Making Copies

In a lengthy email exchange this morning, we had a discussion with a therapist who had a suggestion for therapylog.com.  Liane Garner (North Kansas City) wrote in and had something to say about how we currently copy scheduled days:


Hello, I was just wondering if there was a way to copy a day to several dates, not just one. Many of us have the same clients on the same days of the week and it takes quite awhile to copy a Monday to every Monday of that month. If not, it would be great to be able to copy a date ahead to 3 or 4 dates at a time. Thank you, Liane

This is not the first time we've had a request like this, and Charvel gave a detailed response as to why we try not to do features like this anymore (edited for brevity):

Liane,

...I hope to be able to explain some of our reasoning behind not adding a feature like this...A long time ago we had a feature similar to what you are requesting...but ultimately [that feature] ended up in confusion. When therapists would plan too far in advance...by the time they got to their therapy day almost everything in the plan had changed anyway...therapists became very frusterated with having to delete [a student who left the district] out of each appointment in the future they had placed...all the copying they had done ended up saving them very little time. The ability to copy into a new day was our 'middle of the road' solution. It allows for quick planning in the near future, especially for the therapists who have predominantly static schedules, and avoids the confusion of blanket scheduling that we ran into before...I find the best scheduling usually goes out no more then two weeks in advance...far enough so that you are really only 'planning' twice a month...

Charvel

Liane was very gracious and understanding, but was also clever enough to inquire about a bit of a compromise:

Thank you for responding to my suggestion so quickly. While I understand the thinking behind the decision to not allow copying too far ahead, it seems that at least being able to copy to 2 dates ahead would be beneficial. As far as planning goes, I find that no matter what I put in the "plan" part of the program, it invariably changes right before or during the session anyhow. I, almost always, edit the session before documenting. If I have a student taken out of a group, then, I edit them out at the documenting stage. But, the process of copying even one week to the next is taking additional time that could be cut in half with the ability to copy two weeks at a time. Thank you, Liane

And you know what? She's right. We don't want to open up the feature to indefinite copying, but her suggestion definitely has merit, and we try not to stand in the way of what people want.

Thus, it is my pleasure to introduce the new copy-day feature:

With the addition of the optional second date field, you can (if you wish) copy your appointments to the next two days they will fall on instead of just one.  Thanks for the feedback Liane, we always appreciate an opportunity to add something helpful.

Do you have an idea for another enhancement for Therapylog?  Let us know by leaving us a comment!

~Ethan