The Custom Send Message API is a custom-build API solution the Smart Assistant team recommends implementing when using the Message Assist feature. Once built, the API can be used in place of the private Epic Send Message (2013) API.
Using the Custom Send Message API:
1. Enables Message Assist to grow with future updates & improvements to the MyChart experience.
2. Allows for enhanced functionality over the MyChart experience.
The Custom Send Message API has several advantages over Epic's private Send Message (2013) API specifically.
Epic's private send message API does not guarentee access to the latest AI features, such as thank you note filtering and automatic message categorization.
Custom Send Message API code can be written following the same code path as messages sent through MyChart. This approach ensures parity between MyChart messages and Message Assist.
The custom message API offers improved error handling and responses in comparison to the epic send message API. Messages sent with the API are also tagged, increasing observability into the impact of its usage.
Epic's send message API offers a MessageType field that if not configured properly, will route messages to incorrect pools in hyperspace without returning an error message. The ability to configure routing is also severly limited due to a lack of support for attaching metadata to messages.
The Custom Send Message API takes a declarative approach to routing and supports the inclusion of meta data. The inclusion of meta data is important in a variety of use cases, with one specific example being billing messages - A billing id must be provided to route billing messages to a billing pool.