Providers are working from home but still need face-to-face interaction with patients. We have standardized on the Zoom platform. While the patients need to be emailed the Zoom meeting link we do not want the email coming from the provider. We set up a shared mailbox to send it from but ran into two problems: providers need to remember to change which account the email is coming from and provider signature blocks, containing their email and phone number, is often automatically added to new outgoing emails. Our solution: have the providers enter the information into a web app and have the app email the link to the patient email addresses.

Technologies Used

• PowerApps
• PowerAutomate
• Outlook
• Zoom

Why Power Platform?

Speed and customization.

PowerApp

Providers, by and large, are not technical people. That is why we have a job! We created a canvas app using PowerApps, part of the Microsoft Power Platform, to simplify sending information securely. Requires an email to send to (Patient E-mail Address), the Zoom meeting ID, an optional Additional Information that the provider wants to convey to the patient and (since the provider has to log into Office 365 to access the form) the provider’s email address. Once the fields are filled in the “Send Meeting Invite” button becomes available. Pressing (I try to not say “click” in the age of touchscreens) will send the field values to a PowerAutomate flow, another part of the Microsoft Power Platform, to format and send the email to the patient and the provider. The email to the provider is primarily used as a “receipt” that the patient email was sent to the patient.

PowerAutomate

PowerAutomate, a part of the Microsoft Power Platform, allows even non-technical users to add steps (tasks) that when combined move data from one place to another. Consists of many connectors to ingest data, combine with other data sources and then do an action.

PowerApps sends information to aPowerAutomateflow in JSON format. We have several steps in our flow to extract the patient’s email address, Zoom meeting ID, any additional information and the provider’s email address.

The meeting ID is not only extracted but also formatted to remove spaces and/or hyphens and then combined with the Zoom root URI. Forexample“123-456 789" from the PowerApp becomes the https://company.zoom.us/123456789 link.

We add a “Do Not Reply” variable to hold text stating that the sending address is not monitored. While we could have just added this into the email that issentwe would have had to ensure both the patient and provider had the sameverbisge. Defining it in this variable ensures that both are updated when we make changes.

Combining the variables from the previous steps we send an e-mail to patient with a formatted Zoom URI and any additional information. This email is coming from the shared mailbox that is not monitored.

As a nicety we also Send a copy of the patient email to the provider or, if sending to the patient fails, sends an email to provider letting them know that the sending was unsuccessful.

Conclusion

By providing providers a secure and compliant way of connecting with patients we have been able to ensure that treatments can continue with as little disruption as possible. The Power Platform has enabled us to fill that need quickly.

Everyone is happy until the phone rings again.

Tags

• Power Platform
• PowerApps
• PowerAutomate
• Outlook
• Zoom