Questions & Feature Requests

Hello, How do I change the default time for appointment reason? I can set them up and change the order however I am unable to find an option to change the default times, they are all set as 5 minutes which means we have to modify the time manually Thank you in advance

The takings and income reports keep timing out or giving an error or returning no data - it is intermittent and does not always occur but this never used to happen. The issue is exacerbated when I do a wider date range or more practitioners however I never used to have this issue

Hi team,To my understanding, if a patient texts “STOP” or “CANCEL” to any sms from Dentally, we are blocked from replying to them.While the support team told me that by texting ‘START” to our practice Dentally number, SMSs could be resumed, in practice we tried this with a patient and it didn’t work.So firstly, I’d flag that this isn’t working as intended. It is quite problematic when we cannot contact a patient by SMS, as not everyone checks their voicemail or email. SMS has a much higher read rate than the other methods.Secondly, can we please remove the “CANCEL” rule? I think it works against the intention. For example, if we message a patient with a reminder about their appointment and they reply “CANCEL” (and this has happened) - we are blocked from replying to them.

Hi team,I’m excited to see the now “Short notice” function on the diary. However, I’d like to see one additional function/filter added to the waitlist/short notice function.Many, if not all patients, have days/times they are available - eg Tuesday afternoon (PM), Friday morning (AM).Could we have this added to the waitlist/short notice function, ie a patient can tell us what days they are normally available. This could be for example, tick boxes eg ticking the boxes for the days of the week a patient is normally available.If this data is captured, it makes it a LOT easier for the reception to know who they can call to fill a slot, rather than calling a whole list of patients. the “AM/PM “ would be a further enhancement, but at a minimum we really do need an idea of what days of the week patients are available. Currently, we would have to open each and every ‘wait list’ item to see the notes in it, and see which days patients have said they are available.The ability to filter the waitli

Hi All We are using the chat feature on dentlally and it is great, especially when chatting between clinics. Wondering if anyone knows if the below is possoible, or if support have it in pipeline for rollout.  Group chat. We have 8 reception staff, and if I need to bubble them for anything, I have to copy and paste it into each seperate chat. Would be great if able to create groups  (REC) (supervisors) etc..   so that group chats would be possible.  Delete chat. I have in error once / twice send a chat to the wrong person  (dentist  and admin with same first name) and jsut select wrong name. Is it posisble to delete a chat (even if only by manager?) RegardsEamonn

I'd like to provide feedback on your DIrect Messages feature. The windows to see the list of contacts is too small, and there is no appropriate signs as to which conversation has been read or not. Perhaps this features requires some reworking, as it is specially frustrating on large practices with dozens of staff texting. In fact, you cannot even read their full names if too long. Please fix this as this is a huge quality of lifeimprovement for a very good platform.

Hi there, I’m trying to create a patient in Dentally from a Zap. The zap will pull patient data from a form on our website and then create that patient in Dentally. The first part is working correctly pulling the form data via a webhook, however the patient creation step isn’t working. I’m using the Dentally 1.3.0 version in Zapier.I’ve tried multiple variants for submitting patient data, including copying data straight out of Dentally (so that the target field matches), but whenever I test it, it returns:“Failed to create a patient in Dentally (1.3.0)The app returned "The patient could not be processed".”I wanted to check:is the Dentally Zapier app still supported? Any ideas on general issues with creating patients? Am I better using the API?Thanks for any thoughts,Tom 

Hello, When receiving webhook events for ‘appointment.created’, it often provides fake/default values. For example: finish time is null, when in reality, this can never be the case. Also duration is 0 and start time is also null. Other information such as patient information and reason are filled in.Is this a known issue? Do i need to fetch the just created appointment again by id (id is provided in the body). I did not previously do this due to not wanting to hit the API rate limit. Thank you!

HI Dentally, 3 of our clinics have multi floors, and not all rooms are wheelchair accessable. Wondering if their is any plan currently to have a WHEELCHAIR option available on dentally, that would (ideally) include a blue wheelchair icon on the apt book, beside name to highlight.  Currently our team are adding in ‘wheelchair’ / ‘downstairs only’ into the Nickname, so it comes up on apt book.  Our dentists alternate between rooms, so this helps us stop issues, where a pt needs to be seen in a certain room, etc. . A simple icon like the lab icon which is now on the apt book, would be a massive help. 

Tell me this is happening sometime soon!White space everywhere and where to start!If anything why can we add to the waiting list while booking that individual appointment, rather than having to open patient record, appointments and the adding, so time consuming!

Is there a feature were appointment confirmation can be automatically  sent once booked in diary

Hello,I have to agree with the comments of Kate T and RegentStreet85 about whether Dentally Portal is fit for purpose in servicing the needs of Plan Practices. Kate T wrote the following to the Community.“Hi Simon, the problem is with booking dental checks from our point of view.  It would be ideal if a private patient only had the option to book a private dental check, a Denplan Care patient only had the option to book a Denplan Care dental check etc.  Many thanksKate”From RegentStreet85“Hi,Yes i agree with this request. It would be a lot easier, we have 8000 pts to deal with and can be a pain when needing to book relevant appts to a plan.Unfortunately the portal doesnt seem very Denplan friendly.” It would appear that Dentally has designed a patient portal without finding out what Plan Practices need from online booking. Frustratingly the portal does not seem to be very Plan friendly.Regards,Tim 

Can a param filter please be added to the Rota Practitioner Diary that filters out rows in which a practitioner is no available? It makes sense that in endpoint we the only are looking at dates in which our practitioners are available, and we can make the assumption the practitoner is not available a certain as there is no data for it.

