Appointment Book Update

[Anon]

Good afternoon PracticeWorks users,

The development and QA team are hard at work on updates to the appointment book. I wanted to take this opportunity to give the community a sneak peak and an opportunity to provide feedback. 

*Click on the image for a larger view. 

The first thing you'll notice is the lack of green space. The next thing you'll see is the spiral and book graphics are gone. As a result the appointment book is able to 'breath' and fill out a widescreen monitor. 

There are a host of other changes; some you can see and some you cannot. 

• The action buttons are no longer vertical. They are now horizontal along the top. 
• The appointment book, Ask, and PracticetoGo buttons are removed. 
• The Yellow Sticky graphic is more prominent (no faux sticky graphic, now a yellow square). 
• The name of the appointment book in view is displayed. 
• Clicking on the appointment book name displays the "Select Appointment Book to Use" window.
• The up/down arrows scroll through your appointment books. 
• The home icon returns you to the default appointment book. 
• The buttons to move the appointment book up/down on the far left are now significantly larger. 
• The date in view is now prominent. 
• The calendar can be hidden or retrieved via the calendar icon next to the date.
• If the calendar has fallen below the visible screen, clicking the calendar icon by the date will 'bump' the calendar into view. 
• The ability to drag-n-drop appointments. 
• Modern color palate.

There are a few changes still in the works, including scalability down to 1024x768 and changing the Closed time to make grid lines visible.

As work on the appointment book wraps up, we will begin looking at how to reduce/eliminate record locking between the front and back of the practice for a 2018 release. 

I'd love to get feedback on our progress. Please share your comments below!

[sonyap]

Will take some getting used to, but hopefully it will all be positive.  Will there be a way to disable the drag-n-drop feature?

[Anon]

Good morning Sonya,

Great question and observation.

This will be an adjustment for offices that use the green space as a "dock" for other windows. These offices can either adjust the size of PracticeWorks so as not to take up the entire screen, or setup a second monitor for other applications/windows. 

The reschedule action is tied to the existing security events:

If an employee is currently unable to reschedule by right clicking and selecting Reschedule/Cancel/Fail, they will not be able to drag and drop in the new version. 

I'll post another screen shot in a two weeks with the final layout. Please let me know if there are any other questions about the updates. 

[sonyap]

The "drag and drop to reschedule" is becoming a problem.  Has anyone figured out a way to disable it?

[Anon]

Hi Sonya,

It is not possible to disable. The closest thing would be changing the security level for rescheduling an appointment. What is happening in your practice regarding drag and drop?

[sonyap]

Employees are simply trying to double click on an appt, and when the screen jumps (or they accidentally move their mouse a little), the appointment is getting deleted!!!!!!   With any luck, they remember who the patient was.

[sonyap]

Ok.  I'm not sure how I will handle this once the feature becomes active.  I have disabled the "allow appointments to be resized by dragging" feature, because there is too much room for error.  I have the same concern with the drag-and-drop feature.