Understanding the NHS Mail Folders

This article explains how to manage the three NHS Mail subfolders - DocmanProcessed, DocmanUnprocessed, and DocmanExceptions - created by the system for handling email attachments polled from your practice's inbox. They are created by the system to allow you to manage the emails once the system has reviewed them.

We suggest you monitor the DocmanUnprocessed and DocmanExceptions folders regularly and move the affected emails to the processed folder once the item has been dealt with, and the document is uploaded to the system.

We also recommend the inbox itself is monitored to ensure that no emails that were indented for collection have not been collected and that any emails that are set to not collect are removed from the inbox to prevent the inbox becoming too full to function. E.g. If we are collecting only emails with attachments, you should ensure emails without attachments are manually dealt with and moved out of the inbox.

The three NHS Mail subfolders can be described as processing emails as follows:

Folder

Description

Docman Processed

Successfully processed email attachments are marked as read, moved to the DocmanProcessed folder, and appear as NHS Mail documents in the Capture and Filing screen's Not in a Folder field. While no further inbox action is required, periodically deleting these emails is recommended due to NHS Mail storage limits.

Docman Unprocessed

Unprocessed emails and attachments (often due to unrecognised file formats) are moved to the DocmanExceptions folder and marked as read. These require manual intervention.

You should contact the sender for a different file format, or download the attachment and capture it manually via the Capture and Filing screen.

Docman Exceptions

Emails causing system errors (e.g. conversion failures or exceeding file size limits) are moved to the DocmanExceptions folder and marked as read. These require manual intervention.

You should download the document and manually upload it via the Capture and Filing screen using the Capture function, or request the sender to resend.

The DocmanUnprocessed and DocmanExceptions folders may not exist initially. The Folders will be automatically created as the first items identified with the highlighted issues are attempted to be collected.

How did we do?

Creating and Using Custom Annotations

Setting Patient and Document Security in Docman

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