HI Allwant to see if any other clinics are having the issue we are having of late. on the dentally invoices,   under the invoice date, it says DUE by and another date +7 days in future  We been having patients of late, stating when we go to collect payment, that the balance is not due for 7 days as per invoice. (esp on large treatments).  Unless pre-approved or on payment plan, all invoices are due on day of treatment. This text on top of invoice, is now causing some issues, esp with patients being able to get invoice on dentally portal, and it clearly saying a DUE date that is not the date of invoice. Eager to see if any other clinics have noticed same?RegardsEamonn

I am very happy with the addition of the new Orthodontic Assessment tab within the patient chart.  To further refine Dentally’s orthodontic functionality and better reflect the differences between general dental and orthodontic workflows, I would like to propose the following features under the ortho tab on the patient chart.  1. Modifiable Orthodontic Assessment The new assessment layout is a great start but appears tailored toward a UK-style orthodontic examination. I would appreciate the ability to customise this tab, similar to how custom fields in treatments can be configured. If the existing tab is required for automated UK claims submission, perhaps a separate custom orthodontic assessment option could be introduced for other users. 2. Orthodontic Progress AppointmentsProgress appointments in orthodontics are typically brief, focusing on key clinical details such as: Buccal segment relationships Overjet and overbite Archwires and elastics  Broken/replaced brackets and wire

We went live with our online booking some 6 weeks ago.On average we’re getting only 3-4 online bookings a week despite having the portal link in all our recall emails and reminder emails and mainly from existing NHS patients.  More importantly, we’re seeing a large number of these patients making multiple bookings and failing to turn up for any of the appointments.  Why does the portal allow users to book more than one of the same appointment without warning them to either cancel or rescedule an appointment? There is no feature to switch off online booking for persisten offenders, only an option to prevent further appointments in general (in the patient’s details tab) which is not the same thing as I might be happy for them to call and my staff book them inWhat is the solution here because I can see this becoming an issue as not only are we seeing wasted appointment slots but multiple text msgs which just add up?

If a patient has multiple appts in one day, when you click on one of them on the scheduler, there should be some indication the patient has multiple appts Same if a family is coming in. Easily see on one patient (i.e. the mom) if there’s any other family members due for recare/treatment/hygiene On the appt tab, see other family members appts at once (especially children)

Hi team,Having the functionality to schedule an SMS or email to go out at a certain time (particularly SMS) would really help in practice management.We find for example, during business hours, as many people are busy or working they do not reply to our calls or messages sometimes.One of my staff members actually tested the theory and found the “golden hour” for confirming appointments etc is after work hours from 6.30 onwards - hence I’d like to propose the ability to schedule SMS’s especially to go out later - so that staff do not have to stay back to do so, but we can catch patients at the optimal time.Even for things like social media, the 7-8pm and beyond window is one of if not the most active period of the day - reflecting people’s behaviours and ability to take in information at this time of the day. I believe sending out correspondence at this time when people have the time/ability to engage with it would be really effective.

It would be a great time-saving feature if there was an option to do a mass export in the correspondence section, just like we can export the clinical notes history at the click of a button.The reason I am requesting this is that I am in the middle of copying & pasting every SMS sent, every email sent and every call log for a solicitor acting on behalf of a patient who has requested their entire data file from us. I think this feature should only be available through Administrator access level. 

Hi there, We would like an option as part of the medical history flow, where we could duplicate and update a previous medical history. Patients will frequently have a minor update needed to their medical history. It would save time if we could duplicate the last medical history and then edit, with any recent updates. Rather than having to complete the entire history each time. Thanks,Tom

Very appreciative to have Dentally integrating voice-to-text AI notetaking. I believe this is in Beta testing mode - my apologies if it has not been rolled out to everybody yet. However, it was noted during the training session that Dentally’s AI note-taking abilities do NOT include ambient listening during the appointment.This means that the clinician is still required to dedicate time to both creating templates for Dentally AI to work with, and also to input content for each appointment albeit using dictation. Overall, this saves minimal time for the clinician. Does Dentally intend to provide an ambient listening capability? Or do you have suggestions of how to incorporate software such as Heidi into the Dentally interface? 

Hello, when it comes to any change to the API, can there be communcation on either the community site or  the developer site of any change to API? as a recent example, there was some underlying changes made to the Appointments API on Monday (3rd November), which caused our ETL to timeout repeatedly.

I wanted to be able to filter by last contact method. I.E. If I’ve done all manual calls, I don’t want to see patient’s who’ve had a manual call. I want to filter to see who was contacted by the auto email/sms so I can call them manually. 

It would be great to be able to easily view the history of a cancelled appt that isn’t on the scheduler. At the moment, you can only see the history of an appt from the scheduler section. 

Can we please have medical alert icons appear in the calendar view of appointment bookings?We have had an instance of a patient who came in for his appointment but had to be turned away and rescheduled due his needing antibiotic prophylaxis which had not been administered. His medical needs are noted when you open his profile, but because no one opened his profile in advance of his appointment the doctor had not been alerted to prepare an antibiotic script in advance. If it was obvious from the calendar view, I believe the issue would have been avoided.This is useful for individuals requiring ABs, anxious patients, and those with latex or chlorhexidine allergies.