DVMAX 7.6 Release Notes

Appointment Scheduler

DVMAX Practice v7.6 includes a fully revised appointment scheduler that offers all of the same functionality plus a number of new features, more flexibility, improved reporting and an increase in performance. The web-based appointment book also includes new scheduler views, cut and paste options for moving appointments, double booking, a duplicate appointments option, a check in feature and a heat map. Please refer to the revised Appointments chapter for more details on the new features of the Scheduler. Release notes on the new Appointment Schedule features are reflected below.

Under the Daily and Recurring schedules, you cannot drag to create an appointment longer than the default duration if Reset Duration to Appointment Type Default is selected. In the Main scheduler view, you can do this. This is intentional, as in the main scheduler it is expected that users may want or need to drag to define the length of an appointment on a case-by-case basis.
If the scheduler has performance problems when scrolling in Firefox, turn off Use smooth scrolling in the Firefox Preferences -> Advanced tab.
The scheduler Find field searches from the displayed date forward.
The new Cut Appointment, Copy Appointment and Paste Appointment functions let you cut, copy and paste appointments with the click of the mouse.
The scheduler has a Show Date Picker button in the top toolbar. Clicking it will show a floating calendar that can be used to select the date to be displayed in any view.
Scheduler List View No. Days field default value is defined in Scheduler Setup. The default value is 1 day.
Clicking on a date in the Heat Map View will take you to the Day View for that date.
The Heat Map View reflects the percentage of time booked for client- and patient-associated appointments in relation to the total hours for which the clinic is open (as defined under Scheduler Setup). The Heat Map is intended as a visual “quick reference”, not as an exact ratio of booking to capacity. Appointments not linked to a client or patient, such as phone calls, meetings or staff breaks, are not reflected in calculations for the Heat Map.
It is possible to create an appointment outside of the Start/End of Day time by typing a value in the Start field rather than selecting from the drop down menu. This appointment will not display on the Day View if it is outside of the defined Start/End of Day time, but it will show on the Month view, List view and Heat Map views. Typing a value is not recommended, as it can cause Scheduler issues. Select a value from the Time drop down list instead.
In the Scheduler, you can now specify a color for Appt Staff. This will set the color of the appropriate column header in the Day View.
The Appt List Report under General Management now includes the Checked In status for appointments.
In the Combined View on the Scheduler, clicking on a date on the Monthly area shows the selected day in the Day section underneath it. Changing the month in the Date field on the toolbar changes the month displayed in Combined View.
To move an appointment, right click on the appointment and choose Cut Appointment. Locate the new date/time/staff where you wish to place the appointment. Right click and choose Paste Appointment. If you are moving an appointment to a different staff person, you will be asked to confirm the move. If you have User Initials Required selected under Setup, you will be asked to provide initials of staff moving the appointment.
From the Appointment Detail dialog, if you hold down the shift key when clicking Save, the Scheduler will now remember the current client & patient and display a label at the top of the browser window, just as when you select Set Appointment from a Client or Patient record. The next record you create will then inherit these default values. This replaces the OK & Next Appointment button in previous versions of Appointments.
The new web Appointment Scheduler does not appear on the Window list because it is not a DVMAX window. However, you can access appointments by clicking the Appts icon on the Command Palette (in the upper right of the DVMAX main window) and you can go back to DVMAX from the Scheduler by clicking the DVMAX icon in the upper left of the Scheduler window or by selecting Go to Client or Go to Patient from an appointment record.
Right-click on an existing appointment and select Double Book to create a new appointment in the same time slot, but without a selected patient.
The new Scheduler addresses the concern in previous schedulers that staff could not see “real” appointments because they fall behind recurring and daily schedules. This not longer happens, owing to improved flexibility in the display for double-booked or overlapping appointments.
We now construct the Appt Staff abbreviation/initials from the first letter of every word in the [Appt_staff]Name field, not just the first two words. So, if the staff is Dr. John Doe, the initials will now be “DJD” rather than simply “DJ”.
The new web Scheduler permits users to see patient and client details to the right of the list when selecting a patient from the Appointment Detail dialog. This includes Status, species, breed, DOB, weight, client contact (address, phone numbers, etc) information. Use this screen to confirm the client’s contact information or to update some client and patient details it right from the window where they are making the appointment.
Deceased patients now appear on the patient list in grey font. This addresses an outstanding feature request to add more patient detail when selecting patients through the Appointment Detail dialog. Deceased and Inactive patients are both displayed as grey in the selection panel on the Appointment Detail dialog, and the status Inactive is displayed in the Patient Info area of the Appointment Detail dialog. Inactive client records also display as grey in the Client/Patient list
The ‘Client’ search in the scheduler now searches on first and last name fields for both names (Name 1 and Name 2) under client records.
The new Web Scheduler addresses the concern in previous schedulers that staff cannot see “real” appointments because they fall behind recurring and daily schedules. This does not happen any longer, owing to improved flexibility in display options.
Appointments can now be sorted in ascending or descending order by Name, Color, Duration, Conflict Level and Mobile. This feature of the new web scheduler addresses a request by users to have a way to sort appointment types.
There is a minimum appointment value and an appointment increment (Time Increment field under Appointment Setup). If you have a time increment of 20 minutes and you click and drag close to 8AM (for example), DVMAX will draw you a default appointment from 8:00AM-8:20. If you click and drag just below that appointment, DVMAX will draw you an appointment from 8:20-8:40, and so on.
You can now create an appointment by simply clicking on the Day or Month scheduler.
