Summer is in full swing and often that means staff members are starting to take more vacations. Or maybe your office is like ours, and you are experiencing a bit of a baby boom. Don’t let the panic of planning for coverage dampen your summer spirits; this post can help you prepare Open Dental for your temporary staff that may be covering for your team members.
Users & Security
We recommend that everyone using Open Dental has their own user login, even temporary employees. This ensures they have appropriate permissions and their actions are tracked in the audit trail.
Before you add them as a user, you may want to create a new User Group to add them to, or add them to an existing group. Use the guide below for setting up User Groups:
If they need to use the time clock feature, or you want to indicate that they are an assistant on appointments, add them to the Employees list before you create their user. If they are a provider or hygienist, make sure to add them to the Providers list.
You can use the interactive guide below for step-by-step instructions on adding a new user, including adding employees and providers:
If videos are more your style, check out our webinar on 
Security and User Permissions.
Training
You may have gotten lucky and found an Open Dental savvy staff member, but if not, there are plenty of training options to help them out as they adjust to the software!
In our recent Welcoming Dental School Graduates post, we discussed some of the different ways a new team member can learn Open Dental.
Office Processes
Each office an employee works at is going to have an office flow unique to them. In order to keep your processes and office rules available and transparent, consider writing them out in the Wiki. This easy-to-access tool will help your new employee navigate their new position. Some examples of information that can be included in the wiki are:
- Personnel Policies (e.g. time card policies, rules for lunches & breaks, phone usage)
- How-To’s (e.g. how to schedule a patient, enter insurance, create a treatment plan)
- Office Preferences (e.g. tray setup, office flow)
The wiki can include images and links for easy reference. Each topic can have its own page to easily search and find information. When using the wiki, your employees have a reference they can utilize while you focus on patient care.
Employee Leaving
When it’s time to say goodbye, the Open Dental process is simple. Simply mark the User, Employee and/or Provider as Hidden. If you are using tasks, you can archive the employee’s task list.
Always hide staff members who leave. Hiding them ensures they are not accidentally used, cannot log in, and also makes it easy if you decide to re-hire them down the road. Never reuse (i.e. rename) an employee or user. If a user is reused/renamed, the historical data (e.g. audit trail) is also changed. If an employee is renamed, their time card history is changed. So it’s always best practice to hide old employees.
Need help with your temporary employee setup? Give us a call!