Practitioners
Maintain the list of clinicians appointments are booked with.
By the end of this page your clinician list will match reality, with departed practitioners marked inactive rather than deleted.
What practitioners are
Practitioners are the clinicians appointments are booked with — dentists, hygienists, therapists. The list drives the practitioner picker when booking, the Practitioner filter in reports, and the Practitioner performance report.
A practitioner is not the same as a team member: they don't need a SmileLine login, and a team member who never treats patients doesn't need to be a practitioner. Logins and roles are managed separately under Settings → Team members.
A practitioner can work at several locations. Each site has its own rota under Settings → Practitioner rotas, including weekly hours and date overrides. Saving the first rota creates the practitioner's active assignment to that location. Appointments always point to that exact practitioner/location assignment, so a rota or appointment at one site cannot silently use the clinician's hours from another. Booking also checks the clinician's identity across every site, so overlapping appointments at two locations are treated as the same conflict.
If a location is mapped to a practice management system, that PMS owns the diary: the rota screen for that location is read-only and online booking reads availability from the provider instead. Change those working hours in the PMS. Rotas are not synchronised in either direction, so a rota kept in SmileLine for an unmapped location is independent of anything the PMS holds.
Manage the list under Settings → Practitioners.
Only owners and admins can change practitioners. Members see the list read-only.
Add a practitioner
Go to Settings → Practitioners and click New practitioner.
Type the Name as it should appear when booking — e.g. "Dr Sarah Whitfield" — and confirm.
Rename a practitioner
Click the name (or the pencil icon that appears on hover), edit, and press Enter. The new name shows on existing appointments too.
Deactivate and restore
When a clinician leaves, archive them: click the archive icon on their row. They disappear from booking pickers, while past appointments and reports keep their history.
You cannot deactivate a practitioner while they are assigned to an unfinished appointment. Move or cancel those appointments first. Deactivation then closes every current site assignment under the same reservation locks used by booking. Existing appointment history remains intact, while new appointments and rota changes require the practitioner to be active again.
To bring someone back, switch the toggle above the list to Archived and click the restore icon on their row.
Unlike the other settings lists, practitioners have no manual ordering — the list always sorts alphabetically, so there's no drag handle.