item, it becomes “read” for everyone. There isn’t a per-user read audit for Inbox items today. What you can do is quickly toggle items back to Unread (top-left “Unread” icon in the Inbox), and/or archive once actioned so the list stays clean. 

A couple of tips that help teams avoid misses:

• Assign the message to the patient so it also lives on the patient’s Correspondence tab (easier to find later). 

• Create a Task for the follow-up and assign it to a person, tasks do have ownership and a clearer trail. 

• If you’re multi-site, note the blue dot can reflect unread at another site, which can be confusing, use the site filter to check the right inbox. 

I hope this helps! 😊

Hi Saymon

thanks for this,  we are noticing that emails show as open,  even when no one has looked at them. we have tested the theory when there was only 1 staff member working.

Would be great if we could assign the emails to users without having to create a separate task.

Hi ​@LJW,

Thanks for testing that. Emails flipping to “read” when no one has viewed them isn’t expected. I’ve had a look internally and I can’t see this happening to other customers right now so it’s best to reach out to our Support team and let them have a look at your Account and logs. You can reference this Community post (https://community.dentally.com/practice-admin-45/lesley-403) and you can reach out to our team with this link via our support chat in Dentally.

Re: assigning emails to a user, I’ve logged a request to our product team for Assign to user in Inbox and only mark as read when the assignee opens it. If any other practice feels like they would benefit from this, please comment below as it helps our team prioritise! 😊

I agree and I have noticed this also - it is very easy for emails to get marked as read.

It would be great to have some kind of manual flag with a colour like “Actioned/Completed” or “Needs response” - so that staff can manually flag emails and SMS this way, and quickly see which need actioning.

Similar to how normal inboxes work, where you can tag/flag certain items.