A Quick Guide for Instinct’s Appointment and Event Calendars! Click here for our full user guide.
Table of Contents
📆 Accessing Appointment and Event Calendars
All users can access Appointment and Event Calendars by clicking ‘Business Office’ on the left sidebar. Please note, these calendars must be enabled by contacting us: support@instinct.vet.
Top Navigation:
- Appointments – add, edit, or remove scheduled appointments
- Events – a separate calendar designed to track specific events, including cleaning or vacation schedules
- Patient Registration – search/add new patients, retrieve previous medical history, and check patients in/out
- Accounts – search/add a new account (owner) and transfer patient ownership
- Referrers – document how a patient was referred to your hospital, including the practice name and veterinarian
🔍 Appointments View
When clicking on ‘Business Office’, you’ll be brought to ‘My Calendar’ by default. This is your own personal calendar and you can use the dropdown menu towards the upper left of the screen to view Groups or other Doctor/Staff calendars.
📓 Please Note: All users have their own personal calendar, either under Doctor or Staff. Anyone can schedule appointments, availabilities, and drop-offs on their own calendar or another user’s calendar as necessary.
📅 Group Appointments Calendar
Calendar Groups can be created within the Admin section to include different doctors based on department or schedule. Once a Group is selected on the Appointments Calendar, a list of users within that group are shown in the left filters bar.
The ‘Only Available’ toggle can be turned on to show each doctor’s availability for the selected day. You can un-select any doctor to remove them from this view or turn off the ‘Only Available’ toggle to see scheduled appointments and availability. You may also select a specific appointment time to search for Availability, either by date only or by both date and time.
🍽 Events Appointments Calendar
Events calendars function very similar to personal/group Appointment calendars and can be used to schedule miscellaneous events, including discharges, transfers, surgery OR rooms, staff lunches, staff meetings/CE Events, team birthdays, and cleaning schedules. New Event Calendar types are created within the Admin section.
To schedule a new Event on any of your Event Calendars, simply click ‘+ New Event’ and select which Calendar you’d like to schedule this under followed by the Start time, Duration, and any specific Notes.
You can also Edit or Cancel any Event via 3-dot menu. At this time, we do not have a way to schedule recurring events but this feature will be available in the future.
➕ Scheduling Appointments
There are 2 ways to schedule a new appointment:
- Use ‘+ New Appt’
Click ‘+ New Appt’ on the Appointments Calendar. This opens a side pane on the right side of the screen to enter in the appointment details.
- Use the 3-dot menu within an Availability
Availability Blocks are useful for communicating the times you or your providers are available to see certain types of appointments. These are optional, as an Availability does not need to be created in order to schedule a new Appointment or Drop-off. Availability can be added from a personal or group calendar by selecting the down arrow next to ‘+ New Appt’ followed by ‘New Availability’.
To schedule an appointment within an Availability, click the 3-dot menu and select ‘New Appt’. This opens the same side pane shown above to enter in the appointment details.
To view appointment details, simply hover over the appointment block and a pop-up will appear as shown below:
⏰ Appointment Reminders
When setting up an appointment or drop-off, you can select the Appointment Reminder timing options to your preferred schedule. Once selected, the client will receive an email appointment reminder at the specified time.
Reminders can be sent 3 weeks before, 2 weeks before, 1 week before, 72 hours before, 48 hours before, 24 hours before, 12 hours before, 8 hours before, 4 hours before, or 1 hour before.
🔎 Appointment Search
To search for all current and future appointments and drop-offs for a patient, navigate to the Business Office under Appointments and click on Find Appt.
Clicking the Find Appt button opens the Appointment Search panel on the right side which allows you to lookup specific patients and list their current and upcoming appointments/drop-offs.
Once you have selected the patient from the search results, a list of all current and upcoming appointments are listed in the panel. The list updates automatically so new appointments or drop-offs are reflected on the list immediately. Past appointments, cancellations, or no shows will not display on the list.
Appointments or drop-offs in the list have a 3-dot menu that can be used to edit the appointment/drop-off or view the appointment/drop-off in the calendar. A tooltip text will appear when hovering over the Appointment to show more details.
When scheduling or editing an Appointment, if you try to open the Comm Log before you’ve saved changes to your Appointment, you will get a pop up box warning you that you will lose your changes. Click on Cancel to get back to your Appointment to click Save.
🕖 Upcoming Appointments on the Patient Info Bar
Both Checked In and Checked Out Patients will display up to 3 Appointments in the Upcoming Appointments section, located below the Patient section of the Patient Info Bar.
If there are no appointments or drop-offs scheduled, the section will display No Upcoming Appointments.
All Appointments and Drop-Offs will be displayed chronologically by date and time. Drop-Offs will always display at the start of each scheduled day, before any other same-day appointments.
Each Appointment or Drop-Off will show you the following:
- Date and time of Appointment
- Any Drop-Offs will display ‘Drop-Off’ after the date instead of time
- Provider
- Appointment Type
- 3-dot-menu to Edit Appointment or View the Appointment in the Calendar
Hovering over the Appointments header will display a tooltip with all upcoming appointments.
