Your Grid Scheduler

Your Grid Scheduler shows you your scheduled patient appointments as well as other pertinent data about your day, week, and month. You can hover over patient appointments to pop up a window with additional information, open a patient folder or treatment chart, print appointment cards, update your patients' On-Deck status, process appointments, and more directly from the Grid Scheduler screen.

The way your Grid Scheduler looks, including colors, time intervals, chair headings, and the information you see on your scheduled appointments, depends on how you set it up. See "Get Started with Scheduling" for details.

Scheduling Template - The scheduling template determines the number of columns and rows (i.e. chairs and times) you see on your scheduling screen, and the classifications applied to those chairs and times. The first time you open a new date in your Grid Scheduler, you select the template to apply. However, as your scheduling needs change, you can adjust that schedule as needed.

Choose Viewing Mode (Day, Week, Month, List) - When you first open your Grid Scheduler, you see the daily schedule for the date that is the Number of Weeks to Jump from today, unless you opened your schedule from a patient folder. Then, you see the daily schedule for the date of the patient's appointment. However, you can use the Grid Scheduler toolbar to view your schedule in day, week, month, or detail mode.

Show / Hide Grid Bar - You can show / hide the Grid Bar and calendar sections of your Grid Scheduler by clicking the blue bar that appears at the top right of the grid screen. ViewPoint remembers the setting when you exit and return to the Grid Scheduler. In addition, the show / hide settings are dependent upon the current viewing mode: You might, for example, show the calendar while you are in day view mode, but hide it while you are in week view mode to give you more room for your schedule without scrolling.

Notes & Calendars Board - Use the Notes tab of your Grid Bar to record and review notes for the day, as well as optionally view Office and HR Manager calendar appointments. See "Manage Grid Bar Clipboards, Lists & Notes" for details.

Apply Filters - You can choose to see only appointments for a certain office, doctor, or assistant. Or choose to view all appointments. The filters bar indicates which filters are active, if any. When a filter is active, you will see the scheduled appointments that match the filter, and un-scheduled cells that are assigned to your selected filter.

Doctor Time Indicator - The number that appears between the appointment time and the first column of your schedule indicates the amount of doctor-time currently scheduled for that row. The length of doctor-time is defined for each procedure in your Procedure table. If the column is overbooked, the doctor-time is the sum of all affected appointments. If the doctor-time exceeds the amount of time defined for the appointment cell, the number appears in RED. (See "Appointment Procedure Table" for details.)

Display Kept Appointments - (Optional.) Appointments that have been processed as Kept can appear dimmed on your schedule, or can be removed from your schedule entirely. If the appointments appear on the schedule, you can hover over them to view the details and open the patient folder, just as you can with currently scheduled appointments. In addition, the amount of doctor time assigned to that appointment remains visible on your Grid Scheduler. In addition, you can right-click kept appointments to print a School/Work excuse stamped with the current time of day. (You can enable / disable this feature with your Grid Scheduler Properties.)

Notifications - Special icons appear on your patients' appointments to notify you of certain situations and events. You can quickly toggle the Edge Reminders notification display whenever you want to.

Overbooked Cells - You choose whether to allow multiple appointments in one time slot. If you overbook a time slot, an exclamation point appears in those cells. ( See "Grid Scheduler Properties" for details about enabling / disabling overbooking.) To select which overbooked appointment is visible, right-click an overbooked appointment cell and choose Properties.

Hover for More Information - Hover over a scheduled cell to see a tooltip that includes appointment details.

Refresh - If you leave the Grid Scheduler open for any length of time, click Refresh on the Grid Schedulertoolbar to be sure you are viewing the most current appointment data.

The date you are viewing is noted near the top of the Grid Scheduler window. You can select the date to view from a calendar or click Today from the Grid Scheduler toolbar to return to today's schedule.

Choose Date from Calendar - With the Grid Scheduler bar showing (described above), you can use the scroll bar on the calendar to select the date to view.

Go to Today - Click the Today icon in the Grid Scheduler toolbar to open today's schedule.

You can schedule patient appointments in several ways:

Explore Open Appointments - Use the Explore appointment scheduling tool to search for openings and schedule patient appointments. See "Schedule Appointments with Explore" for details.

Manually Schedule Appointments - You can double-click an appointment time in your Grid Scheduler to manually schedule a patient appointment. See "Schedule Appointments Manually" for details.

