Diary: Bookings and Cancellations

Pressing Edit allows bookings and cancellations to be made, provided that particular time of day in the diary is not being edited by another user. On entering the edit feature the client number field of the first available slot in the diary will be highlighted. Depending on whether the slot already contains an appointment or note, one of the following prompt lines is displayed:

Up Down Label Pos Move Here Cancel Edit Quit or
Up Down Label Pos Move Add Quit

The Label and Pos options will print on the respective printer the appointment details for the slot you are currently on.

Navigation examples

• If you press <UP-ARROW> or <DOWN-ARROW>, you will be taken to the the slot line above or below respectively.
• If you press <HOME> from the editing prompt you will be taken to the very first field on the page.
• If you press <END> from the editing prompt you will be taken to the very last line on the page.
• If you press <PGUP> or <PGDN> while in edit mode, you will be taken up or down by one screenful at a time respectively.

Additional options

• If you move up to the very first field, beside the column headings on the top line, there is a field for a comment for the whole day as an aide-memoire and you will be asked if you wish to edit this.

• If you enter a slash /, you will be taken to the next free slot. If you enter a slash followed by a time, you will be taken to the slot line represented by that time. If you have slot lines which do not have a time attached, these appear on the display with a number or letter in brackets. This number or letter (without the brackets) can be used to go to a specific slot instead of using a time.

• If you enter a dot . an entry will be made for the last client you entered into the diary. If you have not made any bookings in the diary yet, the details of the last client you accessed in the main vet system will be entered instead. This only works if the currently highlighted slot is blank.

If you press <RETURN> without entering anything, you will be taken to the field to the right.

If you press <LEFT-ARROW> without entering anything, you will be taken to the field to the left.

If you are in the first field of a slot line and you enter a client number, this client's details will be retrieved and put in the client and animal columns and you will then be taken to the comment field for that line. The first address line for the client selected appears in the comments column if the appropriate switch is set in:

If you are in the second, or client, field for a line you may enter search details for the client you wish to put into the diary at that point. A window will then appear with the details of clients matching the search criterion and you may select one of these by scrolling up and down the window and pressing <RETURN> at the one you want. Their details will be put into the diary and you will be taken to the comment field for the line. The first address line may already be filled in for the field as described above. Note: Dead Small animals will NOT be shown in the list. If you have

Alternatively you can escape from the pick list by pressing the <ESC> key. The user is then asked whether to add into the file the client they were looking for. If the 'add to file' question is answered by 'no', the user is asked whether to book anyway under the name entered. Making an entry in this way of a client who is not on file marks the client number field with a zero, but of course you will not be able to retrieve the record unless you make it a client on the file at this point.

If you select Cancel, this has the effect of cancelling the appointment. You will be asked to confirm your decision. Cancelled bookings appear on the diary index as an underscore (_). When an appointment is canceled within the diary system you are asked to supply a reason. This information is added to a log file 'diary.log'. This is an ASCII file that can be read with vi/ste or any editor of your choice.

The Here option will only appear if you are using the full Waiting room list, this will transfer the currently selected record over to the Current Waiting room list.

Customisation - You can alter this behavior by setting Log_Diary_Cancel in params.txt. If you set:

Any bookings or cancellations made for a particular client will update their management record if this is possible, i.e. if the record is not locked at the time. If there is already an appointment date in the client's management record field, this will be overwritten by the new appointment. With cancellations, only if the appointment which appears in the management record is precisely for the date and time which has been cancelled, will the next appointment field of the management record be blanked out.

Rather than get the Management record to display the diary that was booked you can, by setting Diary_Use_User_ID to yes in params.txt, you can log the user. This only applies if you have marked the slot with a user's I.D. The user MUST exist as a valid user. If you booked an 'unmaked' slot then the MR will contain the diary name as before. You should not use this option if you use the 'New Style Waiting Room List'.

You may overwrite an existing diary entry for speed, but the next appointment field will not be updated in the case of either of the clients involved. You will be asked to confirm the slot being overwritten. If you want to make sure the client's next appointment fields are updated, cancel the slot first, then enter the new client.