Diary

Open Diary (Schedule in the US) in the clinical workspace. The whole page is the diary: one line of controls above the grid, no heading. The page's address carries the date and the view, so a day can be bookmarked or shared.

The controls

From left to right: one group of previous, Today (shown only when you're on another day), the date and next (a day, or three weekdays in the 3-day view) — the date's picker also holds the jumps +1 week, +3 months and +6 months (the usual recalls); then Day / 3 days / List, the site (only with more than one), View, Print, Fill gaps and Requests (when online booking requests are waiting). There is no Book button on the Day and 3 days views — book by clicking or dragging on the grid; the List view, which has no grid, keeps Book. Each column header shows its booking count. On the keyboard, ← and → move a day (three weekdays in the 3-day view) and t returns to today.

View holds what you see: Columns (practitioners or rooms, when the site has rooms), Columns shown (tick who to show; the button says how many are hidden) and Colour by.

Finding a free day

Click the date. Three months open at once; the arrows page a month at a time and Today returns to today.

• Every day is tinted by how much of its bookable time is taken — green under 40 %, yellow under 70 %, orange under 90 %, red when it is full — and a small bar under the number shows the same thing without colour.
• Bookable time is each practitioner's rota inside the site's opening hours, less approved time off; someone with no rota counts the site's hours. Cancelled and no-show appointments do not count as booked.
• A grey day is a closed day or one where nobody is working.
• Hover a day for the figures: 6h 40m free of 8h · 3 booked.
• The tint counts the practitioners you are showing. Hide the others under View → Columns shown to see one person's free days.

Click a day to open it. The arrow keys move between days.

Reading the grid

• Each column is a practitioner (or a room; in the 3-day view, a practitioner under each day), headed by their avatar — their initials on their diary colour, the same one View lists them by. A former practitioner who still holds a booking keeps a column; a booking with no practitioner sits under Unassigned.
• Grey time is outside the practitioner's rota or the site's opening hours; hatched time is a closed day or an approved absence. A day a practitioner's rota does not cover — a Saturday for someone who works Monday to Friday — is grey from top to bottom. A practitioner without a rota at all is not shaded.
• A card shows the start time and the patient, then the status as a coloured word — Requested for an online booking waiting for an answer, Done for a finished visit — with up to two flags beside it; more read +n. Longer cards add the appointment type, and from 45 minutes the note. A card shorter than half an hour keeps one line, the patient's name in the status colour. Hover a card for the full summary, every flag included.
• Cards are filled with the appointment type's colour from Settings; View → Colour by switches to the status, the practitioner or the room. A type, practitioner or room without a colour keeps the status colour (pending yellow, booked salmon, confirmed green, arrived blue, in the chair indigo, done grey, no-show red).
• One red line marks the current time across today's columns.
• A practice's own appointment label shows as a chip beside the status, in its colour and always with its words, while it applies: "Left message" set to show while booked disappears once the visit is confirmed. A label never changes the status, reminders, deposits or anything clinical.
• Up to two of the patient's flags — their tags marked Show on the diary — show under the appointment type, then +n. You see them when you may see patients.
• A zone is time a clinician's rota keeps for chosen appointment types, such as "Emergencies, weekdays 14:00–15:00". It is shaded with stripes and its name. See Booking into a zone.

Card flags

A card's flags say what still needs doing for that visit, most important first:

You see a flag only when you may see what it is about: money for team members who can see patients' accounts, alerts and medical histories for those who can see the medical record, and so on. In the US, while insurance's share of a bill is still being estimated, the coins read Balance: couldn't check instead of an amount. If the flags cannot be loaded, the cards show without them and the List says so.

Booking from the grid

Click an empty slot to book it, or drag down (or up) over empty time to set the length as well. The slot stays outlined on the grid and the booking card opens beside it with the date, the time (to five minutes), the length you dragged, and the practitioner or room of that column already chosen. The outline shows the times and the length — and the patient's name once you have chosen one — and is still the booking: drag it to another time or column, or drag its bottom edge for more or fewer minutes, and the card follows — and changing the date, time, minutes, practitioner or room in the card moves the outline. Click anywhere else, or Cancel, to drop it. On a touch screen, tap; a drag scrolls the diary. The same card opens in a dialog from Book in the List view and from Fill gaps.

