Skip to main content
How to manually process Responses

When automatic processing isn't the right fit, here's how you do things manually.

Brendan Kilfoil avatar
Written by Brendan Kilfoil
Updated over a week ago

Most of the time, Responses that come into Finger-Ink are automatically processed through to Cliniko. This always happens for Responses via the iPad app. For Responses via the web, automatic processing is enabled by default, but doesn't always occur.

When automatic processing is skipped, you'll be notified and the Response will sit in the Inbox awaiting manual processing. That's what this article is about.

If you're instead looking for the article on automatic processing, feel free to go there now.

The Inbox is a live page

If you leave the Inbox open while you work on your computer, the page will change when a new Response arrives to tell you that new responses are available:

Clicking "load new responses" will refresh the page and thus show any new Responses.

Responses try to match a patient from Cliniko

When a Response first comes into the Inbox, we check with Cliniko to see if the patient that submitted the Response exists within your Cliniko account. This is done using their name, email address and date of birth (DOB).

☝️ In the case that email address and/or DOB are not available, only the name will be used.

Here's an example of a couple of Responses with different matches. The first only partially matched to one patient, and the second matched two patients in Cliniko — as their names are exactly what was entered on the Form.

What if no matches are found?

If a Response hasn't got any matches listed, it means that either:

  • The patient doesn't yet exist in your Cliniko account, or...

  • The patient exists, but the given name, email address and/or DOB differ from what you have on file for them.

Here's what that looks like:

If you're certain that the patient should have matched an existing patient in your records, then you've got two options.

Refresh the matches from Cliniko

Matches can be refreshed using the refresh button on the "create" line of the Response. This will re-run the matching process.

So, if a Response comes in without matching, you could always create them as a patient in Cliniko with just their first and last names. Once there, refresh the matches to pick them up in Finger-Ink and processing them.

Suggest a patient ID

If the patient that should have matched already exists in Cliniko, perhaps it wasn't picked up due to a significant typo. Not to worry — once you have found the patient ID in Cliniko, you can suggest it as a match:

Deciding what to do

Whether there are matches or not, you still need to decide what to do. You can either create a new patient, or update an existing one.

Creating a new patient

To create a new patient, click the little blue button on the bottom row of the Response, then confirm which workflow actions you'd like to perform.

And just like that, the new patient is in Cliniko:

Updating an existing patient

To update an existing patient, tick the little green button next to the appropriate patient, then confirm the desired workflow actions.

Now that patient record in Cliniko has been updated as per the Form's specified workflow.

Did this answer your question?