Customizing Calendar Settings

Calendar Settings

The Calendar Settings section relates to the functions of the Calendar (Calendar tab) in AcuBase. 

     General Calendar Settings

 

The Start Week On Monday (instead of Sunday) does just that within the Week View screen when this box is checked.  The “Yes” box is checked by default.

Select Current Date on Start Up will automatically send you to the current date the first time you open the Calendar, rather than leaving you on the last screen viewed. The “Yes” box is checked by default.

Show Conflicts on Schedule will show a red line alongside conflicting appointments. This slows the program down a bit, but the “Yes” box is checked by default.

Empty Patient Filter Shows is set to “All” by default. When you add a patient to an appointment, it will show all patients in the database (All), or will show none and wait for you to type the first few letters of the last name to show them.  If you have many hundreds or thousands of patients in the program, you may wish to set this option to “None” to avoid waiting for the full patient list to populate.

Show Appointment Times Starting At allows you to choose what time the schedule shows that it starts at on Weekly and Schedule screens.

Show Full Backgrounds:  Setting this to “Yes” will leave the calendar data visible in the background when new items are created. This is somewhat slower for the program, and is set to “No” by default.


     Week & Schedule Views

     The Two Kinds of Week Views

Our basic week view shows the 7 days of the week as 7 vertical columns with the appointments for each day listed below the day.

On our “fancy” week view we place each appointment vertically within the day’s column at a point corresponding to its start time and draw that appointment in a curved rectangle whose length corresponds to the appointments duration. This view looks best when the calendar is tightly filtered (perhaps showing just one user’s appointments) so that there aren’t too many overlapping appointments. While the “fancy” week view only shows 5 days at a time, a “Show Weekends” button in the upper left will “scroll” the week to the right so that you can see the weekend.

Note that the “fancy” view will only show appointments that have a start time, where the basic week view will show all appointments, even if they have no times assigned.

Use Basic Week View is set to “No” (“not fancy”) by default, as it is much faster and shows all appointments. 

Default Level of Detail for Week and Schedule views shows only basic (title of appointment) information when set to “Less”, and Patient and Provider information when set to “More”.  The program is set to “More” by default, even though it is a bit slower, in order to be sure to show patient information on as many screens as possible.

Default Scale refers to the default scale in minutes down the left side of the Week and Schedule view screens. It is set to “half hour” by default.

You’ll also find default detail and scale buttons at the bottom of the Schedule and Week screens to change the detail and scale as you work.

Enter your Default Appointment Length (in minutes) to auto-enter how long an appointment lasts (which may always be modified for a given appointment if you wish to make it longer or shorter).


     Staff, Resources, Types & Colors

The gray subtab bar on the top-right side of the Calendar settings screen allows you to click between these three kinds of settings. 

     Staff

Enter all staff, providers, and/or users who will use the calendar so that appointments may be assigned to them. Add both providers and regular staff to this list--add anyone for whom you’d like to make appointments by clicking into the existing list fields to change them, or by clicking on the green “New Staff” button to add users.  You may add as many users as you like. 

Each user of the calendar is required to have unique initials that refer to them. The calendar uses initials as Keys when filtering appointments.

Setting the Default Appointment Length will automatically set the End Time of appointments made for a given user when their initials are checked on the Edit Appointment screen (when making an appointment for that user or practitioner).  


        Resources

“Resources” may be set up as anything from a room to a provider, and are best assigned when multiple providers and/or multiple rooms are being scheduled.  Resources show up by default across the top of the Schedule view, and are great for when you want to show the daily schedule for multiple rooms and/or providers side-by-side.

Resource abbreviations are used on the Daily View of the calendar where there is no room for the whole Resource Name.

Add the initials of your providers here as well and assign them the type “provider”. Then you’ll be able to use the resource filter on the Schedule tab to show your day by room OR provider.

If you can think of other uses for the Resources across the top of the Schedule screen aside from Room or Provider, feel free to add those to  the Resource Types list.

If the term “Resources” just confounds you and makes you mad and you really want to use a different word to refer to Resources, you can change the word, its plural, and abbreviation on this screen as well.  In all seriousness, this may be useful if you choose to only assign Resources as Providers, for instance.  Then you can change it to “Providers”. Or Rooms.  Whatever you like.  You’re the boss here.

Click on the New Resource or New Resource Type buttons to create new ones, or simply click into the lists to edit existing ones. 


     Types & Colors
 
The appointment types and colors subtab is where you may edit the types of appointments which you may assign to any given appointment.  Some examples are included by default. Each time you assign a calendar entry a Type, it will show on the calendar in the color assigned to that type.  Add as many types as you like on the list to the left, and as many colors as you like on the right by either editing existing entries (clicking into them), or clicking on the New Type or New Color buttons. 

lf you do decide to add new colors, be sure they are at least 25 pixels high and 888 pixels wide. 

Types and colors show up on the Legend for reference at the bottom corner of every main calendar screen.