Taking Your Schedule With You

Being able to refer to your schedule when you are outside the office is a critically important feature, and IntelliPract® / InSched have several mechanisms to allow you to do that. You can use one or all of them.

Be aware that any mechanism that distributes patient information / PHI out of the office can result in unauthorized distribution of that information. You are fully responsible for ensuring that all patient privacy and PHI protections are in place.

Scheduled Email

One of the simplest ways is to have IntelliPract® / InSched mail a copy of your schedule to you as a pdf file every evening. That way, not only do you have ready access to what is on your schedule, you also have a ready backup of the schedule should something happen to your office, or something prevent you from returning to your office.

In order to send emails, you will need to Configure your SMTP Server to be able to send emails.

Setup Email Export

After you have Configured your SMTP Server, go to the Setup menu, and select Email Export. You will see a warning about protecting confidential patient information. You are fully responsible for protecting that patient information.

Setup multiple email configuration schedules

IntelliPract® / InSched allow you to have more than one email sending schedule. For example, you may want to send yourself the schedule for the past 30 days and the upcoming year on weekdays, and going back one year and forward one year on Friday evening. Or you might want to send each of the doctors in the office only their own patients. The emails might need to go out at different times during the day, and to different email addresses.

In the Email Setup Export dialog, you will see a navigation bar at the top left, with text like "Record 1 of 2". That is where you can create and navigate through your various email export configuration. Use the "+" button to create a new email configuration, and the arrow buttons to navigate among the configurations. The "-" button will delete one of your configurations.

For each configuration, you can set the number of days in the past and into the future you want included, select the Resources, Locations, and Event Types you want included (if you uncheck all the boxes, there will be no filtering by that parameter), whether you want to include Plan information, whether you want each day's schedule on a separate page, which File Format to use (you will usually want PDF), and which Report Format to use.

The Report Formats can be changed and edited from the Setup / Preferences dialog, on the Reporting tab.

Setup email recipients, subject, and message

In the section in the lower left, you can enter one or more email addresses "To" and "Cc". Separate multiple addresses with either comma or semicolon.

You can also enter the Subject and Body for the emails here.

All of these are set per-email-configuration. If you have multiple email configurations, you will need to enter this information for each of them.

Setup the sending schedule

In the upper right, you can select the time that the email will be sent, along with the day or days of the week you want to send them. Check the "Disabled" checkbox if you do not want to send this configuration at those dates and times.

Again, the sending schedule is also per-email-configuration, so you will need to set it for each configuration you are using.

Test your email configuration

Finally, you can click the "Send Now" button to actually send the email specified by the configuration you are looking at. This is also per-email-configuration, and will only send the email for the current configuration shown.

Save your email configurations

When you are done, click "OK" to save all of the configurations you have been working on. Alternatively, click "Cancel" to discard all the unsaved changes you have made to any of the configurations.

Once the email configurations have been saved, the emails will go out as scheduled.

Google Calendar Integration

While an emailed schedule can be sent out once or several times each day, the Google Calendar integration allows your Google Calendar, on all your devices (computer, web pages, tablets, and phones) to be continuously updated, so you always know the current status of your schedule.

Google Calendar is a free service of Google that allows you to track multiple schedules online. Google also provides apps and systems to synchronize your other systems and devices with your Google Calendar, including your iPhone, and allows outside programs to synchronize their schedules with Google Calendar.

You can set up InSched to synchronize some or all of your calendar with Google Calendar, so you can access your InSched calendar online and via your mobile device. You can also use Google Calendar and your mobile device to add appointments to your InSched calendar while on the road. You can even just click on the patient's phone number on your iPhone calendar, and iPhone will dial your patient so you can talk to her!

Setting up google calendar synchronization with InSched

TL;DR -- Summary Instructions for Google Calendar

1. Decide which Google account you want to use, and which Google Calendar within that account you want to synchronize with InSched. Within that Google Account, create the Calendar you want to use.

2. Open InSched, and then Setup / Google Calendar Upload

3. In the Setup Google Calender Upload dialog, use the upper left corner to set up the Google Account and Calendar within that account you want to synchronize. Note the top navigation bar - you can use that to set up multiple Accounts and Calendars if you want to.