Drag & Drop Appointments - You can quickly reschedule an appointment by dragging and dropping the appointment to a new time slot that has enough cells available to accommodate the procedure.See "Drag and Drop Appointments" for details.

Schedule Recall Appointments - You can schedule recall appointments for patients that do have not a specific upcoming appointment, such as patients due for annual retainer checks and pre-treatment exams, to help prevent them from falling through the cracks. See "Recall Appointments" for details.

Right-click a scheduled appointment to access several actions for the patient, such as updating the On-Deck Operatory status, processing the appointment, opening the patient folder, and posting a transaction.

Activate Patient - Right-click an appointment cell and select Activate. If you activate from a scheduled cell, that patient is now available for you to work with. If you activate from a non-scheduled cell, Fast Find opens for you to select the patient to work with. Once a patient is active, the name appears on the status bar at the bottom of the Grid Scheduler window. Any activities you initiate in ViewPoint will default to using the active patient's folder.

Appointment Confirmation - Right-click an appointment in your schedule and select Appointment Confirmation. Then choose whether the patient confirmed or canceled the appointment, if you left a message, or if there was no answer when you attempted the reminder call. (If you use Edge Reminders, the patients' responses to your reminder messages are entered automatically, and you do not need to use this feature very often.)Note the notification icon that appears when appointment confirmation processing has occurred, described above.

Sign In, Seat, Exit Patient - Right-click an appointment, and choose Sign Patient In, Seat Patient, Change Seating Details, or Exit Patient to update the On-Deck Operatory status. (See "On-Deck Operatory " for details.)

Process Appointment - Right-click an appointment in your schedule and select Process Appointment. Then choose the appropriate appointment status (i.e. Kept, Missed, Changed.) See "Process Appointments" for details.

Appointment History - Right -click an appointment and choose this option to view and update the patient's Appointment History. (See "Appointment History" for details.)

Treatment Chart - Right-click an appointment and choose this option to open the patient's Treatment Chart. (See "Treatment Chart" for details.)

Post Transaction - Right-click an appointment and choose this option to Open the post transaction window for the patient.

Appointment Card - Right-click an appointment and select Appointment Card to generate an appointment card form for the patient. Run Appointment Card forms to generate detailed appointment reminder cards for your patients. The information available for printing on the card, such as the most recent payment receipt, or a school / work excuse, depends on the style you select. You may also include your office name and address on the form as it prints, or have your logo pre-printed on special form paper for a more professional appearance. In addition, you may choose to email appointment cards to patients and / or responsible parties, rather than printing them. See "Appointment Cards" for details.

Cut, Paste, Delete Appointment - Use these options to move a scheduled appointment to another date / time or to a Grid Bar. You will have the opportunity to flag the change in the patient's Appointment History. (You can also simply click the Delete button on the Grid Scheduler toolbar to delete the selected appointment.)

Audit Appointment - Right-click an appointment and select Audit to see who and when the original appointment was scheduled, as well as the operator, date, and time it was changed. You can audit both currently scheduled and kept appointments. (This action is not available from the Grid Scheduler ribbon bar.)

Send To - Right-click an appointment and select Send To, then select a grid bar board to move this appointment to. You can choose to flag the appointment as Changed or Deleted in a the patient's Appointment History.

Send All To - Right-click any cell of a scheduling grid and select Send All To, then select a grid bar board to move all of the appointments for the selected day to your board. This option flags the appointment as "Deleted" in each patient's Appointment History. (If you have applied Grid Scheduler filters to view the appointments for a certain orthodontist, office or assistant, only those appointments will be affected.)  See "Reschedule Multiple Appointments" for details.

Audit - Use this option to see who and when the original appointment was scheduled, as well as the operator, date, and time it was changed.

Properties - Use this option to review the appointment details, and to add or change the appointment reminder, procedure, and number of units. In addition, if this appointment is overbooked, you can select it as the visible appointment in the grid.

ViewPoint Videos - Click the Video button from the Grid Scheduler toolbar to find topic-specific video assistance. See "ViewPoint Videos" for details.

Keyboard Shortcuts - You can also use several keyboard shortcuts to navigate within your Grid Scheduler. Learn more.

HR Manager Integration - The number of scheduled patient appointments appears at the top of your HR Manager office calendar for a quick overview of your day. See "HR Manager Calendar" for details.