Here is my one last plea about the default calendar GUI in OEMR ...
I just installed the v3.0 release and it went very smoothly (special thanks to Brady!). When I logged in for the very first time I got the the default calendar: Pink and 8AM. I clicked on Week view, then Month view. !! BAM !! The whole calender GUI changes. This was the primary reason I dug into the calendar code well over a year ago.
The default month (and year) view looks nothing like the day or week view. To make matters worse, when you click on Add or Search in the month view you get an entirely different way of adding and searching than if you were on the day/week view.
If we're trying to 'sell' people on this product we've really got to either clean up the default calendar UI or switch over to the Outlook style as the default. To me, and most of my users, the biggest hurdle to adopting OpenEMR is the inconsistent GUI. Especially in the calendar screens.
I know that as the developer of the Outlook calendar style I've got a particular interest in it. But I hope that my comments above are taken with a certain level of seriousness.
Jason
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I don't think the default month and year views are very popular. Might be good to disable them (with the option of re-enabling) and see if anyone complains.
Also I'd like to see some more user feedback on the different calendar styles. That would help us to select the best default.
Rod
www.sunsetsystems.com
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We use the "default" style with day view and like that very much. We have two to three therapists and one physician on the schedule. So the daily view is not too crowded with the low number of providers we have in the office on a daily basis.
I tried the Outlook style and found it was not easily readable with a full day of appointments ( or I may not have had it configured properly). Also, with the Outlook style, I noticed that one was unable to change the appointment time by simply clicking on the time of the appointment like you can with the default calendar.
-Mike
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I use my own home-made calendar. It's simple and optimized for my little practice. I don't think it would work for multiple practitioners, but I could put it in the contrib directory if anyone ever wants to try it.
How do you enable Outlook style?
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I also agree that our "out of box" calendar is a bit of a problem, and I'm guessing some potential users have given up because the calendar "didn't work" because they didn't know to make an "In office" appt. I am leaning towards Jason's outlook style with a couple stipulatons:
The first is simple, and is placing a (back) link in the search menu to return to calendar if search is empty.
The second is the main issue regarding clicking on calendar to make new appt. Instead of trying to get this to work by clicking on the time (which as I remember, you can't do because of multiple users; you actually have it enabled in weeks view which doesn't work because it only adds a new appt for Monday of the week).
Is there a way to have a double-click in the "empty" box intersected by the user and time to then give a new appt menu at that time?
The in office field will need some special treatment also. If users have set an "in office" time, you should also not allow double-clicking to edit anywhere except on the words "IN" and "OUT" because I could see a user converting a "IN" field to their new appointment by mistake.
I hope my explanations make sense.
I think if this functionality was sorted out, then nothing would be lost going to outlook calendar and a lot gained.
-brady
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I just tested out your calendar again, looks like some changes. The add new appointments is much better.
In daily view there is still the issue of when clicking a time it selects the first practitioner. Perhaps if you allowed clicking on and highlighting of a selected physician in the calendar (when showing multiple practitioners) then this should be intuitive enough for users. ie, if the user selects multiple practitioners, they can then highlight practitioners name (could default to first practitioner listed) in the 1st row of calendar, then click on the time to add a new appt.
In weekly view I'd suggest the same mechanism. You actually already do highlight a day in the week view and the new appointment uses it when click time. I'd suggest that the user can click on each day to highlight (instead of going to day view of that day), so then when they click on time it makes appointment on that day.
hope this makes sense
-brady
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hey,
After we finish the next bug release, would that be a good time to make Jason's calendar default? This would then maximize testing time during development cycle to polish it.
-brady
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I've made the simplest feature updates to the calendar code, as Brady has seen.
I can take a look at the 'click in calendar' potential, similar to how Google Calendar works. However, it might involve a long development time. It was tricky enough to rework the PostNuke calendar with its Smarty tag codes to have the Outlook style calendar. I can explain how some general concepts if anyone is interested.
Jason
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I have no problem with making the Outlook style the default, even though I don't use it. For me the month view is best because I have only one provider, but she sees people at four general "locations", one of which is "House Calls", and they are interspersed.
I do recognize though that a multi-provider clinic would see a single-day multi provider view as better. That is the point; do not PREVENT either.
One way to make the Outlook style better would be to allow users to select labels based on the appointment. Seeing 30 heads on a chart is less valuable than seeing the 30 patient names, the appointment types with color coding (even if to save display space you put only a legend of the colors with their type shown), their start & duration, with the provider shown atop, or on a tab, with the schedule for each on a separate tab. If the info which is better displayed currently in the non-Outlook style were able to display in the Outlook style, we would rapidly have little reason except familiarity to support the older style. But based on Jason's feedback, the last time it was revised was 2005, which is the pleistocene in computer time.
So I would personally support a single Calendar UI if we could make it more informative for the single user provider whose hands will be busy with other things, and if need be require the clerical staff for multi-user views to move the mouse for "more info".
Joe Holzer
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Is the only way to change an appointment time to click on the hyperlink of the scheduled patient and then change the appointment time once inside their chart?
I liked the default calendar option of being able to click on the hyperlink of the appointment time to change a patient's appointment to a different time and day without having to enter the patient's chart.
I am testing with latest CVS downloaded today (3-21-09)
-Mike
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This would give lots of development/testing time. We should commit to figuring out way to allow intuitive new appt clicking on this calendar during this development cycle also. Sounds like most straightforward way will be allowing highlighting of columns (already done in weekly calendar). Then clicking a time will pop up a new appt time for user(day calendar)/day(week calendar)in the highlighted column; this seems intuitive and should suffice.
-brady
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Here is my one last plea about the default calendar GUI in OEMR ...
I just installed the v3.0 release and it went very smoothly (special thanks to Brady!). When I logged in for the very first time I got the the default calendar: Pink and 8AM. I clicked on Week view, then Month view. !! BAM !! The whole calender GUI changes. This was the primary reason I dug into the calendar code well over a year ago.
The default month (and year) view looks nothing like the day or week view. To make matters worse, when you click on Add or Search in the month view you get an entirely different way of adding and searching than if you were on the day/week view.
If we're trying to 'sell' people on this product we've really got to either clean up the default calendar UI or switch over to the Outlook style as the default. To me, and most of my users, the biggest hurdle to adopting OpenEMR is the inconsistent GUI. Especially in the calendar screens.
I know that as the developer of the Outlook calendar style I've got a particular interest in it. But I hope that my comments above are taken with a certain level of seriousness.
Jason
I don't think the default month and year views are very popular. Might be good to disable them (with the option of re-enabling) and see if anyone complains.
Also I'd like to see some more user feedback on the different calendar styles. That would help us to select the best default.
Rod
www.sunsetsystems.com
We use the "default" style with day view and like that very much. We have two to three therapists and one physician on the schedule. So the daily view is not too crowded with the low number of providers we have in the office on a daily basis.
I tried the Outlook style and found it was not easily readable with a full day of appointments ( or I may not have had it configured properly). Also, with the Outlook style, I noticed that one was unable to change the appointment time by simply clicking on the time of the appointment like you can with the default calendar.
-Mike
I use my own home-made calendar. It's simple and optimized for my little practice. I don't think it would work for multiple practitioners, but I could put it in the contrib directory if anyone ever wants to try it.
How do you enable Outlook style?
In "Admin" under the user settings, look for "Calendar UI:" and choose "Outlook."
hey,
I also agree that our "out of box" calendar is a bit of a problem, and I'm guessing some potential users have given up because the calendar "didn't work" because they didn't know to make an "In office" appt. I am leaning towards Jason's outlook style with a couple stipulatons:
The first is simple, and is placing a (back) link in the search menu to return to calendar if search is empty.
