Features

Front Desk & Waiting Room Screen - Clinic Flow

Put the work at your door on one screen: who arrived, who is waiting, who is in the room. One button calls the next patient, and the television in your waiting room shows and reads out the name.

What the Front Desk Is

The work at a clinic door asks a different question from the calendar: "who is standing in front of me and where do they go?" An appointment list does not answer that — it tells you what is booked, and answering the door question with it costs a scan of the whole day for every arrival.

The front desk is a separate screen for that question. Its columns follow the path a patient actually walks: Expected → Waiting room → In the room.

Route: /app/front-desk

A user signed in with the assistant role lands here directly — no separate dashboard to hunt for.

Checking In and Calling

Each expected client's card has an "Arrived" button. Pressing it moves the card to the waiting room column and starts a live wait counter. A wait over twenty minutes is marked visibly, so nobody is forgotten.

Calling is the practitioner's action, not the assistant's. Anyone else calling leaves the patient standing at a door nobody opens. The assistant marks arrivals; they do not call.

  1. When the client arrives, press "Arrived" on their card in the Expected column
  2. When ready, the practitioner presses "Call next"
  3. The card moves to "In the room" by itself and the name appears on the waiting room screen
  4. Calling the next patient closes the previous visit automatically
Tips
  • The queue is ordered by SCHEDULED time, not arrival time: a 10:00 patient who turns up early does not jump the 09:45 patient who came on time.
  • The practitioner can call from their own dashboard and from the session screen — there is no need to go to the front desk.
  • Called the wrong person? One button sends them back to the queue, into the position their scheduled time gives them.

Walk-ins

Someone with no appointment needs three fields: first name, last name and who will see them. Saving creates the client record, the visit and the check-in at once, and puts them straight into the queue.

The normal booking flow is three steps (pick a date, pick a slot, fill in details). That is the right shape when planning next month and the wrong one with a person standing at the desk — so this is a different path: the time is now and the patient is here.

The free-plan appointment quota applies to a walk-in exactly as it applies to a booked appointment.

Multi-Room Visits

When the consultation is over and the patient goes on to a treatment room, "Next room" asks four things: who takes them, which room, what happens next, and when (defaulting to "straight away", or a time later today).

Each room visit is a real appointment — its own time, practitioner, service and price, with hours possible in between ("come back at four"). The steps are tied together as one visit and the card shows a 2/3 badge.

Tips
  • "Straight away" puts them in the other queue immediately; a time puts them back into Expected, and reception checks them in when they return.
  • The free-plan quota counts once per visit, not once per room.
  • A room is a label, not a record: the visit's own room, else the practitioner's room, else their name. A solo practice fills in nothing and it still reads correctly.

The Waiting Room Screen

A screen for the television in your waiting room, with no login: who is being called, and who is next. The front desk issues an address, and you type it into the television's browser once.

No extra hardware. Your existing television is enough — no ticket printer, no kiosk, no queue-machine to buy.

When someone is called, the name appears large, pulses gently for half a minute, and is announced aloud.

If the address leaks, "New address" rotates it and the old one stops working immediately. You can also switch the screen off entirely.
  1. On the front desk, press "Waiting room screen"
  2. Turn it on and copy the address
  3. Open that address in the television's browser
  4. Tap the gear icon on the screen to turn sound on and choose how it announces

Announcement Settings

Sound settings live on the screen itself (the gear icon), because which voices exist is a property of that television — and a clinic with two screens may want one talking and the other only chiming.

  • Mode: read the name aloud (default) · chime only · silent
  • Wording: "Alex M." · "Alex M. Room 3." · "Alex M., it is your turn. Room 3."
  • Voice type: female (default) or male, or pick a specific installed voice by name
  • Say it twice: on by default — the first announcement is the one people miss

Every option plays a sample the moment you touch it, so you choose by ear.

Tips
  • Browsers will not play sound on their own: the first time you open the screen, tap "turn on announcements" once. The screen keeps saying so until someone does.
  • The announcement language is the language of the address. The one the panel gives you carries it, so the board reads names in your clinic's language.
  • Speech uses the browser's own engine: it costs nothing and keeps working when the connection is poor.

Privacy and Permissions

Calling a name aloud is lawful; printing it on a public screen is a separate decision. So the default masks the surname to an initial — "Alex M." The alternatives are the full name, or the queue position only.

The board carries no phone number, email, visit reason or identifier of any kind. A waiting room is a public place and this text is readable from across it.

The screen is managed by the owner and the assistant — it is front-office equipment. Clinics that put a monitor at a consulting-room door can narrow the same address to a single practitioner's queue.

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Sık Sorulan Sorular

No. The front desk and the waiting room screen are built for an appointment-based flow, and the screen runs in the browser of the television you already have. No ticket printer, no kiosk, no special hardware.

No — by scheduled appointment time. Arrival order is what a ticket machine uses, and it is wrong in an appointments practice: a patient arriving at 09:30 for a 10:00 slot must not jump ahead of the 09:45 patient who came on time.

No. The assistant marks arrivals, registers walk-ins and manages the waiting room screen; calling belongs to the practitioner. Anyone else calling leaves the patient standing at a door nobody opens.

No. When someone is queuing, a "Call next" button appears on the practitioner's own dashboard and in the toolbar of the session screen; one click calls them in and opens their session. With an empty queue it does not appear at all.

Not by default: the surname is reduced to an initial ("Alex M."). A clinic can choose to show the full name, or to fall back to queue numbers only. Phone, email and visit reason never appear, under any setting.

Sık Sorulan Sorular

No. The front desk and the waiting room screen are built for an appointment-based flow, and the screen runs in the browser of the television you already have. No ticket printer, no kiosk, no special hardware.

No — by scheduled appointment time. Arrival order is what a ticket machine uses, and it is wrong in an appointments practice: a patient arriving at 09:30 for a 10:00 slot must not jump ahead of the 09:45 patient who came on time.

No. The assistant marks arrivals, registers walk-ins and manages the waiting room screen; calling belongs to the practitioner. Anyone else calling leaves the patient standing at a door nobody opens.

No. When someone is queuing, a "Call next" button appears on the practitioner's own dashboard and in the toolbar of the session screen; one click calls them in and opens their session. With an empty queue it does not appear at all.

Not by default: the surname is reduced to an initial ("Alex M."). A clinic can choose to show the full name, or to fall back to queue numbers only. Phone, email and visit reason never appear, under any setting.