Cancelled, No Show Appointments/Drop-Offs, and any Appointments/Drop-Offs in the past will not display in the Patient Info Bar just yet (coming later!).
Additionally, each Appointment and Drop-Off will show a tooltip when hovering over each.
If you are currently Editing an Appointment from the Patient Info Bar and click Edit on another Appointment on the screen, you will get a warning message asking if you want to switch Appointment information without saving changes:
✏️ Editing Scheduled Appointments
To edit any scheduled appointment, click the 3-dot menu within the Appointment.
- Edit – adjust the Appointment details via right side pane (same screen when scheduling the Appointment).
- Mark as No Show – gray out the patient name and document the patient never showed up. You can always undo this action by clicking the 3-dot menu again and selecting ‘Mark as Shown’.
- Cancel – gray out the patient name and move the cancelled Appointment to the bottom of the column’s cancelled section. You can always undo this action by clicking the 3-dot menu again and selecting ‘Reschedule’.
- Check In – Check the patient in for their Appointment.
- Visit History – View previous medical history, including treatment sheets, vitals, and invoices.
🚙 Scheduling Drop-Offs
To schedule a Drop-off, click the 3-dot menu next to the available Drop-offs followed by ‘Schedule’.
A ‘New Drop-off’ side pane opens on the right side of the screen to enter the Reason for Visit, Type, Service, and any Appointment Notes (optional). You can then add the patient information by creating a New Patient, selecting an Existing Patient, or looking up by an Existing Account.
Once scheduled, the number of available Drop-offs updates (from 4 to 3 in this example) and the patient information is shown on the Appointments Calendar:
✏️ Editing Individual Drop-Offs
Use the 3-dot menu within the Drop-off field to Edit, Mark as a No Show, Cancel, Check In, or view this patient’s Visit History.
- Edit – adjust the Drop-off details via right side pane (same screen when scheduling the Drop-off).
- Mark as No Show – gray out the patient name with a strikethrough and document the patient never showed up. The Available Drop-offs count at the top of the day will automatically recalculate and you can always undo this action by clicking the 3-dot menu > ‘Mark as Shown’.
- Cancel – move to the bottom of the column’s cancelled section and recalculate the number of available Drop-offs at the top of the day. You can always undo this action by clicking the 3-dot menu again and selecting ‘Reschedule.
✏️ Adding/Editing Appointment Templates
Appointment Calendar Templates allow you to create daily schedules that can be applied to several days at once on a given calendar or group of calendars. To add a new Template, head to Admin > Templates and click + New Template.
You can then include the Template Name and any Drop-off or Appointment Availabilities.
📓 Please Note: The ‘Name’ is the only required field and the maximum number of Drop-Offs is 100.
You can also select multiple Appointment Availabilities to further customize this template!
After saving this template, click Apply to Calendar which opens a pop-up to select the calendar (can be groups or individual calendars) and days you’d like the template applied to.
If a Group calendar is selected, each team member within the group will populate into the calendar section (meaning this template will be applied to them).
You can remove any user(s) from this Calendar Template by clicking the ‘x’ as shown below:
You can also Bulk Select to include All Weekdays/Days for the visible month or click any weekday header (Mo, Tu, We, etc.) to bulk select the weekday for the visible month.
📓 Please Note: You may apply templates up to 365 days in the future.
After clicking Apply, the following message appears letting you know any existing drop off availability will be overridden. Please note you cannot bulk undo this action once confirmed but Appointment details can always be edited/deleted individually.
You can then view the Appointment Templates within the Calendar Group or Individual Calendars.
🚨 Important Note: If appointment availabilities already exist on the calendar and a template is applied with overlapping appointment availabilities, both availability blocks will be added to the user’s calendar. For example, if a team member has an existing availability for 8a-5p and a template is applied with an availability of 9a-4p, both availability blocks will be displayed on the calendar. This can then be manually adjusted on the calendar if needed.
🚨 Important Note: If an existing calendar day has drop-off availabilities without any drop-offs scheduled and a template is applied with overlapping drop-off availabilities, the drop-off availabilities for the day will be replaced with the number in the template. If the existing calendar day has drop-off availabilities scheduled WITH drop-offs scheduled, the template will not override that information and the existing calendar drop-off availabilities and appointments will remain the same (meaning drop-offs from template will not be applied to day).
✂ Editing Appointment Templates
To Edit or Delete an Appointment Template, simply click the 3-dot menu followed by Edit or Delete.
🚨 Important Note: If a template has been applied to a Calendar and is edited in the Admin section, the drop-offs/availabilities for that day will NOT update on the Calendar. Template updates are only applied to calendars using the template from that point forward, so any days using the previous template before it was edited will remain the same.
🚨 Important Note: If a template has been applied to a Calendar and is deleted in the Admin section, the drop-offs/availabilities for that day will not be deleted on the Calendar. Deleting a template simply removes it from the Templates admin screen and does not allow users to apply it to any future calendars/days, so any days using a template before it was deleted will remain the same.