Introduction

Although both types can be used, the multi-column appointment book has many advantages over the single-column appointment book.

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The multi-column appointment book can:

• Contain multiple providers’ appointments within one appointment book, enabling you to see all appointments for all providers, and to reschedule across providers, where necessary.

• Easily book coordinated appointments between dentists and hygienists.

• Easily block off time in the appointment book (both repeated and one-off blocks).

• Allocate specific time periods for specialised services (clinics).

• Provide a search facility for appointment times.

• Easily set up working hours for each provider.

• Allow more control over what is displayed on screen.

Optional Departure Task List

From software version 10.16 onwards, it is optional to enable an Appointment Workflow facility, which adds an additional area to the Multi Column Appointment Book Window:

1. Click the icon on the Workspace Bar for the main appointment book.

   Note that you will only have an appointment book icon on your workspace bar if one has been set up. Furthermore, the icon for your appointment book may have a different name, but the graphic will be the same as the example shown.
   
   

2. This will open the main multi-column appointment book. You can also open the appointment book by clicking on the ‘File’ menu, then ‘Appointments’ and select the appointment book to view.
   A window similar to the following will appear:

There are four main parts to the multi column appointment book:

The ‘View Day’ area displayed below shows an example of colour-coding for each provider's day as follows:

• Blue appointments for provider RGP

• Brown appointments for AP

• Pink appointments for SM

• Green appointments for JES

• Bright Green indicates a double-booked appointment.

• Grey colouring (if any) represents blocked time (i.e., the provider is not available to work).

• The background colour (pale yellow) indicates available appointment time.

• The red diagonal lines represent clinics that have been set-up. Clinics are designed to set time aside for particular types of treatment, for example, general anaesthetic procedures or emergency time.

• ‘Payor’ clinics that allows only private patients, or patients assigned to a specific payor to be booked into the clinic time are distinguished by diagonal stripes that are drawn from right to left, unlike the current clinics which are drawn left-to-right.

NOTE: Colouring of appointment block is set up in the Configure menu, under "Appointment Book". See To Create an Appointment Book for more details.

The scroll buttons on the top right hand side of the appointment book are used to move the ‘View Week’ area to display other days as described below:

Weeks behaviour: This behaviour ensures that the current weekday (as selected in the week view area) is also selected when you move forward/backward,

So, for example, if you're currently looking at a Friday, pressing these buttons will move to a Friday. The behaviour of the similarly named buttons on the view months window is the same.

Click the drop-down arrow on the top left hand side of the appointment boo to display a calendar. Select a date by clicking once on the required day. The appointment book will move directly to (and display) that day

The top of the appointment represents the start time of the appointment while the height represents the appointment length. For example, the following appointment starts at 4.30pm and lasts for 30 minutes.

The View Week area displays several days of appointments using colour to show available time, blocked time and booked appointments with each provider.

The days of the week are displayed down the left hand side of the View Week area and there are a number of rows within each day. Each row is divided into hour blocks and represents the appointments for a single provider. Clicking on a Day/Time will move the View Day area below, to display the appointments for that day.

In this example, a coloured block represents an appointment whereas a grey block represents unavailable time, e.g. hours not working.

Clinics display as diagonal lines through time ranges.

Quicktip: If the booked patient has a payor set up, the View Week area can be coloured to denote the payor.
The colours will be taken from the Payor File colours, and in the case of private appointments from the Patient File configuration window.

Calendar navigation buttons:

To re-display your View Week pane if it seems to have disappeared

Maximise the EXACT window and then drag the View Week area open (down), as indicated below: