Appointment Session Templates

Appointment Session Templates identify when appointments can be made, in a general way. They are used as a template for creating the sessions into which appointments are actually booked.

Prerequisites

Before you can add a session template, the following details must be configured in Communicare:

Providers, select File > Providers
Rooms and facilities, select File > Appointments > Appointment Facilities
Session types, select File > Appointments > Session Types

You should also complete the Appointment Template Worksheet for each provider for whom you want to schedule appointments. To display the worksheet, select Help > Forms > New Appointment Template Worksheet. Download or print the worksheet as required.

To create a new appointment session template:

Select File > Appointments > Session Templates.
In the Session Templates window, click Add.
From the Provider list, select the provider you are creating templates for. You cannot include a provider in more than one session simultaneously, that is provider overlaps are not allowed.
From the Facility list, select the room you want to assign to the provider.
If you want to allow the room booking to overlap with bookings in other templates, set Allow Facilities Overlap.
If you want to limit this booking to a program, from the Session Program list, select a program.
From the Session Type list, select a session type. The session type defines whether walkins are allowed and may provide a default number of horizon days, which can differ from the system defined default.
From the Day of Week list, select one of the following options:
- Manual - the template is not used to automatically generate sessions. Manual sessions can be inserted manually into the appointment book for any day of the week provided no Provider or Facility conflicts exist.
- Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, ... - the template can be used to automatically create sessions on a repeating basis. For example, every Monday, every second Monday, every third Monday and so on.
If you selected a day of the week, in the Recurrence Pattern section:
1. From the Repeat Value list, select how often you would like this session to repeat.
2. From the Effective date calendar, select the earliest date that the appointments generated from this template can be made. If no date is entered, the current date is used. If the sessions are fortnightly or further apart, ensure that you set this date correctly for the first occurrence.
3. In the Horizon days field, enter the number of days into the future to automatically create sessions. The number in brackets indicates the value that will be used if nothing is entered here. The maximum value allowed is 373 days.
4. The Horizon date displays last time appointments generated up to and including this date. Next time generation will start from the next day.
5. If sessions have been cancelled for the period between today and the Horizon date, you can force the overnight process to recreate them by resetting the date. The effect is that it will commence from 'today' instead of the day after the last run.
In the Start Time field, enter a start time for the session.
In the End Time field, enter a finish time for the session.
For session types that allow walk-in appointments, in the Last Walkin field, enter the number of minutes before the end of the session that walk-in patients will be accepted into the session.
Click Save.

After adding a session template, a Timeslot Template is created automatically and the Timeslot Template window is displayed. Click 'Save' to save the timeslots and enable the session template.

The session duration and end time are reduced if necessary so that session duration is an integer multiple of default timeslot duration.

The nightly Communicare process will generate new appointment sessions based on the information entered in the Recurrence Pattern section. There is no last Horizon Date so new appointments are created overnight, up to the Horizon Date.

If there are missing sessions or you want the appointments generated immediately, right-click on the enabled session template and select 'Apply to appointments book'. See Appointment_Session_Template_Application for more information.

Cloning session templates

You can make an identical copy of an appointment session template.

To clone a template:

Select File > Appointments > Session Templates.
In the Session Templates window, right-click the template you want to clone and select Clone Selected Item.
In the Confirmation window, click Yes.

A duplicate template is created, which is identical but is not enabled.

Editing session templates

You can edit a session template if required. When editing templates, changes will only be reflected in the appointments book after the last Horizon Date.

To edit a session template:

Select File > Appointments > Session Templates.
In the Session Templates window, double-click the template you want to edit.
In the Confirmation window, click Yes to confirm that you want to disable the template.
In the Session Template window, edit the required details. Start time and duration may not be edited. Instead, edit the Timeslot Template to change end time and duration of a session template.
Set Enabled.
Click Save.

Editing session template timeslots

You can edit the start time and duration of timeslots for a session template if required.

To edit timeslots:

Select File > Appointments > Session Templates.
In the Session Templates window, right-click the template whose timeslots you want to edit and select TimeSlots.
In the Timeslots window, edit the required start times and duration, or set Reserved for some timeslots.
Click Save.

Deleting session templates

Session templates are disabled rather than deleted.

To disable a session template:

Select File > Appointments > Session Templates.
In the Session Templates window, select the template you want to disable.
Click Delete.
In the Warning window, click OK.

Filtering

To filter the session templates by provider:

In the Session Template window, from the Provider list, select the provider whose session templates you want to work with.

To display all session templates again, delete the provider or select All Providers.