Is it bad to force taskkill Open Dental?

[notsosuperman1]

We are running 14.1.14.0 with tight integration to eCW, and sometimes I end up having way too many open dental windows open at once, and I wan't to close them all. I can't just right click on the menubar icon and close all windows because we use a lot of popups and those windows don't close via that way. So I wrote a shortcut that taskkill /f the Open Dental processes. If I don't do /f to force quit, not all windows close (not sure if it is the popups again or what). So, is this bad? Am I going to run into any data corruption here, or is Open Dental pretty robustly programmed so that if it is force quit or crashes there is little impact. I imagine if I had a chart where I was in the middle of a note, then the data from my note would never get saved, and I would just have a blank note. But otherwise am I okay? Because, it is a pretty convenient shortcut. Thanks!

[Arna]

I'm going to leave this one to the engineers, however as long as you aren't trying to enter data in the same windows and the exact same time you kill the program, I think it will be OK.
We really should look into WHY there are so many windows open. I think there is a process problem with your staff. Do they Finish and Send at the end of a dental encounter? That would close Open Dental and return to the patient's Progress Note in eCW.

[jsalmon]

For typical Open Dental users I would be horrified if they were doing this because there are many windows that can be in the middle of doing batches of things that would quickly corrupt the database (either via MySQL corruption almost like a power outage would cause or by rows inserted in a state that Open Dental never expects). I don't believe eCW users do much of this kind of thing (sending batches of claims, sending batches of statements, etc) so you'll probably be fine. Just keep in mind that every time you are closing the windows in this way you are rolling the dice. We do have some forms (not many) that expect to manipulate the item you are editing whether you Click OK or Cancel which would be the scenario where there is a row in the database that Open Dental is never expecting to be in the state it is currently in. Your office might find themselves needing to run DBM and you might be the culprit!
http://www.opendental.com/manual/databa ... nance.html

Like Arna said, you shouldn't have that many windows open at once. If they aren't multiple instances of Open Dental, what windows are they? Are they just tasks? If so, you might want to invest in blocking your task pop ups.
http://www.opendental.com/manual/tasksarea.html

[notsosuperman1]

Thanks. It is sort of my fault that so many windows are open. I don't have a dedicated workstation yet to work on notes, so i end up having a few minutes and sitting down, opening up a few Open Dental windows to knock out a few notes, and then getting kicked off the computer before I finish them all, when an assistant seats a patient.

Since we are using eCW, and we don't use exam sheets, consent forms, ortho charts, or imaging in Open Dental, I can pretty much guarantee it would be in one of the following screens:
Chart view
Group or Individual Note
Finish and Send screen
Perio Chart (unlikely)
Chart view with pop up up
I'm thinking that the worst case scenario above would just be losing entered data (note or perio charting). Do you think I'm okay?

Thanks!

[jsalmon]

Yes, if you are willing to accept the risk of rare corruption (cause there is always a risk when closing them that way) then you should be fine to continue closing them the way you are. Those windows do not have items in invalid states when the forms load so technically you should be fine. The only downfall that will happen most often is the one that you are aware of already which is losing work that you were in the middle of and have yet to save.

If you are unlucky and somehow get the database in a corrupted state (in Open Dental's eyes) be prepared to update to get the bug fix! If it is hard for your office to update (your on a version from a few years ago) it might take a while before your office can be operational again (typically it will only affect one patient, the one that has all the windows open for).