Single Column Appointment Book

Single Column appointment shows you appointments for a single provider. This is a legacy feature and we advise using the multi column appointment book (ADD LINK] which will provide more features and functions to manage your appointments.

To open a Single Column Appointment Book select File > Appointments > Single Column Appointment Book:

Open

This will display the single column appointment book. You will now need to select a provider in top left. You can change the selected provider at any time.

Open

The single column appointment book window is divided into ‘View Week’ and ‘View Day’ areas. Different staff within the practice may prefer to see more or less of either of these areas.

Between these two sections is an area (the ‘frame border’) that can be selected and dragged with the mouse cursor to increase or decrease the relative sizes of these two areas.

To resize areas of the Single Column Appointment Book Display

1. Place your mouse pointer anywhere along the grey frame between the two areas. When the mouse pointer changes from the arrow to the black double arrows you have your mouse pointer in the right place (see pointer circled in the example above).

2. While holding down the left mouse button, move the mouse cursor (which should still be displaying the black double arrows) up or down the screen, to drag the frame border.
   Drag Up = the View Day area gets larger, View Week area gets smaller.
   Drag Down = the View Day area gets smaller, View Week area gets larger.

3. Release the mouse button.

   NOTE: The appointment book will retain the size setting until it is changed again.

Week Area

The View Week area displays several days of appointments using colour to show available time, blocked time and booked appointments for the selected provider. Different Colours can be used to represent treatments.

The days of the week are displayed down the left of the View Week area and there are a number of columns within each day.

Each row is divided into hour blocks by the columns, and represents the appointments. Clicking on a Day/Time will move the View Day area below, to display the appointments for that day. The currently selected day will be highlighted in blue.

Appointments and Blocks are represented by a coloured area representing the length of the Appointment or Block.

These blocks can be colour-coded. For example:

Booked appointments (colour coded by appointment category).

• Yellow for Examinations

• Red for Root Canal Treatment

Blocked Time

• Grey for blocked out time (i.e. the provider is not available to provide treatment to patients.)

• Blue for available appointment time.

Double-bookings and Failed Appointments

• Green for double-bookings (only green for the overlapped time).

• Pink for failed appointments (appointments failed today will turn pink tomorrow).

Day Area

The View Day area displays the appointments for the selected provider for the selected day. It includes information such as the name of the patient, their contact phone numbers and what treatment they have come in for.

Also shown on the appointment are the appointment status, and icons to show the status of any contacts made with the patient by telephone, SMS and email.

To edit an appointment that is displayed in the Single Column Appointment Book double-click the appointment time to display the Edit Appointment window.

Appointment Status

Each appointment has a Status box in the top left corner, with status indicators of the patient's current stage in the appointment workflow:

If a patient does not arrive there is also a Failed to Arrive (FTA) icon:

Each time the status is clicked, it cycles through the following status items:

• A telephone handset icon

  indicates that the patient’s appointment has been confirmed; this option can be switched off in the configuration of the appointment book if not required.

• A hollow square icon indicates that the patient has not yet arrived.

• A stick figure icon

  indicates that the patient has arrived for their appointment.

• The patient in the chair icon

  indicates that the patient’s records are open in the surgery.

• A tick icon

  indicates the appointment has been completed and the patient is checked out. (Appointments are automatically updated as completed when the provider charges or TC’s the patient from the surgery).

Deleting an Appointment

To delete an appointment hover over an appointment, hold down the left click button and drag to the bin symbol in the bottom left

Moving an Appointment (Using the Clipboard)

To move an appointment hover over an appointment, hold down the left click button and drag to the new time. If you wish for the appointment to be on a different day then drag to the clipboard in the bottom left, change the day and drag to the correct time.

Other options

To open the patient file for the selected appointment, click this Edit patient button.

To process payments for the selected appointment, click this Payment button.

To print a list of scheduled appointments for the selected provider(s) and date(s), click this Print button.

Restricting Appointment Times

(e.g. “Day off”, “Meeting”, “Study leave”)

1. Click the

   button to the right of the header bar.

    

2. This will display the "Restrict Appointment Times" window.

    

   Here you have a number of options:

   • Click the Create Block Rota button to Set up a Rota that specifies when the Provider is available and unavailable in a weekly cycle to be repeated for a specified number of rotations .

   • Click the Create Block, Clinic or Roster button to open the Add Extra Block window from which you can set up the blocks for the times the provider will be unavailable.

   • Click the Extend Block Rota button to extend the weekly rotations for the defined Block Rota.

Editing the Parameters

Click the

button to open the ‘Edit Single Appointment book Parameters’ window.

This controls the colours used in an appointment book, and the appointment times displayed.

Changing a set Colour

1. In the appointment book, click the Parameters button:

   
   This will open the Edit Single Appointment Book Parameters dialogue.

2. Click the Set Colour button

   next to the parameter for which you wish to change the colour.

3. The standard Color window displays:

    

4. Select a standard colour in the Basic colors section.

5. If you then want to have a lighter/darker shade of a standard colour, click the colour, then drag the slider on the far right up or down, or click on the graduated bar until the shade you want is displayed in the

   box.
   If you wish to save this colour for the duration of your current computer session, click the

   button.

6. You can also select a colour by clicking in the colour palette, or by entering numbers in the area to the bottom right. You will notice the box above

   changes colour.

7. If you are not selecting a basic colour, and wish to set the same colour in another provider's book, save it as a custom colour.

   NOTE: It is prudent to write down the Red, Green and Blue colour settings numbers, in case the custom colour is overwritten or not saved ("Add to Custom Colors" only works for the current computer session).

8. Click the

   button to save your changes.