Software of Excellence Blog

EXACT Release: January 2025

Published: 30 January 2025

After the seasonal break, we’re up and running again with improvements and updates being released in the first V25 EXACT version of the year. January has seen changes to default Gmail settings, the short notice list, workflow and appointment booking plus more.

Keep reading to learn about all of the changes released throughout January 2025.

Gmail update

As Google wind down their Less Secure Apps functionality and Gmail accounts in EXACT must be configured using Google Authentication, we have enabled Gmail authentication for all practices.

Short notice list

Several improvements have been made to the functionality of the short notice list;

📆 The logic used when selecting ‘any available dentist/hygienist’ option has been updated, ensuring any gaps for the booked provider will be prioritised and offered first.
📆 ‘Don’t book before date’ has been added to the pop-up window to stop short notice list offering dates prior to a scheduled recall date.
📆 Appointments can now be booked with any available provider to increase the chance of finding an earlier space in the diary.
📆 The short notice list SMS templates (·GAP AVAILABLE and ·GAP CONFIRMED) have been updated with new merge fields;

📱 Hi [patient.firstname], an earlier [patient.shortnoticegap.dentisthygienist] appt on [patient.shortnoticegap] has become available. If this is convenient please reply 'book'. [practice.name].
📱 Hi [patient.firstname], thanks for responding. Your [patient.shortnoticegap.dentist/hygienist] appointment has been moved forward to [patient.shortnoticegap]. See you then.

Appointment workflow

Updates to the workflow of the appointment have been implemented;

📆 When closing the appointment workflow, the expected length value is copied to the appointment length in the patient charting after closing the workflow window.
📆 A new setting has been added which, when enabled, replaces the close button on the appointment workflow window with a ‘continue’ and ‘dismiss’ buttons.
📆 Continue will save/action any changes made.
📆 Dismiss will not save any changes that have been made.

Appointment booking

The course of treatment display on the appointment booking window has been updated;

📆 The colours of the COT on the chart screen match those in the appointment workflow dialogue.
📆 A course of treatment will open, when selected from appointment workflow dialogue.

NHS

Improvements for all NHS regions have been implemented;

NHS England and Wales

⚠️ A new warning may appear when TC’ing a course of treatment, this will prompt if any banded treatments (one, two, three or four) have been charted with any non-banded items such as a prescription, repair of denture or bridge, arrest of bleeding, or removal of sutures. This is a warning and will not prevent users from TC’ing treatment.
⚠️ A prompt has been added when sending FP17PR forms to a Clinipad to select the correct provider.

NHS Wales

⚠️ In addition to the new warning outlined above, for Wales only, if a prescription is the only non-banded item charted with a banded item. The warning will only appear if any of the following clinical dataset categories are missing:

🗒️ Antibiotics
🗒️ Oral Hygiene Mouthwash
🗒️ Oral Medicine Mouthwash/Sprays
🗒️ Analgesics
🗒️ Antifungal/Antivirals
🗒️ Anxiolysis
🗒️ Artificial Saliva Products
🗒️ Dietary Changes Agreed

NHS Scotland

⚠️ A prompt has been added when sending GP17PR part one and two forms to a Clinipad to select the correct provider.
🐜 Resolved an issue with the GP17PR signee not being populated in the TC exemption window.
🐜 An issue with continued courses of treatment not respecting the acceptance date of the original COT has been resolved. This was causing an issue with the under 26 exemption not being accepted when a patient was older than 26 when completing part two of the form.

Other updates and improvements

In other areas of EXACT, the following changes and bug fixes have been implemented;

📱 SMS receipt sending is now enabled for use by all practices.
⏩ The ‘delete aged data’ tool has been updated with improved search functionality speeds.
📨 Removed the option to include family member appointments when sending receipt confirmations.
🖨️ Printing the details of an email now includes information about the email in addition to its contents.
🐜 Updated the scanning app to use the local time of the computer, not UTC, when saving files. This prevents an issue with file location when saving files close to time-zone boundaries.
🐜 All users can now toggle the ‘Show the first available appointment time’ option.
🐜 Resolved a crashing issue when arriving patients.
🐜 Fixed a bug allowing some users to save blank passwords with cloud authentication.
🐜 Updated Presentation Manager 2 to use Aspose version 23.8 from 23.9 to remove launching issues for selected practices.