Schedule and Manage Appointments
You can use the Calendar screen, available from the Scheduler menu, to:
§ View calendars for yourself and colleagues in your firm
§ Schedule appointments with clients
§ Edit or delete appointments
§ Sync appointments with your Calendar in Microsoft Outlook
§ Create billable tasks from your appointments.
If you have Administrator or Manage Appointments access privileges, you can add appointments for all staff members, including yourself. If you do not have this permission level, you can only create appointments for yourself.
The Calendar allows you to view the entire month at a glance, the current week (or any week you specify), or a daily view of your appointments, and print a hard-copy for reference.
From the Weekly view, you can click any day of the week to switch to Daily view, or click Month, Week, Day to change the view. If the Daily view, you can view time slots in either hourly or half-hourly increments.
From the Calendar, you can edit future appointments to edit any field or delete the appointment from your calendar, or you can edit completed appointments to enter or modify information in the Notes field, or to generate a billable task from the appointment to automatically record the time spent in the appointment as a task you can then bill.
To manage appointments and utilize the Calendar:
1. Select Calendar from the Scheduler menu to open the Calendar screen.
The Calendar displays the Monthly view by default.
2. Click the date of an appointment, or select the Daily or Weekly view and select a time slot for the appointment.
Alternatively, you can double-click an existing appointment to edit or delete it.
The Appointment Editor dialog appears, with the current date and time or the date and time slot you clicked selected.
3. (Optional) Click Delete to delete the appointment and remove it from the Calendar.
If you also saved the appointment in Outlook, you must manually delete the Outlook appointment. Deleting an appointment in the Practice Relief Calendar does not delete the appointment in Outlook.
4. Enter or edit the name of the client in the Client field, and enter or edit the description of the purpose of the appointment in the Purpose field.
The name of the client appears in the item added to the Calendar.
5. Specify the date and time of the appointment, if different from the date and time that appear in the From and To fields, or click the All Day option to schedule your entire day for this appointment.
6. Select an available option from the Repeat drop-down menu to easily schedule recurring instances of this appointment on a Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Quarterly basis, if necessary, and enter an end date for this series of appointments, if known, in the Until field.
7. Specify the site of the appointment in the Location field and enter any comments or notes for this appointment in the Notes field.
8. (Optional) Click Sync Appointment to Outlook to sync this appointment with your Outlook calendar.
Note: You can skip this step to save the appointment without saving it in Outlook.
When you specify to sync the appointment, the system saves the appointment locally and prompts you to indicate whether to open or save the Outlook reminder.
When prompted, click Open, and, in the Outlook Appointment dialog that appears, configure the appointment using the available options – for example, you can invite other attendees, forward the invitation, or specify the importance of the appointment.
When the appointment is configured in Outlook, click Save & Close to set the appointment in your Outlook calendar.
9. (Optional) Select the Save as a Task option in the Appointment Editor to save the appointment as a billable task.
When you select the Save as a Task option, additional fields appear. You can select the appropriate task for the appointment from the drop-down list in the Task field, enter the time, in hours, that can be billed for this task in the Time field (for example, a half hour appears as 0.5 hours), and click the Record Billable Time button to save the appointment as a task.
Completed tasks are added to the Review Tasks/Expenses list immediately. Future appointments will be added to the Review Tasks/Expenses dialog when they are completed.
Note: To view upcoming appointments to be recorded as tasks in your task list, change the To date on the Review Tasks/Expenses dialog.
10. Click Save to close the Appointment Editor and return to the Calendar.
The Calendar is updated to reflect your additions, edits, or deletions.
You can click Print to print the updated schedule.