iCalendar email to patient for upcoming appointments

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tdong
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iCalendar email to patient for upcoming appointments

Post by tdong » Thu Dec 06, 2007 6:34 am

Any suggestion ?

I could do this as an extension to OD since I am not fully understand OD as of yet. The program can be stand alone or from a button on OD

Layout user can choose
-Date range Start and End
-Display(Popup) in grid list of all patients(email,name,datetime etc for ical) who have appointment within that range
-Default would be send email to all patients. Check box for send later
-iCalendar format so that client can add to their outlook or portable device.

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jordansparks
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Post by jordansparks » Thu Dec 06, 2007 8:05 am

The sensible place to put this button is in the Confirmation List window. That window already handles all user interface functions such as letting user pick a date range, displaying a list of appointments to confirm, letting users deselect some appointments, etc. If you build it anywhere else, it will very likely never really gain traction and will quietly fade away. Now let me explain how it might work from that window.

First of all, we need an email button. Then we also need some way to filter only for patients who have an email address entered. The Contact column should include email address. Finally, when you hit the button, it might take a while to actually send them. If we copy code from other sections of the program to send email, we're probably going to end up with an hourglass that stays up for a long time. We need to either warn the user about this, or allow them a way to cancel, or create an outbox that can work behind the scenes. For the first version, I think a warning will suffice.

Nearly all of these features listed above would require some degree of skill working with the existing OD code, so I'm not sure if it's something you want to do. It's something that we are planning on doing fairly soon anyway, so you might just want to sit back and wait.
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

tdong
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Post by tdong » Thu Dec 06, 2007 9:28 am

I agree with your suggestion.

opensource
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Post by opensource » Sun Dec 09, 2007 1:20 pm

Dr Jordan / Team,

Just thought I would add my .02 cents..to not only this topic but also a more general comment.

Wondering if it is time to expand the framework of open-dental to have an option of running services in the background. The way to manage this would need to be from within opendental but these could be windows services / cron jobs that would run independent of opendental (to ensure the performance there-of is not impacted).

The services could be for the following :
1. Sending icalendar kind of functionality (or even other emails)
2. handling emails coming in (future version)
3. handling eligibility checking (future version)
4. auto reminders (email and other ways - future version)
5. many many more....I am sure others will be able to add many more too

It would be great if these could be setup to run on a predefined time (similar to scheduled tasks in windows). That way, some of these could be set to run in the evenings/nights.

I know it will get really complicated but I am sure it need to have a error handling mechanism too and hence some kind of user-interface...similar to handling 'E-Claim'.

I guess once the framework is setup. Expanding it can be done over a period of time.

Just thought I would add my .02 cents on a sunday afternoon.

Cheers,

OpenSource

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