The first shortcut your scheduling team will be looking for is the quickest way to find open time in the schedule, and Easy Dental has just the tools to improve your scheduling process.
The Easy Dental schedule is visual, meaning you can easily “see” appointments on the schedule, and subsequently you can also “see” open time. This ability to see open vs. occupied time makes for quick scheduling when you switch from one day to the next. But have you ever tried to view the schedule by week?
Sure, maybe you clicked on the week view button once or twice by accident, panicked a little until you realized just what happened, and immediately returned to the safety of the day view or month calendar. I am here today to push you past the discomfort of how this view looks and ask that you give it a chance.
Finding Open Time
Start by locating the week view button on your calendar.
Now the hard part: what do you see? If your schedule involves more than 2 providers, you are probably looking at an army of colors. Instead of challenging you with 5 providers, I thought we would start with only 2 providers who work Monday through Thursday.
- Find the days/dates – Notice that the date is still displayed in the same location across the top toolbar.
- Find the operatories – Just below each date, you will find the same number of operatories (AKA schedule columns) with labels of 1, 2, 3, etc.
- Find the providers – Remember that Easy Dental is visual. You should quickly recognize your provider’s appointment block colors (mine are yellow and pink).
- Find the open time – Here it is—the whole reason for looking at this schedule view–OPEN TIME. Compare the schedule view above with the same schedule view below (open times are marked with black outlines and orange centers).
Now that you are looking at your week “at a glance”, use the forward navigation arrow to move to the next week, and the week after that. Is this a tool that you may find beneficial in your practice? Please take a moment to share your thoughts with us below.
David Broom is Senior Director of Product and Business Development. David has a master’s degree in Information Technology (IT) from the University of Texas in Dallas and has more than 35 years of experience from many global companies such as Hitachi Vantara, Methode Electronics, and Keane, Inc. In his current role, he is responsible for all aspects of the product management and field service teams at Henry Schein TechCentral, which identifies the ideal advanced technologies to meet the unique needs of the dental market and ensure that dental offices are using the right IT to be more efficient and effective.
