Schedules 

In the Main Menu, select Setup | Schedules

This screen lets you manage all Provider and Employee schedules.  There is no concept of "default" schedules.  Instead, use the copy/paste/repeat features to quickly fill the actual schedule.  This is very powerful, supporting literally any kind of rotating or alternating schedule in addition to the ordinary type of schedule shown above.  To edit a single day, double click on it

You will start by adding a timeblock.  First, select one or more providers or employees.   Then click the Add button to add timeblocks for all of them at once.

If you set operatories for a provider schedule timeblock, it will override the Operatory settings.  And in that case, a vertical bar will show along the left side of the timeblock on the main screen of the Appointments module.  Using the schedule timeblocks, you can easily schedule multiple different providers in a single operatory at any time of the day.  But if you schedule more than one dentist or more than one hygienist as the exact same time, not all the provider bars will show.  There is a limit of one dentist and one hygienist simultaneously.

Continue adding timeblocks until you get the day set up the way you want it.  You can also use the Practice Note and Practice Holiday buttons to set notes or holidays which apply to the practice as a whole rather than a specific provider.  A holiday would be an officially recognized holiday like Christmas, not a day that the office is simply closed or the dentist is on vacation.  Vacations would be indicated by not having any timeblocks for the day and also by putting in a practice note with a description of the vacation.  You can delete multiple timeblocks at once by highlighting them while holding down the Ctrl key and then clicking Delete.  When entering the times in the Edit Schedule window, you are not locked in to half hour increments.  Those are just there for your convenience.  You can also type in the time box as long as you keep the format the same, following the time with AM or PM.  Once the day is set up properly, click OK to return to the main Schedule window.

Using the Filters

You can select the date range that you are viewing.  After changing the dates, click the Refresh button.  You can also show or hide weekends.  If weekends are hidden, then none of the changes you make will apply to weekends.  You can also select which Providers and Employees you want to show.  If a provider or employee is not selected, then any changes you make will not apply to that provider or employee. For example, if you click the Clear Week button, it will only clear the week for the providers and employees selected.  This means that you can quickly clear or change the schedule for just one person if you need to by only highlighting that one person and making sure everyone else is unhighlighted.  After selecting providers and employees, click Refresh.  In the calendar grid, the text for today will always show in red.

Copy and Paste

This is the key to how the whole schedule setup works.  You set up one day the way you like it, and then you copy that day to other days.  This is a two step process.  First copy, then paste.  There is a clipboard which is similar in concept to the clipboard used in many other types of programs like word processors.  Even though you can only select a single date, you can then copy either a day or a week to the clipboard.  Once you have a date or date range on the clipboard, then you can move on to the second step of pasting that date onto other dates.

In the Paste box, you can either paste once, or paste repeatedly.  Before pasting, select the new date in the main grid that you want to paste to.  You can change the number in the repeat box to be fairly large.  For example, you could paste 500 days, or you could paste 100 weeks.  If you want to clear out multiple weeks, you do not have to repeatedly click the Clear Week button. You can instead go to a blank week, click Copy Week.  Select a different date, and perform a Repeat 20.  That would clear out 20 weeks as long as the Replace Existing box was checked.   If you do not check the Replace Existing box when pasting, then whatever you paste will be added to the existing schedule and will not cause any existing schedule items to be deleted.

As an example, if you have a schedule that alternates weekly, then you might first set up one week the way you like it.  Copy that week and paste it using Repeat 16 to fill approximately 4 months.  Then take one of those weeks and alter it to represent the alternate schedule.  Copy that week to the clipboard.  Then paste single copies of it one at a time to each of the 8 alternating weeks.  This might take about 20 seconds.

As another example, let's say you take off every third Friday.  First set up the standard schedule for a few months.  Then, double click on one Friday, highlight all time blocks, and click the Delete button.  Copy that day to the clipboard, and then paste single copies of that day one at a time to the Fridays you take off.