Blocks in the diary

we have this problem, we work around the patients, and being able to move zones or blocks with ease without having to go into diary and change things around would be great.   something similar to Exact where you just right click to add a clinic

Hi ​@DJmum, thanks for sharing this. At the moment in Dentally, there’s a difference between breaks that come from a clinician’s schedule and blocks added directly in the diary, which is why you’re seeing different behaviour.

Breaks set up as part of a clinician’s schedule (for example lunch or tea breaks) are tied to availability rules, so they aren’t currently movable directly from the diary view. If the timing needs to change, this has to be done by updating the clinician’s schedule.  Blocks added directly to the diary are more flexible and can be moved around as needed.

That said, the workflow you and ​@Katrina Lamont describe is something I’ve heard before from other practitioners coming from SOE Exact. I’ll have a chat with the product team to understand if this is something we’re planning and I’ll make sure to track it as a feature request so it can be reviewed.

As with all feature requests, it’ll go through our usual review process, and while I can’t promise timelines or outcomes, it’s really useful to hear how this impacts day-to-day scheduling. 😊

If other practices work in a similar way, feel free to add your thoughts below, it helps us build a clearer picture of how widely this would be used.

Thanks again for taking the time to share your feedback.

I agree. While some practices may set breaks for clinicians at set times, in reality treatments go over time and patients arrive late all the time. Not to mention families would want to book one after another and would not want to have to wait for a clinician to have her break. So we work around patients which means having breaks sometimes sooner and sometimes later. Effectively, this means whilst you may have the breaks in the calendar, its often booked over anyways.

as ​@DJmum suggested, i agree the break slots should be movable in the Calendar daily. At the moment we use a workaround creating an empty block (not selecting patient) and creating an appointment reason called “Break” so we can clearly see it in the calendar when sorting by appt reason. But this creates a Pending status on that appointment and would probably mess with the reporting. 

Thanks ​@muqmrlabs for the additional feedback, I’ll ensure this is all passed onto the product team!