4. Enter a Google Account Nickname of your choosing, and click the "Authorize" button. Your browser will open to a Google Account sign in page. Select or enter the email address for the Google Account you want to use, and you will see a warning that "Google hasn't verified this app." See below if you want to know why. Select "Advanced", and then "Go to ptconn.com (unsafe)"

5. You will see a page that says "ptconn.com wants access to your Google Account." Click "Continue". You will then enter your login credentials into the Google page, and then be redirected to the Patient Connection page with the message "Authorization Successful!"

6. Go back to InSched, with the Setup Google Calendar Upload dialog still visible. Click the "Get Cal List" button to populate the drop-down combo box with the calendars within that account. Use the combo box to select the Google Calendar you want to use.

7. Set the checkboxes within the top left section to configure the overall synchronization. Recommended settings are: Do Full Sync checked, Remove events outside synch range unchecked, Do Update Sync checked, 15 minutes between update syncs, Sync Note checked, With Every Update checked, Sync Note every 60 minutes, Do Download Sync unchecked (unless you want the InSched calendar to download new events from your Google Calendar)

8. In the lower left corner of the dialog, there is another navigation bar. This section is for the Sync Specs to use with that Google Calendar, which determine which events will be uploaded to Google Calendar. Start with 30 Days in past to synchronize and 300 Days in future to synchronize. Leave Resouces, Locations, and Event Types each set to "All". In the checkboxes below, check all of them except "Blocks".

9. In the top right corner of the dialog, select the days and times each day you want to run a Full Sync, to ensure that Google Calendar is completely updated. You can leave all the days checked. For the PHI combo box drop-down, select whether you want to upload "Full PHI", "Initials Only", or "None", depending on whether you want to upload PHI. Be aware that even "None" will upload dates and so forth, which may be considered PHI for regulatory purposes. You are responsible for any PHI you choose to upload.

10. In the right lower corner of the dialog, set Show Progress in Progress Tab and Save Configuration on Exit checked. Click "Save Configuration". If you want to test your configuration, click the "Synchronize" button, but it can take quite a while the first time. Once you are done, click "Close Window".

The Details of Google Calendar

About Google Calendar

To setup Google Calendar Upload, you will need to know a little about Google Calendar.

First, you need a free Google account to use Google Calendar. You can use your main Google login to set that up, but you might consider setting up a separate Google account for your InSched calendar, for two reasons. First, you will need to login to the Google Account you will use, and might be concerned about that. This is less of a problem with modern authorization systems, such as OAUTH, used by Google Calendar Upload.

Perhaps a more important reason is that Google sometimes, and unpredictably, locks out a Google Calendar account if it believes there has been too much activity. If Google does that to your account, it may be weeks before the lock expires. This is likely only while you are setting up your Google Calendar synch, but it is something to consider.

Each Google account can create a "main" calendar and multiple "secondary" calendars. The Google account is named for an email address (either a gmail.com email address or an outside email address). The email address has to be one where you can actually receive email, to confirm your account. The "main" calendar for the account is named for the email address that also names the account. While every calendar is owned by a single Google account, you can share any calendar with one or more other Google accounts. When you share a calendar, you can share it "read-only" or "read-write".

When a calendar becomes "locked out", that calendar can no longer accept any changes (from any account, including an account sharing that calendar), and further, all of the calendars of its account are locked out. Google is secretive about how this "quota" system works, and refuses to give the details, but there are rumors that the quota is 5000 changes per day. Reading events from a calendar does not seem to be limited. Of course, Google could change this at any time.

Thus, there are probably an infinite number of ways to set this up, I will describe setting up a separate Google account used by both InSched and your iPhone. You will be able to access both your InSched calendar and your regular, personal Google Calendar on your iPhone.

Creating the Google Calendar to use

To start, first get a free Google Calendar account (Google "Google Calendar" to start) and create a calendar in that account. If you want, you can create multiple calendars -- different calendars will have events shown in different colors both online and on your iPhone. If you want to access the calendars (either with InSched or your iPhone) from a different Google account than the one that owns them, share the calendars with the Google accounts that will be accessing them. Be sure to set the local timezone for your calendar to the timezone that you use with InSched.

Connect InSched to the Google Calendar

Start InSched from a computer that has access to the Internet. InSched uses https to talk to Google Calendar, and can use a proxy. InSched does not try to verify Google's certificate, so you should have no problem using a proxy.

Once you have InSched up and running, and you have configured InSched with your schedule, go to Setup/Google Calendar Upload within InSched. First, take a look at this dialog.

