My experiences with the new Enhanced Scheduling
Hi everyone,
Sorry I've been quiet for a while. Tony and Tim have not! Don't forget to visit the Community->Enhanced Scheduling Group pages - I've updated the main post inviting for comment on the new functionality and also requesting people interested in contributing to the development financially to contact me via email.
So I've been playing with the new enhanced scheduling on the website and here are my impressions;
The look:
Is good. Clear and clean just like the OpenVPMS app to date.
The Drop Down boxes:
- Schedule: Nice to be able to fall back to single schedules if needed as well.
- Highlight: Very nice. Again default in our hands would be status. This also raises the question, is it possible currently to change the highlights (colors)?
- Double Booking:
I would suggest that double booking not be allowed and that an overflow schedule be used for this. In our hands the four main schedules will be assigned to consulting rooms (4), surgery (1), imaging (1) and one consulting emergency (1). We will use consulting emergency to handle Walk-Ins and overbooking emergencies.
- Latency:
It may just be my internet connection but double clicks seem only to be interpreted as single click- (Load) - single click - (Action). Are double clicks not able to be detected via the browser and have immediate behaviour?
eg. Currently for "Make new appointment":single click- (Load link text "New...") - single click - (Open appt dialog) vs Double click (Open appt dialog)
- Resources:
So at present I can make an appointment for a single clinician or a single schedule. Are there any other relationships I can set up? Do appointment types automatically populate other schedules?
eg. Ultrasound appointment type - utilises a clinician, a room, a machine.
Can't wait to hear what everyone else thinks.... 
Matt
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Comments
My experiences with the new
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the positive feedback
I will try and answer some of your questions and suggestions.
1. Views. Have cleaned up display a bit more here since. Now display filter over two rows so not so cramped. Also display current selected view and schedule next to date. As well as this have added reason and status to grid appointment display after requests from some test users.
2. Configuration. Views are configured in the Organisation Workspace just like schedules , locations etc. You can create as many views as you like and each view can link to as many schedules as you like. You can then link any number fo views to a location and set one of these views as default so when you select a location that view will be the one displayed initially. Within the view you can order the schedules according to how you want them to be displayed horizontally.
3. Highlights. Colours for Appointment Types and Clinicians can be set in Types and Users workspaces respectively. Nice little colour selectors even ...
4. Time selector. Yes have had various people suggest different time slots for morning, afternoon and evening so we will eventually have to provide a mechanism for practices to set these. Happy to currently modify to something everyone can accept ...
5. Latency: Yes agree .. best we can do in time and limitation of the eent model in web application. So essentiallya double click has to be two single clicks, one to select and one to trigger action based on what selected. Will enhance in subsequent release but will need to doa bit of research first ..
6. Resources. Haven't implemented multiple resources in an appointment yet. Just schedule and clinician for now. Will implement in later release using configurable resources selections in the appointment type.
Cheers
Tony
Further expereiences with Enhanced scheduler
Hi everyone,
Have been playing some more with scheduler and came up with these points;
Selection highlighting
The selected appointment currently changes from normal text to bold. I wondered if the color of the appointment should change also to make even more obvious.
Notes tooltip
I really like the pop up notes - great way to save space and stop the schedule looking cluttered. In our hands we use the notes routinely to indicate who made the appointment hence every appointment will have a note diminsihing its role in alerting clinicians to a particular issue. So for us notes are better displayed within the body of the appointment. As this will be very clinic - clinic specific I was wondering if the text that appeared in the appointment block is configurable via archetype editing Tony?
Secondly the mechanism of using an icon and pop up note was exactly what I had in mind for depeciting alerts for clinician or patient. Would it be possible to have multiple icons based on alert types? I know space might become an issue but our accounts person says that the current single icon alert is failing to sufficiently make receiptionists/vets aware of things like account alerts due to these alert icons also meaning a variety of other things.
Click and drag
I assume these aren't possible yet Tony?
Enjoying the interface. Some of these comments came from discussions with our staff when demonstrating it to them and they were very excited.
Cheers,
Matt
Even more about the Enhanced scheduler!
Hi everyone,
Yes its me again.
I was wondering if these ideas bear some more discussion/thought.
What should be have in "context" menus
Until we can have right-click or context menus, is it a good idea to have the contents of such delection dependent menu options appear somewhere within the scheduler window when a selction is made?
Currently this does already happen. Ie. When we choose an appointment or task the buttons along the buttom change accordingly. But what options do we want in the list? If I quote from the specifications document;
- Move an appointment by using a submenu within a context menu similar to that of the Windows "Send To" menu. Targets would be; Worklists (admit), Schedules (transfer).
- Change appointment status by using a submenu within a context menu similar to that of the Windows "Send To" menu. ie. Status Change->(submenu items:Checked In, Billed etc)
- Delete an appointment
Are there others?
Matt
PS. One more comment to come
Shortcut keys
I can't beleive we forgot to add this to the Enhanced scheduling requirments document!
I't probably won't be in the first release of the Enhacned scheduling 1.3 update, but what actions do we want "shortcutted" in the scheduling workspace?
For my 5c worth;
- All of the bottom row of buttons (Check-In etc etc)
- Changing status or atleast "Completing" a selected apppointment.
I know that there may be variable numbers of buttons on the bottom row in the future, dependent even on site-specific setups, but could there be an Alt-number combination that could be used? Or does everyone think fixed shortcuts are better (eg. Alt-A always adds)?
Matt
PS. No more comments for a while ...