The appointment book can be configured to display appointments in a variety of ways to help easily identify patient information. The options available are,

• Provider
• Room (if enabled)
• Category
• Patient's Payor
• Other appearance options

The view you use is dependant on your user settings, to configure your appointment book view, navigate to Configure - User Settings then under the Appointments column, select from the Colour week view by or Colour day view by drop-down menus.

(Day View Example with it set to show the provider's appointment colours).

Provider

This is the most common option, displaying the booked providers colour. To change a providers colour,

1. Go to File - Providers.
2. Select the provider.
3. Open the Appointments tab.
4. Click the Set Colour button, this will open a colour palette.
   
5. Once you have chosen the desired colour, click OK.
6. Then click the save icon on the providers profile.

Room (if enabled)

If enabled, the booked rooms colour will be displayed. Read more about rooms here.

Rooms colours can be set by navigating to,

1. Configure - Appointment Book.
2. All available rooms are displayed on the left, highlight a room then click e|d.
3. Click Set Colour to choose a colour.
4. Once you have chosen the desired colour, click OK.

Category

This is most commonly configured when using clinics. Read more about clinics here.

Patient's Payor

This will display the patient's payor colour.
This option is not advised if your patients have appointments with multiple payors, such as private and non-private.

Other appearance options

Additional Options can be found in Configure - Appointment Book - Appearance Options. This will open the Appointment Book Appearance configuration window.

Here you can configure the basic appearance of the appointment book, including the following options.

• Failed: Highlight the FTA (Failed To Arrive) appointments with a custom colour
• Transparency: Set the degree of colour Transparency: None, Standard, Medium or High
• Non-Appointment Time colour for Available Time, Rota Time and Extra Block Time
  or use a picture as the background for Available, Rota or Extra Block slots.

To add images for individual providers creating blocks on the appointment book and set a picture for the blog, read more about that here.

• Double Booked: This time shows up on the appointment book when any appointment book time overlaps, apart from available time. Use a bright, distinctive colour for this
• No Category: Appointments booked with no treatment category. This only applies when the appointment colours are set to “Appointment Category” in Configure, User Settings
• Clinic Line Width: Time booked for clinics (i.e Emergencies Only) is shown as diagonal stripes on the appointment book: from the top-left to bottom right for payor clinics, and from the bottom left to top right for private clinics. Set the width of the stripe to either small, medium or large
• Use phone icons: When ticked the clickable Blue, Red and Green Phone icons appear on each appointment. How they are used and what each colour means is up to you. i.e Blue = Confirmed, Red = Need to confirm, Green = Nervous patient
  Other EXACT features such as SMS replies & Patient Portal have for the most part superseded this function as they can show appointments have been confirmed without any manual interaction
• Use full column width: Leave this unchecked to overlay appointments within clinics or blocks, or check to use the full column width:
  
• Display booked provider identifier: Most practices colour appointments by Provider colour so this is seldom used. When appointments are coloured by Status (stage of care) this option can be useful for showing a vertical colour indicator that identifies the Provider for the appointment. i.e If you had a column for rooms (i.e Surgery 1, Surgery 2) rather than columns per provider this will help identify which provider the appointment is with.
  
• Display status timer: Optionally add a Status Timer (hours:minutes) to the appointment book for these Statuses / stages of care while the patient is physically within the practice: Arrived, In Chair, Treatment Completed.
  
• Normal View and Wide view Setup: Choose which patient/treatment details are textually displayed in the appointment block, and in what order, for views where the columns are normal and also for views where the columns are very wide.
  
  This includes how the patient's name is displayed, the planned procedure, the patient's contact number, relevant notes, and the Patient ID. A 'blank' is also included if you wish to insert blank space between details in the appointment block. These settings affect all users and you may need to log out and back into EXACT to see the changes.
  
• Statuses Setup: Each appointment book user can configure a set of coloured appointment statuses that visually differentiate appointment book blocks according to the patient stages of care within the dental practice: Booked > Confirmed > Late > Arrived > Seated in chair > Treatment complete > Checked out | FTA (Failed to Arrive)