Send and receive attachments

While filling in a referral, use its Files section to choose or drop files. They upload while you work and are attached when you send the referral. If you abandon the form, they are not sent.

After sending or receiving a referral, open it and select Add on the Files card. The Add files dialog shows who will receive them under To. For a referral sent to one practice, that practice is selected. For several practices, choose All practices or one practice; after a booking, only the booked practice may be available. On a received referral, files go to the sending practice. If the referral came from outside Syncroly, or your role is read-only, Add is unavailable.

You can also open a referral conversation and use Attach file in its composer, with or without a message. Those files go to the practice in that conversation. You can also drop files onto the conversation or paste them into the message box.

Every file has a 25 MB ceiling, wherever you attach it. A file over that is refused as you add it. On the creation form and in a conversation, the message reads This file is too large. The maximum size is 25 MB. In the Add files dialog, the file is marked Over 25 MB.

You can add up to 10 files at a time, including on the creation form, in the Add files dialog, and in a conversation. Add more in another batch.

Accepted formats are PDF, Word, Excel, CSV, plain text, PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, HEIC, DICOM, and STL. The file picker filters to these, so a format outside the list cannot be chosen.

Images, PDFs, and text files open in a preview inside Syncroly. Anything else, including DICOM and STL, downloads to your machine and opens in whatever software you use for it.

The Files card appears on every sent referral and on a received referral once it reaches your practice. Before any files arrive, it says No files yet. Files appear newest first. If you sent a referral to several practices, files shared with everyone appear under All practices, followed by a group for each practice. Each group shows three rows at first; expand it to see more and use Show fewer to collapse it.

Each row shows who added the file and when. Unopened files appear in bold with a dot. Select a row to preview or download it, or use its Download control.

The sending practice sees every file on the referral. A receiving practice sees files shared with all practices, including those attached at creation, plus files in its own conversation. It cannot see another receiving practice’s files.

In a conversation, each file added there shows as a line at the time it was added, with who added it. Select the file’s name to preview it. On the Messages page, Files at the top of a conversation lists its files, plus any attached when the referral was created.

Use the trash control on a file row when it is available. The uploader can delete their file. The Primary Admin or an Admin at the sending practice can also delete files attached at creation or added by their practice. At a receiving practice, the Primary Admin or an Admin can delete files added by their own practice in its conversation. Files from another practice have no delete control.

Files are scanned for malware, and the result is checked when someone downloads rather than when the file arrives, so a file can upload cleanly and be refused later. The refusal reads This file was blocked because it failed a security scan. The file cannot be recovered through Syncroly: ask the sender to check it on their side and send a clean copy.

A download link is also short-lived. It works for five minutes, so a link copied out of Syncroly and opened later will not work. Download the file again from the referral instead of reusing an old link.

If an upload stalls or fails, the file chip in the composer marks it and you can remove it and try again.

Direct messages accept files through the same Attach file control, with the same 25 MB ceiling, the same accepted formats, and the same security check on download. Only the person who sent a file can remove it there, and the files stay inside that conversation rather than being indexed on any referral.

A direct message is not a place for patient records. Every direct message reads No patient details above the message box, and that applies to what you attach as much as to what you type. Scans, charts, and anything naming a patient belong on the referral. See Referral conversations vs direct messages, and what belongs in each.