The card reads from top to bottom:

1. Patient — search by name, phone or email. Each match shows the date of birth and the last three digits of the mobile number, so two people with the same name are told apart, and the patient you choose shows as a pill with their date of birth. Beside the search, New patient (for team members who can add patients) adds someone who is not on file yet and puts them straight into the booking; whatever you had typed in the search — a name, an email or a number — is already filled in. Its form also takes the date of birth and lists anyone already on file with a similar name or the same date of birth, so the same person is not added twice.
2. To book — once a patient is chosen, their unbooked treatment-plan visits and the recall that is due. Choose one to book it: a plan visit brings its length, and the plan visit or recall is booked together with the appointment — if one of them was booked in the meantime, nothing is booked and the card says so. A check that could not load says so with Retry.
3. Location, with more than one site — it starts as the site the diary is on; change it and the rooms on offer follow.
4. Appointment type — your first four types as buttons, in the order you set in Settings; Other type… holds the rest. A type sets the length, unless a plan visit already has. Someone just added with New patient starts on your first type (the new-patient examination in the standard setup).
5. When — the date, the time and the minutes, and Find a time.
6. Practitioner (always required) and Room (required where the site asks for one). A pick list with eight or more entries has a search box at the top. For a visit with more than one clinician — a dentist and a hygienist together, say — press Add clinician under the practitioner and choose the next one, up to ten; the × beside an added clinician takes them off again. Every clinician on the visit is booked, and each must work at the site and be free then. When the patient asked to be seen by a female or a male clinician, the card says so under the practitioner — for example Prefers a female clinician — as a reminder only: nobody is filtered out or chosen for you. The preference is recorded on the patient's Details.
7. More — Lab work: None required, one of the patient's lab cases still on its way (this visit becomes its fit appointment), or New lab case…, which opens the lab case form once the appointment is booked; Short notice list: Yes also puts the patient on the waiting list as a short-notice request for anything sooner than this visit; and a Note.

A new booking is Booked; confirm it later from its visit panel. Lab work and Short notice list appear only for members who can read lab cases and the waiting list.

The outline turns red when it runs into something: another booking of that practitioner (or of that room), or grey or hatched time — outside the rota or the site's hours, a closed day, an absence. Book then asks first. Over a booking, owners, managers and the front desk give a reason the record keeps, as when a card is dragged onto a taken slot; nobody else can book there. Over grey or hatched time, Book becomes Outside working hours — use anyway and a second press books; moving the outline asks again.

Book also checks every clinician on the visit, and its room, the way Find a time does: each one's rota, the site's hours, closed days, approved time off, their bookings at every site, and the appointment type's time to prepare and clear up. When one of them is not free it says who — Dr Patel isn't free then — outside their hours, on time off, on a closed day or too close to another visit — and Book becomes Outside working hours — use anyway: a second press books it all the same.

Consultations booked from the Today queue land here too: the booked step of the outcome wizard opens this grid in a dialog, and the slot the caller picks becomes an appointment with the journey's treatment on the card.

A booking made here for a patient with an open enquiry moves that enquiry to your board's consultation-booked stage — the patient's newest open one, as a connected practice-management system's bookings do — so its new-enquiry follow-ups stop and the practice's booking messages go out.

Booking into a zone

Zones keep time; they don't confine types. A zone's appointment types can be booked anywhere free. Online booking, Find a time, Fill gaps and the AI receptionist never offer a zone's time to another type.

From the diary you can still book another type there: Book first says Reserved for Emergencies 14:00–15:00, and pressing Book again books it. An overbook reason books it straight away. The same goes for changing a visit: dragging it into a zone, or giving it a type the zone doesn't keep its time for, first asks Move into Emergencies?; Move anyway moves it. Zones are set in the rota.

