Clearer Appointment History

Hey ​@Ola 👋

You’re right that Dentally does already capture cancellation reasons on individual appointments, but at the moment that information lives at a per-appointment level. What you’re describing sounds more like automatically categorising cancellations based on timing, and surfacing that visually (for example with colour coding or summary breakdowns) in the appointment history view.

We already had a similar request in the past but it was more on the status only without any kind of visual indication. I’m going to re-open that and add details from your request. I’ll keep you updated! 

If you have specific notice rules you follow (e.g. 24 or 48 hours), feel free to share those too, that kind of detail really helps when reviewing ideas like this. 😊

Just to add some context, I’ve attached two examples of patient appointment histories from EXACT, along with the list of colour-coded cancellation reasons we used. While cancellation reasons were technically recorded per appointment, the key benefit was that the colour coding meant you could see the overall pattern instantly when looking at the appointment history.

Anything shown in pink or red was effectively a red flag when making further appointments. For example, repeated late cancellations or FTAs would mean no further appointments were offered, or stricter booking rules applied. Reception didn’t need to click into individual appointments to assess this - you could tell at a glance what the situation was with that patient.

In Dentally, although the data exists, it’s much harder to interpret quickly because it lives at an individual appointment level with no visual summary. That makes real-world decision-making at reception slower and more error-prone, especially on busy days.

An ideal solution from our point of view would be an additional column in the booked appointments/history view showing the cancellation reason, combined with customisable colour coding for those reasons. That would get much closer to what worked well in EXACT and would make appointment history genuinely useful as a decision-making tool again.

In terms of notice rules, we work on a 48-hour notice period, so anything under 48 hours, on-the-day cancellations or FTAs would fall into that "needs consideration before rebooking" category.

Happy to provide more examples if helpful, but hopefully this explains why the visual element is so important rather than just the underlying status.

Thanks for sharing the examples ​@Ola  that’s really helpful context! 

The colour-coding and at-a-glance patterns you’ve described (especially around repeated late cancellations / FTAs) are a great illustration of why this goes beyond just individual appointment statuses.

I’ve shared this directly with the product manager who looks after this area 😊. They may reach out to you directly or add a comment here if they need any more detail.

I’ll keep the thread updated if there’s any progress or follow-up questions from the team.

Thanks again for taking the time to explain it so clearly 🙏