Online consultations


Removal of one time passcode


To simplify our account sign-up and forgotten password process, we've removed the one-time passcode that we normally ask patients to input. They will still be required to click on the link sent to them via email.


Forgotten username


Although we no longer allow patients to set up multiple accounts using the same email address, we're aware that those who have done this in the past, sometimes struggle to remember the correct username for the account they are trying to reset the password for. Now, when a patient enters an email address that has more than one account associated, we will email a list of usernames and ask them to confirm which account they are trying to access.


Customisation for our customers in Wales


For customers using our patient portal in Wales, their patients will be directed to NHS 111 Wales when seeking self-help. Patients will be shown content taken from the NHS 111 Wales website when completing a medical consultation.


Telephone number not populated 


Our Vision customers reported that the patient's telephone number was not being auto-populated when creating a request on their behalf in the Engage Client, this has now been fixed.



Outbound messaging

Accessing messages without an account


We've made a change to make it super easy for patients (or their carers) to retrieve outbound messages you send. Patients receiving notification of a new message from their practice via email or SMS, will no longer be required to sign up for or log into an Engage Consult account. The notification will contain a link that will be valid for 7 days, on successfully entering the patient's date of birth, the patient or proxy will be shown the message.


As before, we will continue to utilise push notifications wherever possible (if the patient has downloaded the Engage Consult app and enabled push notifications) to save on SMS costs. The push notification will direct the user to the message in their account.


Some infrastructure changes 


For the geeks among us...


  • We’ve improved the Jenkins build process to make it more developer-friendly. This major piece of our software build infrastructure builds itself automatically, allowing us to deploy upstream updates more rapidly.

  • To ensure the highest level of security and performance, Jenkins has been updated to the latest version. This update includes important security patches and optimizations that will help protect workflows from potential vulnerabilities.

  • Our Clinical Tasks API build pipeline has been parallelised, developers can now deploy changes to our test environment more rapidly, speeding up testing and development within this particular part of our infrastructure.

  • We’ve streamlined the configuration for all Sonarqube jobs by implementing new configuration that simplifies the quality gate check process.