Create Your Calendar Event Types

Create Event Types For Scheduling

Event Types are used not only for scheduling, but also to identify types of charts, as well as services for billing.  Examples of Event Types are ‘Initial Consultation‘, ‘Follow-Up Visit‘, ‘Acupuncture‘, ‘IV Session‘, etc.  These Event Types serve not only to represent appointments in the calendar, but also what type of Medical Chart you can create, and what services you are billing the patient for.

Regardless of the type of OutSmart account you have, setting up Event Types is an important step.  Event Types are created and modified using the Event Manager.

The Event Manager is located within the Calendar Module. There are three categories of Event Types, and two Event Type Scopes.

Event Type Categories

The three Event Type Categories are Patient Event, Non-Patient Event, and Background Event.

• Patient Events refer to events where a patient must be involved in some way.  These are basically your patient appointment types of events, like a First Visit or an Acupuncture session.
• Non-Patient Events are events where a patient is not involved.  These are typically events like meetings, lunches, vacations, breaks, etc.
• Background Events are primarily used to add colored areas to your calendar for organizational purposes.  They are not functional event types and do not affect any other area of the system.  They simply allow you to color-code the background of your calendar.

Event Type Scopes

The two Event Type Scopes are Practitioner Event and Office Event.

• Practitioner Events are event types that are unique to a specific practitioner.  For example, let’s say that you are the only acupuncturist in an office of other types of health care professionals.  Then you would create a Practitioner Event Type called “Acupuncture First Visit”.  This would be a Practitioner Event Type because no one else in the office offers this specific service.
• Office Events are events that are offered by several different practitioners in the office, and all the data about the event is common, including the price, duration, description, confirmation message, questionnaires, and attachments.  On the online booking page, office events can be presented as being offered by a group of the practitioners in the office, as opposed to a single practitioner at a time.

Creating A New Event Type

To create a new event type, first open the Calendar Module by clicking on the purple calendar icon in the top toolbar at the right.

Click on the Calendar Module icon in the top main toolbar to access the calendar on any page.

Once the calendar is loaded, you will then click on the “gear” icon just above the calendar at to the right of the day, week, and month view buttons.  This will open a small menu.  Click on the Event Manager in that menu.

Click on the ‘gear’ icon, then click on Event Manager.

You will now be able to see the Event Manager area.  It is in this area that you can create and edit events.

The Event Manager

Note To Admin Staff:  If you are logged in to an Admin account, you will see an additional Practitioner Selector in the Top Toolbar for this page.  This will allow you to select for which practitioner you are creating or editing events.  It is important to ensure you have selected the correct practitioner before proceeding with the rest of this tutorial.

To create an event, click on the +New Event Type button at the top to open the Event Type Editor.  To create your first event, select and fill out all the relevant options, and then click on the blue Save button at the bottom of the Event Type Editor.

The Event Type Editor is used to create or edit event types for use in the Calendar.

Event Type Editor Options

• Title:  This is the name of your event, and will be seen by patients when booking online.
• Event Category: This is the category of the Event Type.  See above for descriptions of your options.
• Event Scope: This is the scope of the Event Type:  See above for descriptions of your options.
• Event Description:  This is the description of your event that will be seen by patients.  Tip: If you want your patients to know the price of your event, then enter it here to make it a part of your descriptions.  We do not show event pricing to patients by default.
• Duration:  This is the duration of your event, not including any break or buffer time.
• Price: This is the price of your event, not including any taxes.
• Buffer: This is the amount of free time you want after this Event Type before your will allow another booking.
• Interval: This setting is only relevant if you have turned off Magnetic Booking.  When Magnetic Booking is off, this will determine the intervals at which this specific Event Type will be shown in the online booking calendar.  For example, if you start work at 9:00am and you specify an interval of 60 minutes, then this specific Event Type will be offered and 9:00am, 10:00am, 11:00am, etc.
• Email Confirmation Message: This is the message that will be sent to your patients automatically when they book online.  If you are booking patients into the calendar manually, this is the message that will be included as part of the confirmation message when the ‘Send Confirmation Message’ button is clicked in the calendar.  Keep in mind that the header of the confirmation message by default contains all the pertinent information about this event, so your message should be focused on welcoming the patient and providing some additional details about the visit, or instructions on how to prepare for the visit.
• Select Questionnaires To Include: This menu will allow you to select one or many SmartForms that you want to include automatically in the confirmation message for this Event Type.  For example, for a First Visit, you may want to automatically include your Initial Adult Intake Form with every booking.
• Select Document Attachments To Include:  This will allow you to select documents from your OutSmart Documents Module to attach to the confirmation e-mail.
• Appointment Reminders:  This allows you to specify reminder rules for this specific Event Type.  Note that you must first create the Event Type and save it, and then click on the Edit button for this Event Type in the left column of the Event Manager table to set reminders.  Most people typically set reminders to go out 2 days before the events.