Calendar

The settings on this tab control the behavior of the Calendar module. Begin by specifying the starting and ending times for the calendar under the ‘Calendar Settings’ section (Fig. 9). This will define the first and the last time slots displayed on the calendar each day. The duration of each time slot is defaulted to 15 minutes on the ‘Default duration’ box, but you can override this parameter and set it to the interval that works best for your office. The ‘Closed color’ drop-down box allows you to select a color for those time slots when the office is closed. The ‘Not Available color’ drop-down, specifies the color for the time slots when a physician is not available.

On the ‘Work Week’ section, you should define your office hours. Use the ‘Closed’ checkboxes for those days of the week when your office is closed. Any exceptions to your office hours (i.e. lunch hours, holidays, etc.) could be defined on the ‘Business Hours Exception’ section right below and your time zone settings at the very bottom of the screen.

On Fig. 9, the Calendar is configured for 15 minute time slots starting at 8 am and ending at 6 pm. However, the schedule for Monday is set 9 am until 5 pm. What would happen in this instance is that you would have four time slots marked as closed at the beginning (see Fig. 10) and end of the day. This gives you the flexibility required to schedule appointments before opening time or after closing.

Also on Fig. 9, an exception to the office schedule was created for lunch time. To configure an exception like this, click Add… to open the Availability Exceptions dialog (Fig. 11). Fill in the ‘Start’ time and either the ‘End’ time or the ‘Duration’ of the exception in the ‘Exception time’ section.

To set a date range for the recurrence, fill in the ‘Start’ date field in the ‘Range of recurrence’ section. If the recurrence will repeat indefinitely, make sure the ‘No end date’ radio button is selected. If the recurrence will end on a specific date, click the ‘End by’ radio button and fill in the date.

To set a pattern for the recurrence, select the appropriate radio button in the ‘Recurrence pattern’ section. If the exception will recur the same day every month, click the ‘Day’ radio button and enter the numerical day of the month when this will happen. If the exception will recur on the same day of the week and on the same week every month, click the radio button in the middle and select the week and day from the drop-down lists. If the exception will recur the same day of the week every a certain number of weeks, select the ‘Week’ radio button and enter the number of weeks between recurrences. Select the day of the week from the radio buttons below.

Select whether the exception will make the office ‘Available’ or ‘Not Available’ from the radio buttons to the right and enter an ‘Exception reason’ to be displayed on the time slots affected by this exception. Click OK to save your changes or Cancel to disregard them.