Task List - Also Posted on Dental Town Forum

[jclaydds]

Rob,

Here is the section in Online manual on the Task List:

http://www.opendental.com/manual/taskList.html

You asked for a demo of using the task list. Not sure I am up to posting screen shots but let me see if I can get you started. Before I get into some of the details, I will tell you that we used Open Dental for a year or so without using the Task List Function. We started using it a few months ago and it would be on my Top Ten List of Favorite OD features. It is wonderful for improving staff communication. Our entire staff literally uses it all day long. I know I can't give you an exhaustive list but here are some example tasks: Phone messages, Messages from patients, for doctor or staff, need to prepare a letter for specialist and send x-rays, need to fix something (maintenance and repairs) , ask one of your staff to order something, etc. Any communication can be through the task system. It is much more efficient than verbal and you don't have all the sticky notes stuck to your desk or monitor.

First of All, go to Setup, Misc and decide if you want the tasks to be on the right side or bottom of your screen. We use the right side. Make sure that "Don't show on this computer is unchecked. This is not a global setting, You must do this on each computer.

Next go to Add Tasklist and make a task list for each person on your staff. Your Description will be your name, you normally would leave the date field blank, the date type is usually set to None and the Object Type is usually set to Patient. If you want to group your staff together with similar job duties on your list, you may want to consider leaving growth for future names since the list can't be rearranged later. If I have 3 dental assistants and think in the future I might have a couple more, I have TaskLists for Betty, Susie, Pam, Assistant #4, Assistant#5. I left extra spots for additonal front desk staff, hygienists, doctors, etc.

After you have added a TaskList for every staff member, go to Setup and link the inboxes to the appropriate user. For example, your user name may be Rob and your TaskList is named Rob and you have to link them or assign them to each other. Finally, right click on your TaskList name under the Main tab and subscribe to it. Each employee should login to OpenDental and right click on their own TaskList and subscribe to it.

Now it is time to start sending tasks. Click on Main and you will see all the TaskLists for all of your staff. You can highlight a name and then click Add Task. Type in your message and hit Send. It should pop up on your staff members computer in Open Dental if they are logged on. They then can complete the task and click Done and even they can even click Now under Date/Time to document when they finished the task. If you need to reply to the person who sent the task, We type in our initials before every entry and leave a line between each entry so we can essentially have a chat conversation. You can send it back to the person who sent it by hitting Reply or you can send it to someone else (Delegate the task) by using the Send To button.

Once a task is finished, you hit Done and it should disappear as long as the small box is unchecked that says Show Finished Tasks. If you check the box you can see all your finished tasks and even can change the date to show old finished tasks.

We normally only send Tasks that are non-patient related from the Main Tab of TaskLists. If you are sending a Task concerning a particular patient, we find it easier to select that patient in Open Dental and then use the tab at the top of the page that says: To Task List. It will bring up a new task but now you will see near the bottom that the Patient's name is in the task. Now you don't have to reference the patient's name in your task message. When the staff person receives the task, they can click on Go To and Open Dental will bring up that patient's chart. Your task, your staff member's response, etc all show up in the chart which normally gives more complete documentation of the task and what was done.

We still have not figured out a good system of using the Task List as a Tickler List -- For example, Dr. Smith, call John Doe on October 5th. Also, sending a mass message to your entire staff is a bit difficult. Right now, I type the message for the first staff member and then I use copy and paste to paste the message into a new task for each staff member. It takes a minute or so to do this for several staff so it is not too difficult.

Also keep in mind that everyone can go to the Main Tab and click on any other staff's TaskList and see all their tasks. The Task LIst is not a place where you want to post private or confidential content because it can be seen by everyone.

I hope this will get you started. After you begin to use the Task List feature, you will wonder how you ever made it through the day without it. You will discover many additional uses for it and it will improve your communication among your staff.

Jeff

[Hersheydmd]

Can you send someone a Task that will not pop up until a certain date?

[jordansparks]

No, not yet. We suggest using a note on the Appointments screen for that.

[bpcomp]

To send a task to the whole office you can create a new tasklist perhaps called "staff" and then just have everyone subscribe to that list. Then any task sent to "staff" shows up for everyone. The only caveat is that if anyone hits done, then that task disappears from the task list and you don't know if everyone saw that task. In short the copy paste method might be more thorough but the single tasklist is faster and more lazy

[jordansparks]

We made improvements last year to help prevent staff from accidentally marking a task done. We use tasks VERY heavily here, so I feel confident that that's not a problem.