PDF Generation Format Issues

Update timeline

1. resolved Feb 11, 2025, 10:17 AM UTC

   We recognise that currently some of your templates are appearing differently than before the change once they are turned into a PDF and printed. We have identified that there was a bug with our old PDF creator that was reducing the size of the fonts in the PDF created. What in Elixir was marked as size 12 font, was applying to the letter at more like size 10. With the latest update, font sizes are correct. There is also a known bug that our developers are working on where sometimes the text editor box does not reflect fonts and font size defaults. The PDFs that are output use your configuration correctly.

2. postmortem Feb 11, 2025, 10:18 AM UTC

   Elixir recently deployed some changes to how we create PDFs, which has caused some changes in how your letters may look. We would like to sincerely apologise for the frustration this has caused you, we appreciate that letters leaving your practice are crucial to the way you present yourselves to patients and colleagues. There were a mix of issues, and full details are outlined below. In summary though: * We made some mistakes in how we implemented the change. * Our beta testers were let down as we didn’t let them know about specific changes to give feedback on. * Resolving how your letters look will require manual review at your end - documentation is available below. * We have changed our internal policies to reduce the chance of changes being deployed without more detailed testing in the future. ## Letter View Changes Over the last two weeks, we have received widespread reports of issues with how your letters, printed prescriptions and lab requests and other printable items appear. We wanted to lay out what happened, how you can resolve any outstanding issues and what we are changing in order that it doesn’t happen again. In 2024 our development team identified that the software we use to create PDFs was no longer going to be supported, so started the process of identifying and deploying a replacement for this crucial task. The updated PDF system also allows us to provide greater flexibility and customisations around things like Op Lists, Agendas, Letter design etc. ## Fix for Outstanding Issues ### Letter Sizing A common theme across many of the issues you have raised is that letters seem larger, and no longer fit on a single page. We have identified that there was a bug with our old PDF creator that was reducing the size of the fonts in the PDF created. What in Elixir was marked as size 12 font, was applying to the letter at more like size 10. With the latest update, font sizes are correct. Our recommended fix is to reduce your Team default font size in the following menu: * \[Admin\] >> \[Setup\] >> \[Team\] >> \[Letter Settings\] >> \[Edit\] Depending on whether custom preferences have been set for your consultant accounts, you may also need to check under their ‘Edit Letterhead’ menu. * \[Admin\] >> \[Setup\] >> \[Users\] >> \[Edit\] >> \[Edit Letterhead\] ‌ Due to the font size changes being caused by a bug we fixed in third party software, there is unfortunately no change we can make to “fix” all letters that are suddenly taking up more space. Fixing letters will require users reviewing all their templates and letter font settings to ensure that they look as they want them to. We are including with this message a simple description of how font preferences flow through the system, and including this in our documentation regarding letter templates. ### Testing and Beta Users Policy We have reviewed and are changing how we run our testing to ensure we don’t let down our wonderful beta testers by not giving them more opportunities for feedback. If you are a beta user, we will be reaching out to you soon to let you know what we are changing. If you are not a beta tester, you can be assured that we have closed the loophole that allowed feature changes to be deployed without gathering detailed feedback from our beta testers. # Incident Report ### What Happened Our development team identified that the software we use to create PDFs was no longer going to be supported, so started the process of identifying and deploying a replacement for this crucial task. The updated PDF system also allows us to provide greater flexibility and customisations around things like Op Lists, Agendas, Letter design etc. Once a solution was identified, we completed internal testing and published it to our beta users on the 11th December. Beta users were not informed of this specific change, we were relying on them noticing any issues in the course of their work. There were some issues reported from our beta users, which we resolved over the subsequent weeks. Without any further issues reported we rolled it out to the main version of Elixir on Thursday 23rd January. Our users quickly found some issues that were missed by our testing. We identified that we had not included some additional fonts in the configuration which resulted in letters being generated using default fonts. This issue was resolved by 4pm on Monday 27th February. Since then, we have had other feedback regarding the font spacing and size. We have been helping users as issues are reported in this area while we completed a full review and designed a plan to stop this happening again. ### Cause of Outstanding Issues We recognise that currently some of your templates are appearing differently than before the change once they are turned into a PDF and printed. We have identified that there was a bug with our old PDF creator that was reducing the size of the fonts in the PDF created. What in Elixir was marked as size 12 font, was applying to the letter at more like size 10. With the latest update, font sizes are correct. There is also a known bug that our developers are working on where sometimes the text editor box does not reflect fonts and font size defaults. The PDFs that are output use your configuration correctly. We have identified that our documentation could be improved when it comes to explaining the interaction between Team-wide letter settings, user letter settings and what is entered into templates.