Open Dental

We would like to make a formal request for an endpoint to be made in the Open Dental API for purposes of performing a write operation.

Use Case

We have a requirement in our application to be able to mark a claim as sent via an API call. The workflow would look like this:

1. New Claim Created
2. We find and bring the new claim into our application (using ShortQuery)
3. We use the Open Dental API to mark the claim as sent / printed in Open Dental (this is the new API request we're making)
4. We submit the claim to our clearinghouse

Request Details

When we looked at the source code it looks like there is a single method called SetClaimSentOrPrinted. In that method it's doing a simple DB update on the claim, but also inserting something called an Etrans. We're not sure if we'd also need an endpoint that helps us get that Etrans record created or not. So, we may just need an endpoint that lets us set the ClaimStatus, DateSent and DateSentOrig values - OR - we may need something that allows us to execute that SetClaimSentOrPrinted code. We'd be fine with whichever one is needed for our use case or another suggestion from the Open Dental team on this.

Please let me know if I can answer any additional questions about this request. Thank you so much!

Yes, I need the same feature request to update the claims via API request.

Thanks in advance

This has been added to our development list. We will add a new method for updating the ClaimStatus on a specific claim to Sent. It will include the DateSent and DateSentOrig as fields that can be specified in the JSON. The API method will also handle the Etrans insertion automatically, as well.

That's wonderful! Thanks SLeon.

Thank you SLeon!!

Claims PUT Status has been completed and will be available in the next beta update (version 21.3.16). Details can be found in our updated documentation (https://www.opendental.com/resources/OpenDentalAPI.pdf). Please let me know if does not entirely cover your use cases.

Thank you SLeon, that was very fast!

This isn't mentioned in your documentation for the Claims PUT Status, but does the endpoint handle the Etrans status as we discussed earlier?

Also, how do we make sure we can use this on our client's systems in the wild? I assume we will need to learn which release version of Open Dental this feature makes it into and help our clients be updated to that version of Open Dental. Assuming that is correct, how much time does it usually take for something in a beta to move to a release?

Yes, the Etrans component is happening behind the scenes as we discussed. I will add this information to the documentation for clarity.

The version of the customer's eConnector determines the API methods that can be accessed. For example, once they update it to 21.3.16, this Claims PUT Status method can be used.

Version 21.3.16 was released yesterday afternoon. You can view release dates of previous minor versions here (https://opendentalsoft.com:1943/ODBugTr ... sions.aspx) and see that they occur very frequently. It is worth noting that changes to the API do not appear on that list. Our API Documentation indicates which version a method was released in.

As to your last question, 21.3 will be the beta version until 21.4 is released. At which time 21.4 will become the new beta version.

OK, great, so they only have to update the eConnector and not do any updates to other Open Dental software?

As to your last question, 21.3 will be the beta version until 21.4 is released. At which time 21.4 will become the new beta version.

Did you mean to say 21.3 is the beta until 21.3 is released then 21.4 becomes the new beta? How long does it usually take between releases? We're just trying to get an idea for when we can start using this functionality in a released version of eConnector.

A customer needs to update their version of Open Dental to update their eConnector. They are able to update to and use our latest beta version right now, if they so choose.

If the office does not want to update to a beta version but still use this new method, they will need to wait until version 21.4 is released (as beta) and 21.3 is no longer considered to be in beta. It is estimated that 21.4 will be released in the next month or so.

OK, perfect, thanks SLeon.