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Planning this workflow?

The [Messaging & Communications Decision Guide](/content/docs/decision-guides/messaging/index.html) walks through requirements questions and FHIR modeling decisions for messaging — use it alongside these docs.

FHIR supports messaging workflows through the [Communication](/content/docs/api/fhir/resources/communication/index.html) resource. This resource allows your system to manage message content and metadata in a format independent of its medium (email, SMS, chat, etc.). For more information on the data model, see [Messaging Data Model](/content/docs/communications/messaging-data-model/index.html).

These [Communications](/content/docs/api/fhir/resources/communication/index.html) can also be structured to support a variety of use cases, including:

- [Thread lifecycle, participants, and access control](/content/docs/communications/thread-lifecycle-participants-access-control/index.html)
- [Searching and querying message threads](/content/docs/communications/searching-and-querying-threads/index.html)
- [Message Response Tracking and Routing](/content/docs/communications/message-response-tracking-and-routing/index.html)
- [Message attachments](/content/docs/communications/sending-messages-and-attachments/index.html)
- [Message editing and drafts](/content/docs/communications/message-editing-and-drafts/index.html)
- [Read receipts and message status](/content/docs/communications/read-receipts-and-message-status/index.html)
- [Messaging automations](/content/docs/communications/messaging-automations/index.html)
- [Omni-channel messaging](/content/docs/communications/external-messaging-integration-patterns/index.html) (SMS, email, webhooks)
- [Asynchronous encounters](/content/docs/communications/async-encounters/index.html)
- Real-time notifications using Websockets

## Reference [​](/content/docs/communications#reference "Direct link to Reference"/index.html)

- [Contact Center Video](https://youtu.be/ZrMKhl6-Co0) on Youtube
- [Communications Features and Fixes](https://github.com/medplum/medplum/pulls?q=is%3Apr+label%3Acommunications) on Github includes sample data.

- [Reference](/content/docs/communications#reference/index.html)