Open Dental Forum

Hi folks,

I'm playing with Open Dental right now and reading through the forum messages. I'm trying to build a list of best practices and things to look out for, with new installations of OD. Anyone have any personal experience with any issues they ran into. You know, the kind that you wish you had setup differently when you started, and now it's just simply too painful to fix??

Thanks!

I can't think of much that would be too painful to fix. It's designed to be able to work quickly out of the box and to also be able to change settings to make it work smoother as you go. Oh, wait. Planned Appointments. Be sure to set one for each patient as they finish up in the chair or else check the box for "done". It is really hard to go back and add Planned Appointments, and you want to get that system implemented properly from the very beginning.

I'll add a hint. When setting up the medication list, I wish I would have paid better attention when entering the generic names and brand names. Entering generic with lowercase and Brand with uppercase would have been better (atorvastatin and Lipitor). The same goes for correct spelling of meds. Once medications are attached to patients, the only way to correct an error is to unattached the med from all the patients, delete the med, re-enter with the correct information and then re-attach to the appropriate patients. This is definitely something that needs to be entered correctly from the beginning.

Jim

JimZ wrote:I'll add a hint. When setting up the medication list, I wish I would have paid better attention when entering the generic names and brand names. Entering generic with lowercase and Brand with uppercase would have been better (atorvastatin and Lipitor). The same goes for correct spelling of meds. Once medications are attached to patients, the only way to correct an error is to unattached the med from all the patients, delete the med, re-enter with the correct information and then re-attach to the appropriate patients. This is definitely something that needs to be entered correctly from the beginning.

You can use a MySQL query to update the name of the medication. I just tested this query using SQLYog with a backup database. Think you could probably use the User Query in the Reports section, too. If you'd like to have the code I used just PM me.

All it did was changed the med to lowercase. Be very, very careful with these queries, though. If you forget to add the WHERE statement you'll overwrite the name of all your medications. Test it with a backup database first and make sure you have an untouched backup to roll back to in case anything goes wrong.

KevinRossen wrote:...Be very, very careful with these queries, though... Test it with a backup database first and make sure you have an untouched backup to roll back to in case anything goes wrong.

I'm glad at the very least you mentioned these things. I'm having an internal battle over removing your post. Running update, insert, or delete statements on any database should absolutely never be encouraged...

The correct resolution to this issue is feature request #1283

jsalmon wrote:I'm having an internal battle over removing your post. Running update, insert, or delete statements on any database should absolutely never be encouraged...

I removed the code from my post just to be safe. I've only done it a few times after watching Spike from conversions work his magic. I ALWAYS test it in a non-live environment AND make sure my most current backup works just to be safe.

KevinRossen wrote:

jsalmon wrote:I'm having an internal battle over removing your post. Running update, insert, or delete statements on any database should absolutely never be encouraged...

I removed the code from my post just to be safe. I've only done it a few times after watching Spike from conversions work his magic. I ALWAYS test it in a non-live environment AND make sure my most current backup works just to be safe.

I thought it was a great tip. I already tried it and saved the code in my Favorites.
I am surprised you removed the code. Considering that this is in Advanced Topics, you should be more trusting of the members who use this forum. I understand the concern that someone who doesn't know what they are doing can get in trouble. But that shouldn't stop everyone else from benefiting. An attached warning should be sufficient.
Anything that makes the OD experience more user friendly should not be discouraged.

Hersheydmd wrote:I am surprised you removed the code. Considering that this is in Advanced Topics, you should be more trusting of the members who use this forum. I understand the concern that someone who doesn't know what they are doing can get in trouble. But that shouldn't stop everyone else from benefiting. An attached warning should be sufficient. Anything that makes the OD experience more user friendly should not be discouraged.

I'm just another user (and a new one as of Nov 2013), so it was my choice to remove the code from the forum. Again, I have no problem sharing it in a private message. Just want to respect the wishes of the OD staff.

Per the User Manual, here's why I think they'd rather not have it posted in the forum:

The table viewer is intended only for SELECT commands which return a table. You should never try to change the actual data in the database from here using INSERT, UPDATE, or any other similar command.

Another option, which I used prior to your post, is to use a program like Navicat, to edit the spelling of a medication in the Medication Table.