Using the Pinboard, you can easily reschedule all appointments for members of the same family that are scheduled on the same date.
Updated 6/30/20
At 8:05 Monday morning, the phone rings at your dental office. It’s Mrs. Bradley, who needs to reschedule all of her family’s dental appointments to next week. You open the Appointment Book and sigh quietly to yourself as you see that the Bradley family has four dental appointments scheduled for this Wednesday. After Mrs. Bradley apologizes for the inconvenience, you begin by locating her appointment and temporarily move it to the Pinboard. You then display next week’s schedule in the Appointment Book and see that next Tuesday is available. Mrs. Bradley OK’s the appointment time, and you drag her appointment from the Pinboard to the new time on Tuesday. With the first appointment rescheduled, you tally in your head, “One down, three more to go.”
You go back to Wednesday’s schedule and reschedule her husband Jon’s appointment using the same slow process–dragging the appointment to the Pinboard, displaying Tuesday’s schedule, then dragging the appointment to a new appointment time on Tuesday. “That’s two,” you almost say out loud as the tally climbs. You then continue to move back and forth between Wednesday this week and Tuesday next week, as you reschedule appointments for Carl and Gina. Finally, with all four appointments successfully rescheduled for next Tuesday, you bid Mrs. Bradley a nice day, glance at the clock to see how much time you’ve just spent rescheduling four appointments, and wish to yourself, “If only there was a way to reschedule everyone in the same family at once…”
With the latest version of Dentrix, there is. The Appointment Book Pinboard now holds as many appointments as you want. What’s more, Dentrix makes it easy to move all appointments for one family on the displayed date to the Pinboard with just a few mouse clicks. Gone are the days of going back and forth between schedule dates to reschedule each family member individually.
Rescheduling a Family
To reschedule an entire family, in the Dentrix Appointment Book right-click a scheduled appointment for any member of the family. On the shortcut menu, click Move to Pinboard > Family Appts for Displayed Date.
A dialog box appears and gives you two options.
Both options in this dialog box will move the family appointments to the Pinboard. However, the first option leaves all the appointments scheduled at the original time until the appointment is rescheduled (or deleted from the Pinboard). This option may be helpful if you need to refer back to the original appointment times while you reschedule several appointments. The second option removes the scheduled appointments from the Appointment Book and may be helpful if you need to free up schedule times immediately for new appointments.
After clicking OK, go to the new schedule date in the Appointment Book. All the appointments still appear on the Pinboard ready for you to assign them to a new schedule time.
Now all you have to do is drag each appointment from the Pinboard and drop it on the new schedule time. Tip: You can click the word “List” at the top of the Pinboard list to display the entire Dentrix Pinboard List.
Other Rescheduling Options
Other situations can arise that will require you to move other groups of appointments (besides families) to the Pinboard. For example, one of your hygienists may call in sick or have a scheduling conflict. To reschedule all appointments for one provider on a given date, right-click a scheduled appointment for that provider. On the shortcut menu, click Move to Pinboard > [provider]’s Appts for Displayed Date. Specify whether you want to leave the appointments scheduled after moving them to the Pinboard, then click OK. You can now reschedule these appointments to a later date.
You may also have a problem with one of your operatories–or with the entire dental office–that requires a temporary closure and rescheduling of appointments on a certain day or for several days. In this case, right-click a scheduled appointment and click Move to Pinboard > Operatory Appts for Displayed Date or All Appts for Displayed Date, and follow the same rescheduling procedures described previously.
These new Appointment Book features will help save you time whenever you need to reschedule any group of appointments. Now the next time Mrs. Bradley calls, you’ll be ready.
Learn More
To learn more about rescheduling appointments, see The Pinboard topic in Dentrix Help.
For more Appointment Book tips, read 10 Time-Saving Tips for the Appointment Book.
By Roger Gagon, Senior Editor
Originally published in Dentrix Magazine, Summer 2010