The second is the main issue regarding clicking on calendar to make new appt. Instead of trying to get this to work by clicking on the time (which as I remember, you can't do because of multiple users; you actually have it enabled in weeks view which doesn't work because it only adds a new appt for Monday of the week).
Is there a way to have a double-click in the "empty" box intersected by the user and time to then give a new appt menu at that time?
The in office field will need some special treatment also. If users have set an "in office" time, you should also not allow double-clicking to edit anywhere except on the words "IN" and "OUT" because I could see a user converting a "IN" field to their new appointment by mistake.
I hope my explanations make sense.
I think if this functionality was sorted out, then nothing would be lost going to outlook calendar and a lot gained.
-brady
Jason,
I just tested out your calendar again, looks like some changes. The add new appointments is much better.
In daily view there is still the issue of when clicking a time it selects the first practitioner. Perhaps if you allowed clicking on and highlighting of a selected physician in the calendar (when showing multiple practitioners) then this should be intuitive enough for users. ie, if the user selects multiple practitioners, they can then highlight practitioners name (could default to first practitioner listed) in the 1st row of calendar, then click on the time to add a new appt.
In weekly view I'd suggest the same mechanism. You actually already do highlight a day in the week view and the new appointment uses it when click time. I'd suggest that the user can click on each day to highlight (instead of going to day view of that day), so then when they click on time it makes appointment on that day.
hope this makes sense
-brady
hey,
After we finish the next bug release, would that be a good time to make Jason's calendar default? This would then maximize testing time during development cycle to polish it.
-brady
If we added the ability to click on the time slot to add an appt to the Outlook style it would be nearly perfect.
--Tony
www.mi-squared.com
I've made the simplest feature updates to the calendar code, as Brady has seen.
I can take a look at the 'click in calendar' potential, similar to how Google Calendar works. However, it might involve a long development time. It was tricky enough to rework the PostNuke calendar with its Smarty tag codes to have the Outlook style calendar. I can explain how some general concepts if anyone is interested.
Jason
Folks;
I have no problem with making the Outlook style the default, even though I don't use it. For me the month view is best because I have only one provider, but she sees people at four general "locations", one of which is "House Calls", and they are interspersed.
I do recognize though that a multi-provider clinic would see a single-day multi provider view as better. That is the point; do not PREVENT either.
One way to make the Outlook style better would be to allow users to select labels based on the appointment. Seeing 30 heads on a chart is less valuable than seeing the 30 patient names, the appointment types with color coding (even if to save display space you put only a legend of the colors with their type shown), their start & duration, with the provider shown atop, or on a tab, with the schedule for each on a separate tab. If the info which is better displayed currently in the non-Outlook style were able to display in the Outlook style, we would rapidly have little reason except familiarity to support the older style. But based on Jason's feedback, the last time it was revised was 2005, which is the pleistocene in computer time.
So I would personally support a single Calendar UI if we could make it more informative for the single user provider whose hands will be busy with other things, and if need be require the clerical staff for multi-user views to move the mouse for "more info".
Joe Holzer
Is the only way to change an appointment time to click on the hyperlink of the scheduled patient and then change the appointment time once inside their chart?
I liked the default calendar option of being able to click on the hyperlink of the appointment time to change a patient's appointment to a different time and day without having to enter the patient's chart.
I am testing with latest CVS downloaded today (3-21-09)
-Mike
hey,
Just double click the appointment time slot (anywhere but the name link).
-brady
I got it now. I didn't think to double click on the time slot because it did not look like a hyper link. Thanks!!
-Mike
hey,
Is it time to pass the torch to Jason's calendar.
This would give lots of development/testing time. We should commit to figuring out way to allow intuitive new appt clicking on this calendar during this development cycle also. Sounds like most straightforward way will be allowing highlighting of columns (already done in weekly calendar). Then clicking a time will pop up a new appt time for user(day calendar)/day(week calendar)in the highlighted column; this seems intuitive and should suffice.
-brady