Goodteith Software

Thanks to all who attended our first ever Residential “Getting more from Goodteith Course”. Thank you for all the positive feedback you gave us and for all your comments and suggestions, and a special thank you to Mark and Janet Shimidzu at the Wheels Cycle Centre, and to Sally and Sheila for the grub. We are also grateful to a bevvy donation on Saturday night from the Dental Directory. Although I wasn’t thanking them for this on Sunday morning!
COURSE NOTES:

Friday 6.30pm..9.00pm

Introduction: “What’s Great about Filemaker” : Alistair Johnston

Filemaker is a huge company with 12 million copies of Filemaker Pro sold. Wealth of information and technical support on internet. It is a relational database adapted by Alistair for use in Dental practices. Easy to use and add features to. Particularly useful for storing scanned documents and digital images. Planned that over the weekend we would introduce you to getting more information into and out of your practice database.
Easy to back up and easy to restore to your home computer. Good financial and administrative reporting.

Introduction: “What’s Bad about Filemaker” : Stewart Johnston

It’s easy to confuse Filemaker Pro & Goodteith Software, although this is mostly our fault for not being consistent with names. Programming and data are stored together, making upgrading slow and difficult. This is being improved by programming imports to be carried out, so we don’t have to upgrade on-site. Control of external programmes is limited, this can be improved with external tools. Although it is very easy to add new features, these are lost again when we update the software. It is also possible to really mess things up, so please experiment at home. Interface is very inconsistent, scrappy and colourful. This will improve with future updates, and Goodteith Version 2 will hopefully look a lot nicer and be more streamlined.

Discussion : Some users want more of a graphical interface for the software and would like mistakes to be more easily corrected (after the date of entry). A more powerful Mailmerge would also be desirable. Ideas for course content and objectives.

Saturday 19th 9.00..12.30

2 Groups to Callander Dental Practice. Backing up AND RESTORE procedures shown to dental staff. EDI linking and schedule reconciliation demonstrated. Clinical charting and administration tasks performed.
Wheels group used laptops and desktop computers to perform advanced finds using related databases, and multiple find requests. Marking records for Mailmerging and auditing purposes.
2.00…5.00 pm

Groups to Callander Dental Practice. More backing up and restoring. Scanning x rays and documents. Storing and printing practice handouts.
Wheels group introduced to more find techniques, charting mistake correction, and adding a new file for storing mail merge letters. Replace command. Individual problem solving

Sunday 20th August

9.00am…12.00am

Find command revisited. Backup techniques discussed. Alistair Johnston gave a talk on disaster planning and computer housekeeping. Stewart Johnston demonstrated Wordpress; an easily editable web publishing tool you are looking at right now!