In Setup you can now set the default duration for each appointment type, and this default duration is used when creating an event when clicking. If you change the appointment type of an existing event, the duration of the event is reset to the default duration if you have the new Reset Duration to Appt Type Default checkbox selected in Setup. This new feature was added to deal with what was reported as a long-standing grievance with the previous version of the scheduler.
Appointment Settings have been removed from the System Constants area in DVMAX and are now in the Setup dialog of the revised Appointment Scheduler. The Show Appt Labels setting is now handled by editing the Day and Week Templates from the Advanced tab in Setup.
Appointment Setup only permits using a full hour (7, 8, 9, etc.) not partial (7:30, 8:30, etc) for Start of Day. You have to select from the options, not type a value.
A visit is started when a client or patient appointment is Checked In from the Scheduler. Visit history, including visit events (status value changes) are tracked and can be viewed by clicking Visits from the Client or Patient General Info tab of the associated Client/Patient record. You can also see visit history from an invoice. Depending on your default setting, the Visit History may display when you finish an invoice. A visit is closed when you deselect the visit from the Visits list. To close, select the Visit row and uncheck “Visit Active”.
Fixed a timing issue that could cause problems when first opening the scheduler.
“Cancel Check In” has now been added to the scheduler contextual menu. It will only be visible after the appointment has been checked in.
Scheduler preferences (column width & row height, etc) are stored on a per-station basis.
The scheduler now always shows the modification history for appointments, even when no client or patient has yet been selected.
Double-clicking an appointment in the “Pending” palette will now open that appointment in the web scheduler.
The scheduler will now warn you if you try to close the window. Note that this warning will also appear when you reload the page.
There’s now a DVMAX button at the top of the scheduler window that lets you switch to DVMAX from the Scheduler.
It is now possible to edit some Client and Patient information displayed in the Appointment detail dialog.
Tabbed browsing must be turned off if you are using Firefox as your Scheduler/Boarding browser.
When an upgrade is installed, users must clear cache prior to using the new version of the Appointment and Boarding Schedulers. This is essential to proper function.
Deleting appointment type records is not recommended, and will leave appointments on the scheduler, but the event will no longer be linked to an appointment type so it will not have a label. Only the appointment type “New/Unknown” cannot be deleted. If a person accidentally deletes an appointment type, they can have DVMAX Technical Support fix the problem for them by recreating the appointment type with the right ID, because we do not reassign IDs when an appointment type is deleted.
The “New/Unknown” appointment type can no longer be deleted.
Deleting the default Appt Type in Setup will now reset the default type to “New/Unknown”
You cannot check in an appointment without selecting a check in reason.
When visits are closed this is now included in the visit history in the scheduler. As well, once a visit is closed changing the status on the appointment does not create a visit event, and ‘Checked In’ is no longer available as a status.
You now create client-only appointments by selecting Client Appt appointment type.
It is possible to select a group of records from the appointment records in List View and print the selection using Quick Print.
The Find/Search area of the Appointment detail dialog (Create/Edit Appointments dialog) has 2 fields - a Client Filter and a Patient Filter. Typing in those fields filters the list of client/patient records below the filters. The action of filtering may be “on keystroke” or may not filter until you tab out of the filter field, depending on the setting for the Advanced Setting that controls this behavior. Click to select a record. The patient and client details, including Name) are placed in the Patient Info and Client Info areas on the right hand side of the dialog.
Mac Users: If Enable Access for Assistive Devices support is not turned on (under your computer’s System Preferences), you will see a dialog informing you of this and giving you the opportunity to turn it on. After that’s done, the scheduler will open in your chosen browser, or the system default browser if you haven’t explicitly chosen one in DVMAX Preferences.
A Quick Print button has been added to the List view of the scheduler. This provides a simple, printable grid of the displayed schedule items.
Only members of the DVMAX group, Patient Codes (under DVMAX Security settings) have access to Scheduler Setup. Only members of the group Scheduling have access to the Scheduler. Contact DVMAX Technical Support to make changes to these settings.
The format of the date & time columns in the main Scheduler List View are controlled by advanced settings. Contact DVMAX Technical Support to make changes to these settings.
The default behavior of the lookup fields, Client and Patient, under Appointment Info area of the Appointment Detail dialog is to refresh the list of records when the user tabs out of the Patient or Client fields. This is controlled by an advanced setting. The alternative behavior is to have the list will refresh on every keystroke (as you type), which may cause the lookup to be slow for sites with large numbers of patients. Contact DVMAX Technical Support to make changes to this setting.
Visit History can be displayed when you finish an invoice. This behavior is controlled by an advanced setting, which defaults to “False” (Visit History does not automatically display when you finish the invoice). If the setting is changed to “True”, you will be presented with the Visits dialog when you finish an invoice. From the Visit dialog displayed, you can choose to view visits associated with that invoice. Contact DVMAX Technical Support to make changes to this setting.
The size of the text in the Scheduler column header (Day View only) is controlled by an advanced setting. Note that the size of the header itself cannot be increased, so any font size larger than 14 or so will be clipped. Contact DVMAX Technical Support to make changes to this setting.
It is now possible to have status changes automatically change the color of the appointment. This behavior is controlled by an advanced setting, which is “Off” by default. When this setting is enabled (“On”), you will be able to select a color for Status Values in the Scheduler Setup. Then, changing the status of an appointment will change the color of the appointment. Contact DVMAX Technical Support to make changes to this setting.

