Shared drafts

A referral you cannot finish in one sitting can be saved and picked up later, by you or by a colleague: the front desk starts it with the patient on the phone, the practitioner finishes the clinical half. Here is how saving, sharing, and the 30-day clock work.

What a draft is, and is not

Saved drafts are available with Pro Solo or Pro Teams, including during an active trial or complimentary access. You can still send a new referral with files on Free.

A draft is a referral in progress, shared inside your practice rather than private to whoever started it. A coordinator can enter the contact details while the patient is on the phone, and a practitioner can add the clinical half later.

What a draft is not is a referral. Nothing about it leaves your practice: it carries no patient link, no recipient can see it, and it records nothing in the activity log. Sending it runs the ordinary send, at which point the draft is deleted and a real referral exists.

Save once, then the form saves itself

  1. On the referral form, fill in what you have.
  2. In the summary beside the form, select Save as draft. A Saved to drafts toast confirms it.

Nothing persists before that first save, so a form you abandon leaves nothing behind. After it, the Save as draft button goes away and the form autosaves as you work. The status line in the summary tells you where you stand: Not saved yet until the first save, then Saving… while a save is in flight, Draft saved with the time when it lands, and Changes not saved. with a Retry when a save failed and retrying could work.

Drafts hold patient details, so they are kept for 30 days from the last edit and then deleted along with any files staged with them. An unchanged form is never rewritten and opening a draft to read it writes nothing, so reading one does not restart the 30 days. On Free, saved drafts are locked and the same expiry still applies. If you return to Pro before they expire, you can open them again.

The summary beside a referral form after its first save: a green dot and Draft saved with the time it was saved, then Cancel and Discard draft below.
The status line in the summary after the first save.

Find your drafts

  1. In the sidebar, open Referrals.
  2. Select the Drafts tab. The tab carries your open-draft count, and hides the count at zero.

The Drafts tab sorts your drafts into two trays, newest-edited first: Needs you for drafts waiting for your review or about to expire, and Drafts for the rest. Each row names the patient, its recipients so far, the practitioner of record it is for, and who edited it last and when. A draft set to send for the practice shows your practice's name followed by (no provider named) in place of the practitioner. The quick filters above the list narrow it: All, and Not yet assigned for drafts that name nobody yet. For clinicians, Waiting for my review and Naming me join them. If your view is narrowed to your own referrals, the first filter reads Naming me or unassigned in place of All. To narrow to one clinician's drafts, select Filters and choose under Practitioner: it lists the options in your view, each with its count, such as All drafts and each practitioner named on a draft. An option with no drafts is not offered, unless it is the one selected, which stays listed at zero.

Who sees which drafts follows the same rule as sent referrals. Coordinators always see the whole practice's drafts, and owners and administrators do too unless they have limited their workspace to their own referrals. A practitioner whose practice keeps referrals narrowed to their own sees drafts that name them as practitioner of record, plus drafts that name nobody yet, which is exactly how a coordinator-started draft reaches the clinician who has to finish it. Naming a practitioner on a draft moves it out of the other practitioners' view. See Inbox visibility: who on your team sees what.

The Drafts tab of the Referrals page, with the quick filters All and Not yet assigned and a Filters button. The Needs you tray holds one draft that is about to expire, and the Drafts tray lists six more. Each row names the patient, the specialty and the recipient, the clinician it names, and who last edited it, with what it is waiting for at the right, such as a clinician to review it, a patient, or a recipient, then Continue and a discard button.
The `Drafts` tab, with its quick filters and both trays.

A row can also say it is waiting for somebody. Where a practice requires a clinician to send, a colleague prepares the referral and hands it to that clinician, and from then the row carries a Waiting for line naming them and the date. On that clinician's own list the same row reads Waiting for your review. See Send a referral for clinician review.

Two people, one draft

When two people edit the same draft, whoever saves first wins, and the other is told rather than overwritten. A banner appears on the loser's form naming who changed the draft and when, and listing which fields differ, by field name only, never the values. It offers two ways forward:

  • Load their version replaces your form with what your colleague saved.
  • Replace with mine saves your version over theirs.

Autosave stops the moment the conflict is detected, and everything you typed stays on your screen until you choose. Sending is protected the same way: if two people send the same draft at once, exactly one referral is created and the other send is refused.

Finish it, or discard it

Opening a draft puts you back on the referral form with everything restored, and Syncroly re-checks the recipients against the live directory as it opens: a recipient who is no longer available is flagged on their card. From there the draft sends like any referral, and sending deletes it from the drafts list.

A draft that will never be sent gets discarded instead:

  1. On the Drafts tab, select the trash button on the draft's row.
  2. In the Discard draft? dialog, select Discard draft. The draft and any files staged with it are deleted.
The Discard draft confirmation dialog, saying it removes the draft for the named patient from your drafts along with any files attached to it, and offering Cancel or Discard draft.
The discard confirmation, which names the draft it will remove.