In Comm.care an appointment is an instance when a service is scheduled to be delivered to the person/Participant. In order to create an appointment for that person, their Circle first needs to have the relevant service added to the Roadmap - see Add your services to the Roadmap.

The Circle Calendar shows the Participant's appointments including yours and your colleagues.

Note: Comm.care revolves around the idea of person-centered care and so you can only create appointments based on the Circles and not staff.

There are two ways to create appointments for the Circle in Comm.care.

1. From My Circle's Calendar

Click on My Circles > Select the Circle from the list or search for their name at the bottom of the list > Calendar> Click Add Event > Add Appointmenton the top right or scroll through the time-slot in the calendar (refer to the image below).

Complete the new appointment form.

• Title: Name the appointment. A good option is to call it something meaningful like Assistance with Daily Activities.
• Related Services: Select the service that will be provided in this appointment. If you can’t find the service listed it is because the service is not active in the Roadmap.
• Support Item: Select 1 or more support items provided for the service delivery in a single appointment. E.g, you can select Community participation = direct service + Provider travel + activity-based transport with correct time and quantity in the appointment itself, and it will pre-populate the fields in the Progress notes for your staff. The system will automatically populate pre-agreed travel time when you select the correct line item. To know more on how to charge transport using multiple lines, see: Charging Transport in NDIS

• Attendees: Select the staff member/s that will be present at the appointment, this way the appointment will also appear on the attendee's calendar.
• Date: At what time will the support services be delivered? Don’t set the period of time the service will be repeated over, you have done that already when you added the service. This is just one appointment. You will set the repetition option on the next field.
• Instructions: Leave any handy instructions for the person providing the service like; Social outing to Cultural Center - Mike, disability taxi driver picks up 10:30 returns approx 11:45.
• Repetitive: Switch on to set up a recurring appointment.
• Location: Where will the appointment take place?

Pro-tip! Are you NDIS Funded? Set up the line item within the appointment, then all the related Progress Notes will have that line item. This is perfect for support workers, as the risk of them making a mistake when selecting line items during Progress Note creation is virtually eliminated!

With the smart filters, you can now view the Circle's appointments as per the Roadmap and the attendees.

2. From My Organisation's Calendar

Now you can create multiple appointments for multiple Circles in a single place and can have a single view of all the appointments.

Click on My Organisation > Calendar > Click on Circle's tab on the right > Add Appointment.

Create Appointments using Staff Availability

Note: Only available for enterprise plan users

Step 1: Create appointments for the clients.

Once you know which staff members are available, switch to the ‘Circle filter’ and create appointments for your clients.

Step 2: Assign available staff members.

When creating appointments for the Circle, Comm.care will take into account the time and duration of the appointment and show you the available staff members to roster as shown below:

Note: If a staff member has not mentioned their availability or their availability field in their profile is blank, they will be shown as available at all times by default.

Step 3: Save the appointment

After assigning an available staff member to the appointment, be sure to save the appointment and/or notify the assigned staff member by clicking ‘Save & Notify’.

Note:

• Because you have multiple Circles here, please be sure of the Circle you select and add an appointment for.
• Once you create the appointment, don't forget to Save (Save Only or Save & Notify)
• In case of Save & Notify, the attendee will receive an email notification.
• Attendees can now click on 'Reply to' once they receive the notification to confirm or to request any changes to the appointment.

Set up a Recurring appointment

Click on option Repetitive to select the type of repetition: Hourly, Daily, Weekdays, Weekly, Monthly. Each type has different options, which are designed to help you quickly automate the process. You can also set an end date for the recurring appointment. For example:

• Set up an Appointment that repeats every Tuesday and Thursday: Select repeat weekly, every 1 week, then choose weekdays Tuesday and Thursday.

• Set up an appointment that repeats on the second Monday of each month: Select repeat monthly, every 1 month, then choose the second Monday.

Once done, don't forget to save changes. Comm.care gives you two options while doing that:

1. Save Only: To save the appointment created but do not notify the staff
2. Save & Notify: To save the appointment and notify the staff about it.

Choose the best option for you and Congratulations! You have created your first appointment. Now you can add all the other appointments related to the other active services.

Click on an appointment to see more information about the specific appointment.

You’ll notice that there is a red page next to your appointment. This red page means that the Progress Note for that appointment has not yet been completed. Appointments that do have completed Progress Notes will have a green flag instead. See how to create Progress Notes.

Delete appointment/s

Open the appointment > Edit > Delete

If the appointment is repetitive (part of a series of recurrent appointment), you will need to select if you want to delete:

• This appointment only
• The whole series
• All future appointments

Avoid time clash with staff availability

When an appointment is booked with the Circle, apart from the available staff shown while rostering, Comm.care also shows a message box to give you a warning if the assigned staff is already booked. It enables the organization to avoid scheduling conflicts and manage staff availability smarter.

You still will be able to save the appointment in case of Group services or other cases where the worker has multiple appointments.