The Appointments module is your clinic’s diary. It shows, at a glance, who is coming in, when, to see which dentist, and in which chair — and it keeps the whole team, from the front desk to the surgery, working from the same live schedule. This overview explains how to read the calendar; the linked pages take you step by step through booking, rescheduling and cancelling, the status workflow and automatic reminders, and moving around the calendar.
How the day calendar is laid out
Open Appointments from the top navigation bar. By default CAPS28 shows today in day view:
- Time runs down the left-hand column in 10-minute rows, from your clinic’s opening time to its closing time (set under Office ’ Business Hours).
- Each dental chair is a column — in the example above, Chair-1 and Chair-2. Add or rename chairs under Office ’ Chairs.
- Every appointment appears as a coloured block spanning its booked time, showing the patient’s name and ID, the time range, the treating doctor and the appointment note.
Reading the colours and status badges
Two visual cues let you scan a busy day in seconds:
- Block colour = the doctor. Each provider has their own colour (set per clinic under Office ’ Team), so you can instantly see whose patients are whose. In the example, Dr Aadil Inamdar’s appointments are teal and Dr Gregory House’s are blue.
- The round badge = the appointment’s status — S Scheduled, U Unconfirmed, C Confirmed, A Arrived, T In Treatment, F Front Desk, L Left, X Cancelled, N No-show. The full lifecycle is explained on the status workflow page.
What you can do from the calendar
- Book a new appointment — click any open time slot in a chair column. See Book an appointment.
- Open an existing appointment — click its block to see full details, change its status, edit notes, change the doctor, or reschedule it.
- Move around the diary — use the previous / next arrows, jump to a date, or pick a date range to see several days at once. See Calendar views & navigation.
Why the appointment book matters
Because bookings, statuses and reminders are all connected, an accurate diary does more than tell you who is next. Booking an appointment can automatically send the patient a confirmation and schedule reminder messages; marking someone Arrived lets the surgery see the waiting room fill up; cancelling frees the slot and stops the reminders going out. Keeping the calendar current is what makes the rest of CAPS28 work for you.
