Send and receive attachments

While you are filling in a referral, the form carries an Attachments section. Choose files or drag them onto it, and they upload while you keep working. Nothing is attached to anything until you send the referral: if you abandon the form, the files go with it.

After a referral exists, files go through its conversation. Open the referral, select the row in its Conversations card (Conversation on one you received), then use Attach file in the composer. You can send a file on its own or alongside a message. Files sent this way reach the practice in that conversation, not every recipient of the referral.

Every file has a 25 MB ceiling, wherever you attach it. A file over that is refused as you add it, with the message This file is too large. The maximum size is 25 MB.

The count limit applies to referral creation only: up to 10 files on the form. Conversations are not capped, so a case that needs more can continue in the thread after the referral is sent.

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.

A referral with files carries a Files card in its sidebar, with a count beside the title. It is one chronological index of every file on that referral, whichever conversation each one arrived through. Two rows show by default, and Show fewer collapses the list again once expanded.

Each row carries a small icon marking where the file came from: a document icon for one attached when the referral was created, and a speech bubble for one sent in a conversation. Selecting the speech bubble opens the conversation the file arrived in. Selecting the row previews or downloads the file.

The card shows what you are allowed to see. The practice that sent the referral sees every file on it. A receiving practice sees the files attached at creation plus the files in its own conversation, and never the files another recipient practice exchanged.

Inside a conversation, the same files appear under Attachments at the top of the panel.

A file attached when the referral was created can be deleted by the person who uploaded it, or by an Owner or Administrator at the sending practice. A file sent in a conversation is removed from that conversation rather than from the Files card, and only the person who sent it can remove it.

Where a delete is not available to you, the control stays visible and tells you why: Files shared in a conversation can be deleted from that conversation. or Only the uploader or a practice admin can delete this file. A receiving practice has no delete controls on the Files card, because nothing there belongs to it to remove.

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. The banner on every direct message thread asks you to keep protected health information out of it, 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.