FAQ 303: Customising Appointment Captions in the Diary

[Support]

We sometimes get asked if it's possible to fully customise "auto-description" captions for appointments in the diary - to which the answer is: YES!

Firstly, please follow these instructions :-

- Go to the diary and click the DIARY OPTIONS button (top right)
- Click the "Visual Settings" tab
- Notice there are 2 caption formats; one for "staff view" and one for "room view"... these are the boxes you will be editing

There are six standard 'merge fields' available, as follows :-

{patient} = the name of the patient/contact attending the appointment
{type} = the appointment type (e.g. "Consultation")
{status} = the status of the appointment (e.g. "Arrived")
{clinic} = the name of the clinic where the appointment is booked (usful for multi-site clinics)
{staff} = the name of the practitioner involved in the appointment
{room} = the room that the appointment is booked in

For sake of argument, let's say we're working in the STAFF VIEW. The default caption format is :-

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{patient} [{type}] in {room}

This displays the patient's name, then the type of appointment, then the room e.g.

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Bloggs, Joe [Consultation] in Room 1

But what you if you want to add information from a different field? Please read on...


Constructing Custom Merge Field Codes
'Merge field' codes are all enclosed in curly braces i.e. {...} For custom merge field codes, THREE parts are required inside the braces :-
[1] The database table name
[2] The field which is displayed
[3] Mapping information for mapping the information to this appointment

Each of the above is separated by an exclamation mark character i.e. "!".

For example, say we have added a custom field to our patient database called "my_text_field". To add this field to the caption, we would need to add the following 'merge field' code to the caption format :-
{custom_patient_fields!my_text_field!per_id=@per_id}

Hence the final caption format would be something like :-

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{patient} [{type}] in {room} - {custom_patient_fields!my_text_field!per_id=@per_id}

[1] The database table = "custom_patient_fields"
[2] The field name = "my_text_field"
[3] The "per_id" field in the "custom_patient_fields" table is mapped to @per_id which is the per_id of the appointment

This would result in :-

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Bloggs, Joe [Consultation] in Room 1 - some custom info

A Note About Performance

Including additional custom fields in the auto-generated captions WILL affect performance because ClinicOffice will have to perform an additional database lookup for every appointment that is displayed in the diary.


If you're non-technical, then this is obviously going to be quite difficult to follow so please feel free to post a reply with more information about what you're trying to achieve and we'll be happy to help!

[clinicoffice_user]

Hi - I run a domiciliary clinic - please can you tell me how to format the labels as follows :-

23/07/2013 09:00-10:00 Nail Extraction - Mrs Smith (Sue) - 12 Long Hurst Rd Crawley RH11 0TB 01903 12345

I want to show :-
DateTime - Appointment Type - Patient - Patient Address - Patient Telephone - Status

[Daniel Casserly]

Hi - thanks for your post. Please follow these step-by-step instructions :-

• Go to the Diary and click on the Diary Options button (above the diary on the right)
• Click on the Visual Settings tab
• Under Appointment Captions you will see two options - Caption format for staff view and Caption format for Room View. Click the [Advanced] link next to the "Caption format for staff view"
• Copy and Paste in the below code, click OK and then OK again to save the changes.

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{type} - {patient} - {per!address1!id=@per_id} {per!towncity!id=@per_id} {per!postcode!id=@per_id} {per!telephone!id=@per_id} {status}

You may need to click the Refresh button to refresh the diary and see the updated appointment labels.

Please let us know how you get on.

[dyerstchiro]

Hi all,

With regards to putting in the number, when I place in the code only the home telephone number appears. Is there a way to change this to a mobile number?

Many thanks

Rob.

[Mat Larkin]

Hi there,

Please use this code to use mobile number instead of telephone number;

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{type} - {patient} - {per!address1!id=@per_id} {per!towncity!id=@per_id} {per!postcode!id=@per_id} {per!mobile!id=@per_id} {status}

Thanks!