Feature requests - lab work received, automation triggers, HTML formatting & scrolling on calendar page

Question

HiCould I please request improvements to the following: Lab related featursLab work received - nice feature but the green lab bottle does not appear on the calendar in some circumstances.  I’ve played around with it and whilst it appears for patients who are booked in and have no long preferred name, I’m finding that where the name is long or we have additional comments in the preferred name and we want to set a short appointment time of 5-10 min, the green bottle will not display.  The only way I can make it display is by increasing the appointment duration to 20 min which we dont need that long.  I am able to book some 15 min appointments but only where the patient name is short.  Perhaps text wrapping or something is preventing the lab icon from appearing	A logical extension to the lab work received is to have the ability to write somewhere which lab we have sent the work to (if we use and have several different labs).  Yes I know we can write it in the yellow sticky or in the charting notes, but for non clinical staff it would be extremely useful to know at first glance where a patient’s lab work is	On the back of the last feature request (2), could we please have the ability to produce a report of all patient’s lab work that is outstanding, received, sent and the lab name. This would be very useful for a staff member to then check the immediate status of x number of patients or call a lab or series of patients without having to guess or keep spreadsheets etc.  Huge time saver	I saw in another thread 2 months ago by Kellwills, the suggestion of a “Lab Work tab”.  Given the importance of lab work, I think this would be an excellent suggestion to implement.  	 	AutomationI have mentioned this to the support line, but please please please can we have the ability to setup email automation triggers based on when an appointment is “BOOKED” rather than or in addition to when an appointment actually is.  The rationale behind this is simple.  We might want emails to go out to patients within 15 minutes of being booked that confirms an appointment, or sends a particular clinical set of pre-operative instructions or a lot more.  We can also check after a few minutes to be sure that the said important email actually goes out and has not bounced etc rather than hope and pray that it gets sent under the current system of it being sent x hours before the appointment time Settings - Email templatesI keep getting told by Dentally support that they provide zero support to help us with the HTML formatting of template emails.  I appreciate and understand that this is more complex as it requires some coding knowledge.  But on the basis that most of users of Dentally are not programmers and will not want to spend on a web developer to help us, sure there can be some basic help either provided or simple template examples or help guides.  For example, I want to edit my template so that I can have something as simple as red coloured text to warn patients that miss appointments they will be charged / discharged from the referral / deregistered.  Why can nobody at Dentally Support help me with that? Calendar screen - cannot drag an appointment down the screenThis has to be one of the more annoying bugs or fixes that should have really been done ages ago.  When dragging / moving an appointment from e.g. morning to afternoon or vice versa or from the clipboard to further down the screen, the screen does not scroll.  You are forced to drop the patient at some random time in the diary and then manually scroll down and then move the same patient a second time.  This may not seem like a big issue, but again this turn into multiple clicks and is more work which adds up when you consider the frequency of appointments being moved (in addition to the fact that you have to confirm that you want to drop a patient at that time) Thanks.

Saymon · Answer

Hi @BCDC2023,Thanks so much for all the feedback! I’ll split this into four parts so we can track them cleanly. For future requests, one idea per post really helps Product triage 🙏. I’ll keep this thread updated:Lab features:I can see why the green bottle matters for quick scanning. I’ve flagged the icon not showing on very short slots with long preferred names as a potential layout issue for our design team. If you can share a screenshot, slot length (5/10/15 mins) and your browser zoom, that’ll help themreproduce.For “which lab” at-a-glance and reporting, a practical step today is a treatment custom field (e.g. Lab as a dropdown, optional Due back). I’m adding your ask for a Lab Work tab and a native sent/received/outstanding by lab report to our current lab enhancement request.I know the team was working on some enhancements for our recentlab work feature. I’m going to bring in @Hansa Rastogifrom our product team who may be able to share more. Thanks for all the valuable feedback, I’ve seen similar requests from other practices so I’ll make sure to add this to our internal enhancement feature request.Automation: Understood, and you’re not alone. I’ve added your +1 to the request for a “when appointment is booked” trigger (with filters by reason/practitioner). No timelines yet. If you can share two concrete examples of the emails you’d want within 15 minutes of booking, that will shape discovery and I’ll make sure to pass it to our product team😊Settings - Email templates:Support may not build HTML, but I can still help you here. For a simple red warning, you can paste:

Missed appointments may incur a charge and could lead to deregistration.

If you drop your template text here, I’m happy to tidy the HTML/CSS with you.😃Calendar screen - cannot drag an appointment down the screen:100% with you! This is top priority for us and something our customers in Australia have been asking for as well. I’ve reached out to our product lead in Australia to gather more details, I’ll update the post once I have more!

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