Find a time

Find a time in the card lists the free times for its appointment type and length at the site, day by day, a button per start time, each naming who is free then. When the card has more than one clinician, it searches them Together: only the times every one of them is free, with one room for the visit where the site books by room. A clinician who can't be booked at the site — no longer active, or working elsewhere — stops the search and is named, rather than being left out quietly. Choose Any or one person to search otherwise. It starts on the date in the card, or today if that date has passed. A treatment plan visit can't start before the plan allows, so the search starts on that day instead and tells you so. Moving an appointment searches from today unless you change its date. Narrow it to one practitioner, and to Mornings or Afternoons; Load more shows more times. Each search covers 90 days. When it reaches the end it says how far it looked — Searched to Tue 26 Jan — and Search further looks at the next 90 days, as many times as you need. It counts each practitioner's rota and time off, the site's hours and closures, every booking and hold, the type's buffers and minimum notice, and — where the site books by room, or the card has a room — a room free for the whole visit. Choose a time and the card takes its date, time, practitioners and room; on the grid the card moves onto that slot, which the outline marks, and keeps every clinician as you move it.

Choose an appointment type first: the search needs one. When nobody is free it says so — No free 40-minute time for Dr Patel — with Try any clinician, or No free 40-minute time for everyone together. A site whose diary your practice management system keeps has nothing to search here.

Booking from a Book button

Every Book in the clinical workspace — on the patient record and its Appointments tab, a treatment plan visit, a recall, the inbox's patient summary, a visit panel's next visits — opens the diary on that patient instead of a form of its own. A banner across the top names who you are booking, with their date of birth: Booking Jane Doe · 12 Mar 1984. For a treatment-plan visit it adds which visit, how long and from when — Visit 2 of 3 · Crown fit · 40 min · from Tue 28 Oct — where the first day is the visit before's day plus the gap the plan asks for. Days before it are hatched, and a click there books nothing.

• Click a free slot and the booking card opens there already filled in: the patient (a pill with their date of birth; it cannot be changed here), the visit, its length, and the practitioner or room of that column. Its title reads Book Jane Doe.
• Find a time on the banner opens the card with the free times listed; choosing one puts the card on that slot.
• Skip (when the plan has more visits) moves on to the next visit without booking this one. Stop ends booking for the patient and closes the card.

Once a plan visit is booked, the banner moves straight on to the plan's next unbooked visit — Visit 3 of 3 — with its first day counted from the one you just booked, until none is left. A recall is booked together with its appointment, in one step. When you are done, the banner goes and Booked offers the way back to where you started: Back to the record, Back to To do, Back to Inbox. Each visit is its own booking, and refreshing the page or going back never books one twice.

Move on a visit panel works the same way: the banner reads Moving Jane Doe, and the card moves that appointment, keeping its length, to the slot you choose.

While you are booking someone, clicking another patient's appointment first asks Stop booking Jane Doe? — the diary never switches patient without you saying so.

In the Desk app, which shows the diary as a list, a Book button opens the booking card with Find a time straight away.

Moving and resizing

• Drag a card to another time or column. A dashed outline shows where it will land, snapped to five minutes, and carries the patient's name, the new times and the length. If that slot is already taken the card returns and the diary says so; owners and managers are offered an overbook with a reason the record keeps. A change made elsewhere in the meantime refreshes the diary instead.
• Drag the bottom edge of a card to change its length.
• Everything else you do to an appointment — its status, edits, cancelling, check-out — is in its visit panel.
• A booking an external practice management system manages cannot be moved or edited here: its visit panel shows the details and offers only Mark confirmed; the provider owns its time and outcome. Done, cancelled and no-show bookings stay in place.
• A visit shared by several practitioners appears in each of their columns and moves in time only. To change who is on it, open it and use Edit: the card lists every clinician, and Add clinician and × change the set.

The visit panel

Click a card, or a row in the List view, to open its visit panel. It slides in from the right over the edge of the diary, which keeps its full width, and the card wears a ring. The diary stays usable underneath: click another card to switch the panel to that visit, or click or drag on empty time to book while it stays open. Close it with × or Esc. Double-click a card or a row, or press Enter on it, to open the patient's record instead.

