Nopali Initial SetupNopali Initial SetupIn order to properly set up the scheduler, you need to have entered Locations (described in a previous step here). Press the 'Calendar' icon in the Nopali Toolbar and select the 'Calendar>Calendar Settings' menu item.
The Appointments Tab is used to set predefined appointment specifications. Although not absolutely required, this may be used to facilitate the creation of repetitive types of appointments. For example, you may want to create default time lengths for 'follow-up' appoinments, or another for 'initial consultation'.
To create an appointment template, simply press the 'Add' button near the bottom of the panel. A new entry will be created in the table. Single-click on a value in the table to modify the 'Reason' and 'Duration' values.
You can set the order of appearance of the templates by dragging and dropping a row within the table. Pressing 'Sort By Reason' will arrange the rows alphabetically by Reason.
The scheduler is organized into columns that represent office resources. For example, if in Office A there are 2 exam rooms and 1 treatment room, then you would need 3 columns, one for each room. Doing this prevents you from double-booking a room, since it is unlikely that you would see 2 patients in the same room at the same time.
To create a column in the scheduler, press the 'Add' button. A new row will appear in the table. You can then single-click on the label field to edit it to your liking (like Exam Room 1, OR, etc). You should also select the appropriate 'Location' for that particular column.
Columns can be reordered by draging and dropping rows within the table. This will reorder the columns as they appear on the main Nopali window.
You can setup the default behaviour of the scheduler by using the Calendar Defaults tab. Whenever you look at a new day in the scheduler, it will look at these defaults and determine what behaviour to use. Once you look at a day, you must use the 'This Day' tab to make any changes to the default for that particular day.
You can set the default behaviour for each day of the week. Settings include the opening and closing time and the time interval that the day is divided into. The 'Schedule Columns' table is used to check columns that should be visible for a particular day of the week. If nothing is checked in the table, then all columns are visible.
You can color-code scheduler elements using this view. For example, office staff may be given a color so that all appointments associated with that particular staff member will have an associated color.
To change a color, simply select one of the rows in the Staff, Locations or Appointment Templates table and click on the color selector box:
We suggest that you stick with soft pastel colors for Staff and shades of gray for Locations.
The 'This Day' tab is used to override the default behaviour for a particular day. For example, if most of the time, Mondays start at 10, but for a particular date it starts at 11, you would then override the default for this particular day. It functions similar to the 'Calendar Defaults' tab, but only affects a particular date.
You can also add a comment for a particular day, like 'Dr X On Call' or 'Dr Y On Holidays'. This comment will also be visible on the main Nopali scheduler window.