InSched allows you to synchronize with several Google Calendars. Those Google Calendars can be accessed with one Google account or with several different Google accounts. The upper portion of the dialog describes each Google Calendar.

Within each Google Calendar, you can synch several different event specifications. For example, you may want to include consult events within the past 60 days, but surgeries for the past two years, and vacations for the past five years and into the future. Each of these event specifications are configured on the lower portion of this dialog.

Enter a nickname of your choosing for the first Google account that InSched will use to access the calendar. If you access the Internet via a proxy, set that up on the Diagnostics and Proxy tab.

Enter a Google Account Nickname of your choosing, and click the "Authorize" button. Your browser will open to a Google Account sign in page. Select or enter the email address for the Google Account you want to use, and you will see a warning that "Google hasn't verified this app." See below if you want to know why. Select "Advanced", and then "Go to ptconn.com (unsafe)"

You will see a page that says "ptconn.com wants access to your Google Account." Click "Continue". You will then enter your login credentials into the Google page, and then be redirected to the Patient Connection page with the message "Authorization Successful!"

Go back to InSched, with the Setup Google Calendar Upload dialog still visible.

Click the "Get Cal List" button to populate the drop-down combo box with the calendars within that account. Use the combo box to select the Google Calendar you want to use.

Select the Events to Synchronize to Google Calendar

Each Google Calendar can have several Sync Specs. The Sync Specs are configured on the bottom left panel. Use the controls here to set the number of days in the past and in the future to synchronize, the Resources, Locations, and Event Types to include, and the kinds of Event Types to include.

Any given event will need to meet ALL of the criteria set in a given Synch Spec in order to be uploaded to Google. The default is to upload all events within the given timeframe except for Blocks. "Upload Others" refers to all non-block Event Types other than the named Trigger Types of Surgery, Procedures, Consult, and Ongoing.

Once you have set up the first Sync Spec for a calendar, you can press the "+" button in the lower navigator control to create a second Sync Spec for that calendar. An event will be uploaded if it meets the criteria in any of the Sync Specs for that calendar.

For example, you might want to upload all Surgery events within two years, and all other non-block events within 60 days. Set up one Synch Spec with Days in Past and Days in Future of 720 days, and in the checkboxes in the bottom, uncheck all except "Upload Surgery". Then, create a second Synch Spec, set Days in Past and Days in Future to 60 days, and leave the checkboxes at the default of everything checked except "Upload Blocks".

If there are multiple providers on the schedule and you only want your own events, select the Resources you want with the Resources button. If you want to fine-tune the specific Event Types, select the ones you want with the "Event Types" button, but remember that ALL of the conditions in the Sync Spec must be met to upload a specific event. However, if ALL of the conditions in ANY of the Sync Specs are met, the event will be uploaded.

You can use the navigator in the bottom panel to set up the Synch Specs for a given Google Calendar. Use the navigator in the top panel to switch to different Google Calendars to configure. Different Google Calendars can be for different practitioners, or can be for different colors on the iPhone of a single practitioner. Of course, you can put multiple practitioners' events into a single Google Calendar if you want.

Select the PHI you want to upload

For the PHI combo box drop-down, select whether you want to upload "Full PHI", "Initials Only", or "None", depending on whether you want to upload PHI. Be aware that even "None" will upload dates and so forth, which may be considered PHI for regulatory purposes. You are responsible for any PHI you choose to upload.

Configure when the schedule is synchronized

Now look again at the upper right panel in the Setup Google Calendar Upload Dialog. Each Google Calendar, with its multiple Sync Specs, can be synched with Google on its own schedule.

A "Full Synchronize" gets all of the events on the Google Calendar in question and checks them to be sure they are up to date. InSched adds a special marker to every event it uploads to Google Calendar, so that InSched will not interfere with non-InSched events on that calendar.

For every InSched event found on the Google Calendar, InSched determines whether it still qualifies for uploading to that Google Calendar, and if so, if it is up-to-date with InSched. If it no longer qualifies for uploading, InSched will delete it. If it still qualifies but is out of date, InSched will update it.

If the event still qualifies for uploading by every criteria except date (e.g., a Consult event in the example above that is now 61 days in the past), InSched will look at the "Remove others" checkbox for that calendar. If "Remove events outside date range" is checked, InSched will remove it. If "Remove events outside date range" is not checked, InSched will leave the "old", but still up-to-date, event on Google.

