When macOS High Sierra was originally announced, Apple provided technical details indicating that the drawer was going to be depreciated. The drawer is used for such things as reference-specific reports, editing transparency blocks, repeating appointments, and other miscellaneous functions. As a result, the drawer will be going away when the latest macOS (Mojave) is released to the public.

We've been working hard at a solution that will retain the exact same functionality as the drawer contained, but without the drawer. In prior builds, we've already added the List Window, located in the Window Menu. This allows you to access the lists created from reports and use those lists to generate postcards and other forms. In MacPractice Gen 11, we'll be releasing the other solutions to replace the functionality of the drawer.

This article will discuss the areas of MacPractice that have been changed in 11.1, and how to use the replaced features.

Introducing the Inspector

The drawer icon, typically located in the lower left corner of the MacPractice window, has been replaced with an "I" icon for the Inspector. The Inspector behaves very similarly to the Drawer. It will display context-appropriate options depending on where you are in MacPractice.

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Eventually, the button in the lower left will be removed to add some breathing room, but we will leave it in for the next few builds so as to not completely pull the rug out from underneath our offices! We encourage you to become accustomed to accessing the Inspector from the lower right button.

You can also access the Inspector from the View Menu. This will open or close the Inspector. You can also press Command-I on the keyboard to open and close the Inspector.

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Regardless of the method used, the Inspector view will pop out from the right, and can be resized.

Changes to Reference Reports

Reference Reports have mostly stayed the same thanks to the new Inspector. Whenever you would want to review any report information that was normally in the Drawer, you can simply open up the Inspector to get the same contextual information you used to!

Changes to Scheduling Repeating Appointments 

Prior to MacPractice 11, scheduling repeating appointments required the use of the drawer. We've moved that functionality into the Schedule Ability.

To schedule a repeating appointment, you'll first schedule an appointment for a patient as normal. Once you have that down on the schedule, right-click the appointment block and select "Repeat".

The new repeating appointments sheet is very similar to the Appointments tab in the Drawer. At the top of the sheet, you can see all of the appointment details, as well as patient DOB and phone number.

By checking the "Repeat Appointments" checkbox, you can configure a repeating appointment to repeat (and end) at an interval of your choosing, from Days, Weeks, Months, or Years. Once you're happy with how your repeating appointment is configured, you can click the "Create Repeats" button.

For example, if you plan on having a patient come in every two months starting in July for the remainder of this year, you would enter fields as so, then click the Create Repeats button. The resulting screen would appear as so:

The Repeated Appointments table at the bottom displays every appointment that will be generated with this configuration. If this is acceptable, click the "Save" button in the lower right of the Appointment sheet to save the generated appointments to the schedule.

Changes to Transparencies

Transparencies used to be split between the Schedule and the Drawer in terms of accessibility. When we evaluated Transparencies in terms of how it functioned in the old Drawer, we realized there were some opportunities to re-organize Transparencies to be a bit more intuitive.

Here is a link to a video demonstrating the differences. 

Prior to MacPractice 11, Transparency Types were located under the "Transparency" node in the Schedule, while editing an individual Transparency block would use the Transparencies tab in the drawer with the transparency block scheduled. This certainly worked, but there was frequent confusion reported from our Support calls regarding the Transparency node. Many users would assume that the Transparency node would contain Transparency blocks and would create several transparency types in error.

To remedy some of these problems, we've created a Transparency Types reference node in the Schedule sidebar. This reference node behaves exactly as the old Transparencies node, containing all of your Transparency Types. They are color coded the same, you can check and uncheck them to show and hide them at your whims. We then renamed the Transparency node to "Transparency Blocks", which allows you to create Transparency Blocks by selecting this node, then dragging and dropping as with creating appointments as we're all accustomed to.

Let's walk through the new workflow of how to add a transparency type, and then to add a transparency block.

Transparency Workflow

First, you'll navigate to the Schedule. In the sidebar, scroll down until you see "Transparency Type". Expand this node to see your pre-existing Transparency Types. The main Schedule window will now display the configuration screen for Transparency Types. This will look very similar to the old Drawer and the Transparencies tab.

You can edit a Type by clicking on it in the sidebar and adjusting the details in the main window. If you want to add a new Type, click the Green Plus in the sidebar. You can set up as many Transparency Types as you'd like.

Once you've set up your Transparency Types, you can now set up Transparency Blocks. Scroll the sidebar up until you see "Transparency Blocks", then select and expand that node. The Transparency Blocks node contains all transparency blocks for the selected days in the calendar.

To create a new Transparency block, with the Transparency Block node selected, simply click and drag over a time span in the Schedule just like you were scheduling an appointment. 

From here, you can set the Block Name, and select which Type this Transparency Block will be. You can also change the Resource or Scheduled time from here. 

From this window, you can also set up a repeating Transparency. This functionality is similar to repeating Appointments. By clicking the drop down menu for Repeats, you can choose to have a Transparency repeat Every Day, Every Week, Every Month, or Every Year. You can also choose Custom, which will allow you to set up Transparencies by every other week, or every three months, or however you'd like this Transparency Block to repeat.