The panel reads from top to bottom:

1. The patient — name, date of birth and age, patient number, an alert pill for each alert in force and the patient's price list; under it, the mobile number with a call button and the email address. Reception's pills say what kind of alert it is; dentists, hygienists and nurses also see its words there.
2. The visit — the time, appointment type, practitioners, room and lab work, its status, the practice's own Label (choose one, or No label, from the list under the status; an archived label can't be chosen again, but stays until you change it), the patient's flags, and one solid button for the next step. On the day of the visit that is Mark arrived, then Mark in chair, then Mark done; before the day it is Mark confirmed. Edit opens the booking card in the panel; Move places the visit again on the diary (see Booking from a Book button); Cancel… asks for a reason (see Cancelling a visit).
3. Before the chair — only what still needs doing before the patient sits down: a medical history that is due — the same rule as the Medical tab: the latest was rejected or has expired, or there is none on file and your practice sets a review period — or No medical history yet (Fill in with patient opens the form at the desk; Send form link and Show QR let the patient fill it in themselves, and the line then says when the link was sent or opened), a form awaiting a clinician's review (the latest medical history always waits for one), a missing mobile number or email address, an unpaid deposit (Re-send link), money owed (Take payment) and lab work that is not back. When every check has answered and nothing is due, it says All set. A check that could not load says Couldn't check with Retry — never All set.
4. Check-out, once the visit is Done — see below.
5. Medical — every alert in force in its own words, and the patient's active allergies, conditions and medications, for anyone who may see the medical record. None recorded. when there is nothing.
6. Details — the patient's pinned note, other phone, preferred contact method and time, the channels they opted out of, and their dentist and hygienist.
7. Upcoming — the patient's next visits, with their status, and when the recall is due and how many treatment-plan visits are still to book.
8. Open plans — each open treatment plan with its status, total and treatments.
9. Open record and Message, always at the bottom. After you send a message you stay on the diary.

Cancelling a visit

Cancel… asks for the cancellation reason, then Cancel appointment cancels the visit. If the visit was booked by mistake — the wrong patient, a double booking — tick Booked by mistake instead: no reason is needed, and the visit does not count as a cancellation, or as an appointment at all, in reports and To do's Missed, not rebooked. The patient gets the same cancellation message as for any cancel, and a practice management system you are connected to is told the same way. Cancel… on the patient record's Appointments tab offers the same tick. Declining an online request never offers it.

A cancelled or missed visit hands back what it booked: the patient's recall returns to Recalls due, the treatment-plan visit to Treatment to book, and a waiting-list request to the waiting list, however the visit ended — here, through the patient's own link, the AI receptionist or your practice management system. Booking the patient again takes them back.

A visit the patient moved to another time with their booking link, or with the AI receptionist, reads Moved rather than Cancelled, and what it booked moves with it to the new time.

Done and No-show ask twice

Mark done and No-show cannot be undone, so the first click only turns the button into a question naming the patient — Confirm: Jane Doe done — and the second click records it. Clicking anywhere else, or the visit changing in the meantime, puts the button back. The same goes for the List view's buttons, and Status in the booking card, which appears only when you edit a visit, never offers Done or No-show.

Undo arrival

A visit marked Arrived by mistake — at the kiosk or with Mark arrived — can be taken back until the patient is in the chair. Click Undo arrival, say why, and click Undo arrival again. The visit goes back to Confirmed if it had been confirmed, otherwise Booked, and its history keeps the reason. Anyone who can update appointments can do this; a visit managed in a practice management system can't be changed here.

Check-out

After Done, the panel lists the treatment completed for the patient on the day of the visit — whether or not it is part of a treatment plan — and sends each item to the right way of charging it:

• Private and membership treatment shows its fee. Charge opens the charge form with the item already chosen; once posted it reads Charged. A reversed charge counts as uncharged again. An item with no fee reads Nothing to charge.
• NHS treatment is never charged at its procedure fee. Its course of treatment carries the patient charge, so the panel shows the course — NHS course · band 2a · £73.50 — with Charge course, which asks you to confirm the amount before it posts. A course is charged once; an exempt patient's course reads No patient charge.
• In the US, the panel shows today's charged fees split into Insurance estimate and Patient pays, and anything the patient owed before on its own line. The insurer's part never counts as money the patient owes.

Take names what the patient owes now and opens the payment form with it filled in. In the US it is today's own share: anything the patient owed before has its own line with its own Take, so today's visit is never charged with older debt by default, and today's share reads Paid once it is covered. After each payment the panel reads the account again and offers Take for whatever is left, so a split payment is simply taken twice.

Under Next are the patient's unbooked treatment-plan visits and their recall due, each with Book, and Add to waitlist, which puts the patient on the waiting list for anything sooner at this site.