Boarding

The revised Boarding scheduler was released with DVMAX Practice v7.5. The revamped boarding scheduler includes a fully redesigned web interface. The boarding scheduler allows you to make boarding appointments right on the boarding screen, add a check in status to the boarding appointment, perform setup and room changes directly from the boarding grid and add multiple animals to the same boarding cage. Please refer to the manual for the Boarding function for complete information on using the new Boarding scheduler.

The updates, bug fixes and changes to the Boarding schedule in v7.6 include:

The boarding report has been adjusted to accommodate longer breed names.
The boarding report now correctly uses landscape mode and wraps long comments.
Right-clicking on a boarding record displays a contextual menu with a Go To Record menu item. Selecting Go To Record will display the associated Patient record in DVMAX.
The cage listing in boarding setup now has a numeric Order field that can be used to control the order in which the cages are displayed.
Only users in the Patient Codes group now have access to the Setup function in Boarding.
DVMAX Boarding Setup no longer uses the field # Days to Display. There are now 2 fields - # Days Forward, which defaults to 365, and # Days Back, which defaults to 7.
We now strip quotes from Room and Cage names in Boarding setup.
Fixed various issues with cage weight constraints in the boarding Setup interface.
In the web-based Boarding scheduler, click Print and then choose Check In, Check Out or Is Boarding report options with a Start Date and End Date. You can preview and/or print this list. This provides, among other things, a quick way to print a boarding list for holiday or weekend boarding.
A confirm dialog is now displayed before deleting cages or rooms in boarding setup.
The boarding Setup now prevents you from deleting cages that contain boarding records, or rooms that contain cages.
Fixed an issue that could prevent newly created boarding rooms and cages from being saved correctly.
Improved boarding functionality under Internet Explorer.
Added a check to prevent the creation of a boarding appointment with a negative duration. The OK button is not enabled if the boarding duration is 0 or negative.
Fixed an issue with boarding that would cause cages with the same name as their room to not work correctly.
Fixed an issue with boarding that could prevent changes to the displayed date range from working correctly.
The following alert displays when the user tries to display too much information in boarding: “Sorry, the date range has been constrained because the view is too complex.” This behavior is controlled by an advanced setting. Contact DVMAX Technical Support to make changes to this setting.

Findings

Fixed a problem where a typed diagnosis without findings would not immediately display the typed text.

