There may be times when you need to alter your normal office schedule on short notice or close your office altogether for an unplanned event. The following tasks help during these times:

• Rescheduling Appointments with the Pinboard
• Setting up Location Hours
• Managing Working Hours for Providers
• Inactivating Operatories
• Inactivating Providers
• Reactivating Providers
• Reactivating Operatories
• Building Your ASAP List
• Filling Openings from the ASAP List
• Generating an Unscheduled Treatment Plan Report
• Mass Communications with Your Patients
• Disable All Appointment Communications
• Adjusting Online Booking to Align with New Office Hours

Rescheduling Appointments with the Pinboard

You can use the Pinboard to quickly move an appointment to a different day. The Pinboard can hold multiple appointments at one time, which can be useful, for example, for rescheduling appointments for members of the same family or household. For more information, click here.

Setting up Location Hours

You can customize your location's office hours to show on the Calendar when the office is closed and when appointments can be scheduled. If you attempt to schedule an appointment outside of the specified hours, a message will ask you to confirm that you want to schedule that appointment outside of normal business hours. For more information, click here.

Managing Working Hours for Providers

You can manage the working hours for providers from their user accounts. For more information, click here.

Inactivating Operatories

If operatories do not have any future appointments scheduled, you can inactivate them. An inactive operatory does not appear on the schedule and is unavailable as a view option for the schedule. For more information, click here.

Inactivating Providers

You cannot delete a user account, but you can inactivate the user account of a provider who no longer works for your organization. An inactive provider cannot log in, and his or her name no longer appears wherever providers can be selected. Inactivating a user account also deletes their availability for online booking. Also, when you inactivate a provider, the assigned fee schedule is removed from that user account. For more information, click here.

Reactivating Providers

You can reactivate an inactive user account so that the user can log in to Dentrix Ascend.

Note: When you reactivate a user's account, that user can log in with the same password that was associated with the account as before. Also, this sends an email message to the user with a link that they can click to reset the password. For more information, click here.

Reactivating Operatories

You can reactivate operatories which correspond to columns on your schedule. When you reactivate an operatory, it is again displayed on the schedule. For more information, click here.

Building Your ASAP List

It doesn’t need to be challenging to keep track of patients wanting an appointment right away. In these situations, you can offer to call the patient if a time becomes available. In Dentrix Ascend, you can flag scheduled appointments as ASAP (As Soon As Possible). Once you mark an appointment this way, it appears on the ASAP List. This ASAP list allows you to accommodate patients who request to get in as soon as possible while keeping their currently scheduled appointment in place. For more information, click here.

Filling Openings from the ASAP List

When a patient wants to schedule as soon as possible, you select ASAP in his or her appointment. But where do these appointments go?  How do you find them when you have an opening in your schedule? Dentrix Ascend has all these appointments in one spot, so you can find the perfect patient for any openings that may arise. For more information, click here.

Generating an Unscheduled Treatment Plan Report

When patients are not ready to make financial decisions at the time you diagnose and present treatment options, often you must follow up with them to stress the importance of the recommended treatment and to schedule an appointment. The Unscheduled Treatment Report displays patients who still need to schedule treatment-planned procedures. You can use this report as a call list to remind customers of their planned treatment and encourage them to set an appointment. For more information, click here.

Mass Communications with Your Patients

Periodically, circumstances may arise in which you need to send a bulk email communication to your patients. While Dentrix Ascend does not currently offer this service as an integrated feature, you can still get your message out using the following methods: you can use the native Patient Communications feature, or you can export your patient email addresses to a third-party mass-email tool. For more information, click here.

Disable All Appointment Communications

You can temporarily disable appointment communications (email or text messages that get sent to patients automatically regarding their appointments). For more information, click here.

Adjusting Online Booking to Align with New Office Hours

You configure Online Booking separately from your office hours, and that configuration does not recognize when you decide to move to new extended or reduced hours. When you make that change, you also need to adjust your Online Booking availability. For more information, click here.