Money buttons appear only for team members who may post charges or take payments.

Online booking requests

When an appointment type is set to Practice confirms, a patient's online booking lands in the diary as a request for you to answer. Open its visit panel, or find its row in the List view:

• Accept books it. It becomes Booked, the patient's booking confirmation and reminders go out, and its Confirm online booking card leaves Today.
• Decline… asks for a cancellation reason; press Decline to cancel the request. The patient gets your cancellation message, if you send one.

If someone else answered the request, or it changed, while you had it open, the diary tells you and refreshes.

Waiting for deposit

A booking marked Waiting for deposit is one a patient is still paying the deposit for on your online booking page. The slot is held for them and there is nothing to accept: paying books it (or, for a Practice confirms type, turns it into a request), and an unpaid hold lapses after an hour and frees the slot.

3-day view

The chosen day and the next two diary days, each split into a narrow column per practitioner (initials in the header, the full name on hover). Hide practitioners under View to widen the rest. A Saturday or Sunday appears only when it holds a booking or a rota window, so a Thursday shows Thursday, Friday and Monday. The rail runs 07:30–20:30 and stretches to anything earlier or later. Whenever today is on screen, the diary opens scrolled to the current time.

The List: the day's huddle

List shows the day as a table the whole team can work from; the Desk app opens the diary this way. The segments along the top count their visits: All, Requested, Expected, Arrived, In chair, To check out and Done. Click a row to open its visit panel (a dentist, hygienist or nurse goes to the chart); double-click it, or press Enter on the patient's name, to open the record.

Each row shows Time, Patient (name and age), With, Room (when the site has rooms), Type and Status, with the label and the next step beside the status. When the day has labelled visits, All labels filters the list to one label. Then come what the team needs to know about the visit:

A column appears only when you may see what it shows, and — means there is nothing to report. If these details cannot be loaded, one column reads Couldn't check with Retry; the rest of the list works as usual.

To check out

To check out lists today's visits marked Done with treatment completed today that is not charged yet, and counts them. NHS treatment is charged through its course and an item with no fee has nothing to charge, so neither keeps a visit here. Once everything is charged from the visit's check-out, the visit leaves the segment. The segment appears for team members who can see patients' accounts and treatment.

Fill gaps

Fill gaps opens a panel that holds the site's waiting list and the free time it could fill.

At the top, for the day on screen, each open request whose earliest and latest dates take that day lists its free start times, short-notice requests first, then the most urgent. They come from the same search as Find a time: the request's site, its appointment type (or 30 minutes when it has none), its practitioner (or anyone), and every site's bookings and holds, rotas, time off, rooms and buffers. Each request shows its first times, and Load more shows the rest. A search that could not run says so with Retry, keeping any times it already found.

Press a time to open the booking dialog on it, with the patient, the request's appointment type and length, the practitioner and the room already chosen. The waiting-list request is booked together with the appointment, so the two are never out of step. If the request was changed after the panel showed it, the booking is refused and nothing is booked; open Fill gaps again to see it as it is now. If someone else took the time meanwhile, the diary says so and the request stays on the list. Times are buttons only for team members who can book.

Below it, Everyone waiting (3) lists every open or offered request at the site, highest priority first: the patient (their name opens the record), the status, what they are waiting for, the priority, and any practitioner, appointment type and window.

• Add puts a patient on the list: search for them, then choose what they are waiting for — As soon as possible, Short notice or Referral to treatment — and, if you like, the site, appointment type, practitioner, treatment plan, the earliest and latest days, the priority and a note. Press Add.
• Withdraw takes a request off the list for good, so it asks first: the button turns into Confirm: withdraw Jane Doe, and a second click withdraws it.

The panel reads the list each time you open it. If the list cannot be loaded it says so, with Retry, rather than showing nobody waiting.

After you cancel an appointment, decline an online request or mark a no-show, the confirmation offers Fill this gap · 2 waiting when someone on the waiting list could take that time: waiting at that site, for that practitioner or anyone, with that day inside their window. It opens Fill gaps. When the waiting list cannot be checked it offers plain Fill this gap; when nobody waiting could take the time, or the time has already passed, it offers nothing.

Printing

Print the page for the day sheet: the sidebar and the controls are left out and the grid prints landscape.