Using The Calendar And Organiser

The main calendar in Practice Master Pro can be colour coded to your own specifications and displays booked appointments or availability for your practitioners and can also display appointments by room. You can show different calendars side by side or combined in to a single colour coded view.

The calendar has two distinct views:

Appointments view displays booked appointments and shows information relating to that (subject, description, room etc). Availabilities view shows available slots based on 'Appointment Types' for the practitioner. 'Appointment Types' combine start options along with duration etc which means your reception staff do not need to know all the different types and lengths of all your practitioners appointments.

Some pages that relate to the calendar you may find useful:

Administration - Calendar Colours & Highlights
Administration - Rooms & Locations

 

Showing Appointments On The Calendar

Step 1
Click on the main 'Organiser & Calendar' tab to view appointments. Notice the 'More Options' side panel.

The main organiser and calendar

Step 2
If you expand the side panel 'More Options' panel you can select other practitioners or rooms to add to your calendar. The other calendars will appear side by side in the main calendar area.

The main organiser and calendar showing appointments for multiple practitioners

Step 3
You can show practitioner calendars as well as room calendars in the same view.

The main organiser and calendar showing appointments for a practitioner as well as a room

 

All In One View

The calendar images above show 'side by side' calendars for each user/room next to each other. You can combine separate calendars in to a single one and each set of appointments will be given its own colour. New colours will be assigned to new users or rooms as they are added to the calendar.

Show multiple users/rooms all colour coded together in a single calendar

 

Showing Availabilities Instead Of Appointments

Booking by availability can help reduce booking errors if you have a receptionist booking for you and/or work at more than one physical location during the week. As practitioners will usually have more than one appointment type with different start options, locations and durations it can be difficult for receptionists to remember all the different specifics of your practitioners appointments when booking patients in. Availability view along with 'Appointment Types' makes this process easy and less error prone and very fast.

Step 1
Open the 'More Options' panel and select 'Availabilities' at the top.

You can switch the calendar from Appointment view to Availability view for fast error free booking of multiple practitioners appointment types

Step 2
When you have a user selected in the 'Staff Members' area of the 'More Options' panel you will notice the 'Appointment Types' collection becomes visible and open. If you select more than one user then you will see all the appointment types for the selected users. You must select at least one appointment type for the availabilities to appear on the calendar.

Selecting appointment types will show their availability on the calendar

The image above shows two users selected and one of each of their appointment types. The calendar is in 'All In One' mode so the availabilities are shown on a single calendar and colour coded by user so you can tell the apart.

 

Finding Availabilities Quickly

The 'More Options' pane gives you all you need to find availabilities quickly even if you have a busy reception and lots of practitioners with different appointment types, durations and locations.

The 'More Options' panel is a bit like a 'Search' panel where you set criteria and display results on the calendar.

In Appointment view you can search by:

And for Availability view you can search by:

In both cases above the 'Discipline' buttons will select all users for you who belong to the discipline. And for each case you can display your results either 'side by side' or 'all in one' colour coded on the calendar.

The different search options open to your receptionist include:

 

Creating Appointments

You can create several appointment types on the calendar including:

Step 1
To create a new appointment drag on the calendar to select the start and end dates (the duration) of the appointment, then right click the selection and choose 'Create Appointment' from the shortcut menu.

You can select an area on the calendar for the start and end dates then right click to create a new appointment

Step 2
You can fill in the details of the appointment in the 'Appointment Details' window. Some important fields are:

Please note: the location bar in the 'Visit Appointment Window' is only visible if Rooms & Locations are enabled for your practice in the 'Practice Details' administration screen.

Setting appointment details including any recurring appointment setting

Notice you can override the system assigned colour in the appointment window above.

 

Creating Patient Visits

Step 1
Select the start and end points on the calendar then right click the selection and select 'Create Patient Visit' in the shortcut menu.

Creating a new patient visit from the main calendar

Step 2
Select the patient you want to create the visit for, remembering you can search using the textboxes and the surname start characters in the 'Patient Browser'. You can use the 'Create New' button to create a new patient from this screen.

Creating a new patient visit from the main calendar

Step 3
You can enter the appointment details (or change them as you wish) in the 'Visit Appointment Details' window.

Please note: the location bar in the 'Visit Appointment Window' is only visible if Rooms & Locations are enabled for your practice in the 'Practice Details' administration screen.

Creating a new patient visit from the main calendar

Notice you can override the system assigned colour in the appointment window above.

 

Editing Appointments

To edit appointments you can:

The image below shows an appointment that is in the process of being re-sized to change its duration.

You can re-size an appointment to change its duration

 

Online Booking Features - Creating A New Patient

Appointments booked online will flow back in to your application automatically. If the appointment is for a new patient who is not currently in your system, or if the details provided by the patient online were not sufficient for the patient to be found automatically, the appointment will appear greyed out.

When an appointment is booked online but the patient does not exist or cannot be found the appointment appears grey

Step 1
If the appointment is for a new patient or one that could not be automatically matched in the system, you can right click the appointment to find or create the patient.

When the patient cannot be found or is new you can right click the appointment to find or create the patient

Step 2
If you cannot find the patient yourself and are satisfied they are new you can go ahead and click the 'Create New Patient...' button to enter them and link them to the appointment in a single step.

When the appointment is for a new patient you can create them with a single click

 

Calendar Colours & Highlights

You can specify your own custom calendar colours in the administration section and give them meaningful names for your staff to use such as 'Private Patients' or 'Child Patients' etc. The calendar will assign a colour for you for your appointments and you can also override the colour if required.

The calendar is able to alert you to important information about the patient or visit 'at a glance'. A couple of examples of this are:

The appointment shows a 'highlight' down its left side to alert you of these things. If more than one applies then the highlight colours will be striped so each can clearly be seen.

Highlights can alert you to important information about the patient or visit

You can also set a default calendar colour for a patient so that any time a visit is booked for them their appointment will appear a specific colour in the calendar. If you open up the 'Patient Details' screen for a patient you will notice the ''

You can specify what colour a particular patient (or group of patients) calendar appointments will be

 

Right-Click Shortcuts

There are many right-click shortcuts built in to the organiser to help you navigate quickly through the application and to perform common tasks quickly. Some of the features include:

If the appointment corresponds to a patient visit:

The image below shows an appointment that is being right clicked to open the patient's account history.

You can right click appointments to get access to useful application shortcuts