In this section you can view and modify System Settings that control how your practice calendar appears and behaves by default.
- If you have multiple locations, different defaults can be set per location.
- Individual users can override some of these settings for their own calendars.
More information about selected settings is below:
Default appointment status for new appointments added to the calendar
If you have a process for confirming patient appointments, including by having patients click a link in the email appointment notification or email or SMS reminder, then the default appointment status should be Scheduled. When the patient clicks the link that you include in your default appointment notification or reminder email or SMS reminder, that will automatically change the status to Confirmed. If you are manually confirming appointments (e.g., by calling patients), then a user would manually change the appointment status to Confirmed at the appropriate time.
Cancelled appointment visibility
Cancelled status appointments can be set to still show in the calendar (in black), or to disappear from the calendar. Either way, the cancelled appointment time will be available for online appointment requests (if applicable). And the cancelled appointment will be visible in the patient’s appointment history and in the schedule report.
Show an “Appointment Requests” block on the main calendar page
Clinics that do not allow online appointment requests may want to hide the Appointment Requests mini-block that otherwise appears at the far right of the Calendar page. They can do so using this setting.
Show a warning when you add an appointment without a patient associated
Busy schedulers may mistakenly forget to associate the patient with their appointment when scheduling. Which means that the patient will not receive the appointment notification or reminders. This setting shows a pop-up warning when a user tries to add an appointment with no patient associated. They can choose to proceed anyway or go back and add the patient.
Include a .ics (universal event/ calendar information) attachment in the initial email notification
The .ics attachment makes it simple for patients to add the appointment to the calendar program connected to their email inbox. That attachment is set up to not ask for a going/ not going response from the recipient. However, some email programs do not respect that setting and present going/ not going options for every .ics attachment. In those cases, patients may sometimes mistakenly think that selecting going/ not going in their email program is confirming or cancelling the appointment with your office.
iCal Export
Each Cerbo user can subscribe to one-way synchronization of their appointments in the main calendar to their own external iCal-compliant calendar.
EHR users can choose Scheduling > Calendar Sync URL to generate and download an ICS file, which they can then subscribe to in their own calendar tool; see Calendar Sync : Online Help. This creates an iCal feed that periodically exports appointment events that have been recently entered into the practice calendar.
You can configure the one-way sync option to include appointment notes in the sync, include or exclude potentially sensitive patient name information. If you include name information, you can choose to show initials only (JD), or first name and last initial (JDoe).