Healthengine's Dental4Windows Integration: Benefits & Troubleshooting Follow

Healthengine's Dental4Windows integration syncs with your Centaur e-Appointments, allowing you to manage appointments efficiently and display availability online.

If you're not set up for e-Appointments with Centaur, you’ll need to use one of our non-integrated solutions, which you can read more about here. For practices using e-Appointments, below you'll find a complete overview of the integration and its benefits.

Contents

• Benefits of the Integration for Your Practice
• How Does it Work?
• Setting Up Appointment Types
• Troubleshooting
  • Adding a New Practitioner
  • Missing Practitioner Books or Appointment Types
  • Preset Slots Not Showing or Reducing Bookings
  • Availability Issues
• Optimisation Tips

Benefits of the Integration for Your Practice?

• Time-saving: Automatically publish available appointments across the Healthengine Network, removing the need for manual publishing and reducing front-desk workload.
• More patients: With more patients searching for dentists online, this integration ensures your practice is visible and easily accessible.
• Peace of mind: Both Centaur and Healthengine provide seamless support to resolve any issues.
• Superior security: Enhanced protection against malicious attacks and malware to keep your practice safe.

How Does it Work?

We connect to Centaur e-Appointments via an API, which means no software installation is required, and it operates independently of server computers. This removes hardware issues that might affect other systems.

You can adjust what availability is shown online directly from Dental4Windows. There are three options:

1. 1. Free time only: Only blank slots in your appointment diary are available for online booking.
   2. Preset slots only: You manually create slots to publish online.
   3. Both free and preset slots: A combination of both options.

You can also select which doctors' books will be connected to Healthengine, decide how far in advance you want to publish availability (up to 90 days), and set the communication interval between the systems to 1 minute for optimal performance.

Setting Up Appointment Types

In your Centaur Portal, allocate the e-Appointment types to each practitioner and set the required length for each type:

In your Healthengine portal, link your appointment types to the e-Appointments you've created in the Centaur portal. Match the appointment length in both systems to ensure successful integration. When a patient selects an appointment type online, the integration automatically inserts the appointment into your Dental4Windows diary with the correct duration.

Please Note: Online cancellations are not supported. Patients will need to contact your practice to cancel or reschedule appointments. You can manually remove the cancelled appointment from the D4W diary to make it available for another patient.

Troubleshooting

Adding a New Practitioner

To add a new practitioner:

1. Add them in your D4W software.
2. Enable the practitioner to sync in e-Appointments.
3. Log into the Centaur e-Appointments portal, assign appointment reasons, and set appointment lengths for online booking.
4. Log into the Healthengine practice admin portal and add the practitioner, linking the appointment types between the two systems.

Please Note: If you are using the preset slots setup for your e-Appointments, you will need to set those up for your new practitioner, and also ensure your preset slots are setup correctly, see here for further instruction.

Missing Practitioner Books or Appointment Types

If you’re not seeing a practitioner's appointment book in Healthengine, ensure they are enabled to sync for e-Appointments in D4W under Options, then Setup e-Appointments. If new appointment types are missing, refresh the appointment types in Healthengine by navigating to Appointments Setup, then Appointment Types and pressing the refresh button.

Please Note: You may need to contact Centaur for additional licences if yours are all in use.

Preset Slots Not Showing or Reducing Bookings

Ensure preset slots are ticked for online display, and work time is set to "yes." If you aren’t getting enough bookings, consider switching to publishing free time instead of preset slots. Free time publishing increases availability without manual intervention, reducing administrative effort and increasing booking opportunities.

To make this change, in Dental4Windows, go to: Go To -> Location Setup -> General -> eServices:

Once you are in the eServices menu, select 'Types of slots for the sync', and you will see the option for Free time:

Availability Issues

If the availability displayed on Healthengine is incorrect, first check how it's displayed on your own website using Dental4Windows' e-Appointments system. If the issue is consistent across both platforms, contact Dental4Windows for support. If only Healthengine shows incorrect availability, contact the Healthengine Support Team via phone, live chat or email support@healthengine.com.au. 

Optimisation Tips

• Limit appointment types to around 6 per practitioner to avoid overwhelming patients with too many choices.
• Use free time publishing to minimize manual work and ensure maximum availability for patients.
• Add a cancellation policy to your booking form to inform patients about cancellation procedures.
• Regularly talk to your patients about their booking experience to identify any confusing language or additional appointment types that may be beneficial.

By following these steps, you’ll be able to manage your appointments efficiently and enhance your practice's visibility and patient satisfaction.

If you have any questions, experience any issues or need assistance with troubleshooting, please reach out to our friendly Healthengine Support Team via phone, live chat or email support@healthengine.com.au.