While InSched is doing the Full Synchronization, it is building a representation of the events on Google in memory, and will use that image to keep Google updated as changes are made to InSched. If InSched is restarted, a new Full Synchronization is required to get that information from Google back into memory. Since only changes are sent to Google, the Full Synchronizations will not count toward your Google Calendar quota except for changes that need to be uploaded.

To do a Full Synchronization, click the "Synchronize" button while that calendar is the current calendar in the upper panel of the dialog. Once the calendar has been synchronized, InSched can keep Google up to date by adding, updating, and deleting events on Google as they are changed in InSched. InSched calls that an "Update", and you can manually run an Update by clicking the "Update" button. Of course, InSched must already have done a Full Synchronization with that calendar before doing an Update. Occasionally, a network or other error will prevent an event from being Updated on Google. When that happens, InSched can Re-Send the event. You can do that manually by clicking the "Re-Send" button.

Normally, InSched will automatically do a Full Synchronization once a day, and then keep Google up-to-date as changes are made. To prevent that, check the "Disabled" checkbox for that Google Calendar. Pick the days and time to do the Full Synchronization for each calendar in the panel in the upper right. Check the "Do Full Sync" checkbox to have InSched do the scheduled Full Synchronizations, and check the "Do Update Sync" checkbox for the continuous updates. "Mins between" is the number of minutes between sending the Updates to Google. For immediate updates, set that to zero. Note that, to be polite, InSched can wait until you are not using the program to send the updates - use the Setup/Preferences dialog, go to the Synchronization tab, and set the Minutes of quiet time before synch to a number other than zero to make InSched wait.

Configuring downloading events from Google Calendar into InSched

In addition to uploading events to Google Calendar, InSched can also download events you add to Google Calendar in the web or with your iPhone, and add them to your InSched calendar. This is great for adding events you find out about when you are outside the office. It is intentionally limited to adding, rather than changing, events, since it is way too easy to accidentally move an event on Google Calendar - consider the ramifications of accidentally moving a surgery to a different date. Google Calendar has none of the audit tracking and reliability features of InSched. However, the ability to add an event to InSched while you are on the road is a great convenience. Use the Downloads panel to set this up.

Be sure the "Do Download Sync" checkbox is checked, and "Disable All Downloads" is not, for the calendar you want to download from Google into InSched. The difference between those two checkboxes is that "Do Download Sync" refers to automated, repeated downloads, whereas "Disable All Downloads" refers to those downloads as well as downloads performed manually by clicking the "Synchronize" button.

You need to set a "Download Cookie". This is a brief word or phrase that you will enter into your new event entered on the road. When InSched sees the download cookie in a non-InSched event on this calendar, InSched will know to download the event into InSched. InSched will then replace the cookie in the event on Google and turn the event into an InSched event. When you notice from your iPhone that the download cookie is gone, you will know that InSched has downloaded the event, and it is successfully added to your InSched schedule.

"Mins Between" for downloads is the number of minutes between the times InSched checks Google for new events. Remember that, for Update, InSched won't actually contact Google unless there is an event to update, but InSched will have to constantly, around the clock, check with Google for events to download. InSched tries to be nice to Google by telling Google the download cookie and only asking for events that contain that cookie (so Google does not have to send all of the events on the calendar!), but consider the load on Google if you make "Mins Between" too small.

Pick an Event Type for InSched to use for making the new events on the InSched schedule. One trick is to set the Event Type you use to be "Inactive", so it does not show up on the list of Event Types when your staff is adding events to InSched in the regular course of business. Also, you will probably want to set the Trigger Type for this Event Type to "None". If you make this Event Type a bright color, the staff will likely notice it easily when it appears. You can put the info about the event into the text from your iPhone, and you or your staff can change the Uploaded Event to a more appropriate event once you get back to the office.

Finally, don't forget to set the Resources and Locations for the newly-downloded events. If you and your partner both use your iPhones with different Google Calendars, you can be sure your downloaded events get added with the correct Resource. Alternatively, you can set the resource to be the default resources for the Event Type you choose.

Only single, non-recurring events can be downloaded from Google Calendar to InSched, but you can put a note in the event you create that you want your staff to schedule a recurring event.

Saving the Google Calendar Configuration

Once you have all of your configuration info set up for Google Calendar, you will want InSched to save it for use when you re-start InSched. InSched encrypts the information, using your Windows logon, and stores it in the Registry. Thus, if another user logs onto your computer, they will not be able to read or use your Google Calendar configuration. Another consequence of that is that, should you move to a different computer, you will need to re-enter this configuration information, but the alternative would be a security breach, if other users could read your informtion.