Invoicing

Fixed an issue that occurred when deleting a line item. If the next line item on the invoice had a Misc or Adjustable bill item, then the existing values on the line item might be incorrectly overwritten.
Fixed an issue with the Edit Details dialog that is displayed when editing invoice or estimate line items. In some cases the selected line item code could be lost when editing the discount percentage.
Fixed an issue that could cause duplicated line items when working on an invoice.
Improved the speed of opening invoices with many empty line items.
The Edit this Invoice menu item is now disabled when working on an invoice that is itself in the process of being edited.
Calculated item costs on purchases are now rounded to 2 decimal places.
Fixed a display problem with the Sales Tax Collected list.
If there are more than 255 patients on an invoice, we now use a listbox instead of a popup menu when selecting a patient. Contact DVMAX Technical Support to make changes to this setting.
There are two new advanced settings that can be used to control the width of the “Patient” column on invoices. The pixel width of the column defaults to 100 and the maximum number of characters that are displayed in the column defaults to 12. NOTE that these changes will only apply to new invoices; existing invoices will not be modified. Contact DVMAX Technical Support to make changes to this setting.
Split owenership invoices cannot be voided or edited.

Invoicing and Remote Processing

You can no longer choose the ‘Finish unfinished invoices’ function from a list of patients if you are trying to use the function from a remote terminal.
New invoices created as a result of newer line items on a remote terminal will now carry over the Dr. Code from the original invoice.

Lab Results

Fixed several issues that could cause IDEXX lab results to be retrieved incorrectly.
(From v7.5.2) Corrected an issue from Antech/Zoasis where small sets of lab results included the indicator for “no results”, and were thus ignored. These are now correctly identified as real results and imported.
(From v7.5.2) DVMAX now correctly connects to and imports results when two Abaxis instruments are connected to the same terminal.
VetConnect PLUS credentials (username and password) are set under Preferences -> Lab Results Setup.

Miscellaneous

The eClipboard function can now capture if a patient is neutered/spayed.
Fixed a problem with Canadian provinces not being listed in the eClipboard choices for States and Provinces.
Fixed a runtime error that could occur when completing a treatment plan item.
Fixed a runtime error that would happen when opening a text view of a patient’s history when that patient’s owner had less than 3 phone numbers.
Fixed a problem with non-US (i.e. non MM/DD/YY) date formats.
Calculated item costs on purchases are now rounded to 2 decimal places.
Fixed a display problem with the Sales Tax Collected list.

MREs

Fixed a slowdown that could occur when creating a new MRE.
When printing all MREs in the current view, the Exclude from Printed History setting is now respected.
The button OK & New MRE replaces the old OK and Next MRE button. If you are creating a new MRE, OK & New MRE is enabled and clicking it will save the current entry and take you to a new MRE entry screen.
If you are viewing an existing MRE, OK & New MRE is disabled. Use the Prev and Next buttons to move between existing MREs.
If the Print button is clicked before the MRE is saved, we now tell the user they have to save before printing and ask if they want to do this now. If they choose Yes, we save the MRE and print it. If they choose No, we do nothing. If the button is clicked before there is a Med Rec Code entered, we tell them there is nothing to print.
Fixed a problem where MRE comments would sometimes not be visible as you typed them.
When working with MREs that are part of a super item, quantity changes entered in the prescription label dialog that comes up will now carry through to the invoice quantity. This was always the case with individual MREs; this fix applies only to MREs added as part of a super item.

Printing Client Lists

Fixed an issue with blank File Number/Client ID when printing a client list.

Printing Statements

PDF Creator is required on all workstations. It is the local machine that is doing the printing work for statements, so the driver has to be installed locally.

Reporting

Clarified the description of the Canine Boarding Report, formerly called Boarding Report, under General Management. Updated it to work with the new web-based boarding scheduler.
Fixed a situation where the exported version of the Detailed Sales Report could differ from the printed version if discounted line items were present in the report.
Fixed a runtime error that could appear when printing the Controlled Substances log.
There is a setting that controls whether estimates appear in the audit trail reports. By default, estimates will no longer appear in the Audit Trail reports. Payments recorded on estimates will always appear. Contact DVMAX Technical Support for assistance in making changes to this or other advanced settings.

System Constants

If the country is USA in System Constants, we now use the US spelling, “euthanize”. If the country is Canada, we use the UK/Canadian spelling, “euthanise”.

VetStreet

Vetstreet export is not possible if the terminal is in remote processing mode.
Vetstreet exports now include the patient status information correctly.