Security 

Every user must log on before using Open Dental.

If you are not seeing this window on startup, then the administrator does not have a password set up. Assign the administrator a password, and add some groups and users as described below.

Users should log off when they leave the workstation from the Main Menu | Log Off. But sometimes people forget to log off. To prevent misuse, you can setup more than one 'user' for each employee. One user would have minimal permission and this is the user that would be used on a routine basis. If they want to perform an action that is a security risk, they would have to log off and then log back in using a different user that had more permissions. This minimizes the chance that someone will be able to take advantage of another user who did not log off.

To setup security, in the Main Menu, select Setup | Security.

Every user is part of a user group. The permissions on the right pertain to the entire group, not just the single user. So if you want one user to have permissions that are different from everyone else, then you will need to set up a user group just for them. 

See Permissions for more details on specific permissions.  As described on that page, some of the permissions have Date or Day limits.

By setting day or date limits, you can significantly reduce the amount of freedom that a user has to edit historical data. These limits are based on the date the item was entered, not on the date it shows in the patient account.

At the bottom, there is a lock date feature.  This lock is the only way to prevent backdating of new items.

Double click on a user to edit.

If you are using the Time Card feature, you can attach each user to one Employee. In that case, also make sure to check the TimeCardSecurityEnabled checkbox in the main Security window. You will also not want to give the regular users permission for "Edit All Timecards". Only the office manager should have that permission.  The second checkbox at the bottom is "Users cannot edit their own timecards".  This option is not used in most offices because you do want employees to be able to make notes and fix errors (keeping in mind that error fixing is already tracked well).

Attaching a user to a Provider is not generally useful for a dental office, but is useful for Dental Schools, where each student is a provider and a user.  This lets the security part of the program restrict usage based on which student is logged in.

A user can be associated with a Clinic.  This has two purposes.  Firstly, it causes new patients to default to this clinic when entered by this user. Also, if the checkbox for 'restrict user to only see this clinic' is checked, then it does not show patients from other clinics when in the Select Patient window, making it impossible to accidentally select a patient from the wrong clinic.  However, there are other ways to select a patient, so this cannot be considered completely secure.  The most obvious way to select a patient from a different clinic would be to click once on an appointment of theirs.  If Appointment Views are organized by clinic, then this won't happen accidentally.  But someone could do it intentionally.  It is also possible to pick a patient from a different clinic using some of the Appointment Lists.

Passwords may be changed by administrators from the interface above, or a user may change their own password from the Main Menu, File.

An Audit Trail can be pulled up to see a history of what various users are doing.