As an extra layer of security, InSched can further encrypt this information with a "vault password" of your choosing. The vault password will need to be entered both when InSched starts up (so it can read the configuration information itself) and also when opening the Setup Google Calendar Upload dialog, so someone else coming to your computer once InSched is running will not be able to see your Google configuration. Note that if you do not set a vault password, once you are logged into your computer, anyone with access to your computer will be able to start InSched, open the Setup Google Calendar Upload dialog, and see your configuration. They will also be able to open the SMTP Email dialog, and see your SMPT password.

To manually save your encrypted configuration to the registry, click "Save Configuration". To have the encrypted configuration automatically saved when you exit InSched, leave the "Save Configuration On Exit" checkbox checked. To reload the saved configuration from the registry (if you have messed up your configuration) click "Reload Configuration". Normally, the configuration is automatically loaded from the registry when InSched starts.

To delete the saved configuration from the registry, click "Delete Config". To set, change, or clear the vault password, click "Set Vault Password". Save a blank vault password to remove the vault password functionality.

"Close Window" hides this dialog and lets you go back to InSched. Note that automatic Full Synchronizations and Updates will not occur while the dialog is open.

Progress and Errors tab and Diagnostics and Proxy tab

These tabs are at the top of the Setup Google Calendar Upload dialog.

"Show Progress On Progress Tab" tells InSched to keep track of all Google Calendar activity on the Progress and Errors tab. Open that tab to see the log.

Copy to Clipboard (or right click on the window) to save some or all of the log to the Clipboard, for saving, emailing, etc. Check the "Save New Items To Logfile" checkbox to have any new activity also saved in the InSched.log logfile, for troubleshooting. "Clear", of course, clears the window.

The "Diagnostics and Proxy" tab has troubleshooting tools as well as proxy setup. A proxy is a network resource that you access and which grants you access to the Internet at large. Many businesses use proxies to limit the websites that employees can access from work. If you have a proxy, enter the proxy information in the Proxy Configuration panel. Check with your network administrator for this information.

The upper part of the Diagnostics and Proxy page contains diagnostic and troubleshooting tools. The nickname you set, along with the Google Calendar ID of the calendar are shown, along with part of the Access Token.

You can see what the timezone for this calendar is (you set that when you set up your calendar on Google), and when the last errors were. A "Forbidden" error occurs when you submit an incorrect username or password. The local cache must be up to date for the Update functionality to work (this is what holds the information about events on Google, downloaded during a Full Synchronization). "Save data transmissions in files" will save the information sent to and received from Google into files in the InSched directory. You can safely delete the transmission log files in InSched's directory when you don't need them anymore, but this is a great troubleshooting tool if you are having trouble determining what InSched is receiving from and sending to Google.

"Show Calendar Info" shows some of the same information in a message box, including the full authorization tokens. "Show local cache info in progress tab" puts similar information into the Progress and Errors tab, so you can copy to the clipboard, etc. Click this button, and then go to that tab, to see the information. Finally, "Show all events in local cache in progress tab" puts detailed information about all of the events downloaded from Google and stored in the local cache into the Progress and Errors tab. Of course, events that are not InSched events won't be there, and events that do not meet the upload criteria will not be in the local cache, either (InSched will have tried to delete them.)

The navigator at the top of the Diagnostics and Proxy tab lets you look at the different Google Calendars you have configured, and is linked to the upper navigator on the Configuration tab.

Once you have configured your upload to Google Calendar and clicked the "Synchronize" button and checked that the synchronization is complete, log onto the Google Calendar website to make sure your schedule has uploaded the way you want. Then, to synchronize with the iPhone Google Calendar app, follow the instructions on the Google website (which change frequently with changes in both Google and the iPhone).

If you have any problems with the schedule on your iPhone, first go to the Google Calendar online to see if the problem is with the connection between InSched and Google, or with the connection between Google and your iPhone. In particular, repeating events on InSched, of which a single instance has been deleted or changed in InSched, still show up without the changes on the iPhone. However, when you check Google Calendar, they are shown correctly there, so you know the problem is with the iPhone, not with InSched.

Desktop Outlook

IntelliPract® / InSched can also keep your desktop Outlook updated, and you can then synchronize the Outlook calendar with your devices. At present, this does not interface with Outlook on Office365.