The Waiting Queue
Every clinic has a line, and no two clinics read it the same way. One works strictly by booked time. One sees whoever walked in first. One puts the urgent case ahead of everybody, then goes by the booking, and only asks who arrived first when two patients share a slot.
Until now the system had one answer for all of them — earliest booking first — and clinics worked around it by calling patients out of order and hoping the screen would catch up. It never did.
Queue ordering is where you tell the system how your clinic actually reads its line. You pick the rules, you put them in order, and every screen obeys: the day's board, the doctor's own list, and the page the patient reads on their phone.
Where to Find It
Click an address to open that screen on your own clinic. The first click asks which clinic you are, then remembers it. Addresses holding a {id} need a specific record, so they are shown but not linked.
| Screen | Address |
|---|---|
| The waiting queue | /queue |
| Queue ordering settings | /appointment-settings |
| Today's board, by status | /all-appointment-kanban |
| A visit, to set its priority | /edit-appointment/{id} |
The Idea: Rules in Order
You do not pick one rule. You pick the rules your clinic reads, and you put them in the order it reads them.
The first rule decides. When it cannot — when two patients are equal under it — the next rule decides. And so on down the list.
An example. Say your order is:
- Priority
- Booked time
- Arrival
An urgent patient booked for 11:00 goes ahead of an ordinary patient booked for 09:00, because rule 1 settles it and rules 2 and 3 are never asked. But two ordinary patients both booked for 10:00 are equal under rule 1, so rule 2 is asked — and they are still equal, so rule 3 decides, and whoever checked in first goes first.
If every rule ties, the patient whose visit was booked first goes first. That last step is not something you set; it is there so the line always has exactly one order and never wobbles between two.
The Four Rules
| Rule | What it reads |
|---|---|
| Priority | How urgent the visit is: Urgent, VIP, Elderly, Normal, Follow-up — in that order |
| Booked time | The time the visit was booked for, earliest first |
| Arrival | When the patient checked in at reception. Everybody who has arrived comes before everybody who has not |
| Desk order | The arrangement your reception staff made by hand |
A rule you switch off is not read at all. A clinic that ignores bookings entirely can run on Arrival alone — that is a walk-in clinic, first through the door, first seen.
Ready-made orders
You do not have to build one from scratch. Pick a starting point and adjust it:
| Start from | The order |
|---|---|
| Appointment clinic | Booked time → Arrival |
| Walk-in clinic | Arrival |
| Emergency | Priority → Arrival |
| Busy outpatient | Priority → Booked time → Arrival |
| Desk-driven | Desk order → Booked time |
The moment you change one of these, it stops carrying the name and shows as Custom. Nothing is wrong with that — most clinics end up there.
Who the Order Applies To
An order is saved for one of three things:
- The whole clinic — the default. It runs wherever nothing narrower is set.
- One branch — every doctor working in that branch runs it.
- One doctor — that doctor runs it, in any branch that does not have its own.
When it comes time to read a queue, the system asks in that order, narrowest first: does this branch have an order? Then does this doctor? Otherwise, the clinic's.
Nothing is ever deleted, only paused
This is the part worth understanding, because it is what makes the setting safe to experiment with.
When you save an order for a branch, you are warned first: every doctor's own order inside that branch stops applying while the branch order is in force. Their orders are kept. Remove the branch order and every doctor goes straight back to what they had, exactly as they had it.
The same is true of the switch marked Use the clinic order everywhere. Turn it on and every branch and doctor runs the clinic's order. Turn it off and they all pick up their own again. Nothing is lost either way.
Priority: What the Five Levels Mean
Every visit carries a priority. You set it on the booking form, and you can change it later by editing the visit.
| Level | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Urgent | An emergency |
| VIP | A patient your clinic has agreed to see ahead of the queue |
| Elderly | A patient who should not be kept standing |
| Normal | Everybody else. This is what a visit gets if you say nothing |
| Follow-up | A short check that can wait for a gap |
A visit's priority is always recorded, whether or not your order reads it. So you can mark a patient urgent today, switch your clinic to a priority-led order next month, and the marks you have been making all along start counting.
Checking Patients In
When a patient arrives, open the queue and press Check in on their row. The time is recorded, along with who pressed it.
Check-in is not a status. The patient has not been accepted, is not in the room, and nothing about their visit changes — it simply records that they are here. If you press it by mistake, Undo check-in clears it and the line goes back to exactly what it was.
Check in patients even if your order does not read Arrival. It is how you keep an honest record of the morning, and it is what the late rule below reads.
Patients Who Arrive Late
Your clinic picks one rule, and a grace period in minutes. A patient counts as late when their booked time plus the grace has passed and reception has not checked them in.
| Rule | What happens |
|---|---|
| Keep their place | Nothing. The late patient stays exactly where the order put them. This is what the system did before, and the default |
| Move to the end | The visit goes to the back of today's line and is marked late |
| Hold out of the queue | The visit leaves the line altogether and sits in a Late block until reception checks the patient in, which puts them at the end |
A patient who does arrive is never late, whatever the clock says — so a check-in inside the grace period settles the matter for the whole day.
An emergency is never late
No late rule touches an Urgent visit. It is not moved down, it is not held out, and it is not marked late — however long the patient takes to get there. That is deliberate and it is not configurable.
VIP and Elderly get no such exemption; only Urgent does.
The Two Screens, and Why There Are Two
The waiting queue is the line. One numbered list per doctor — plus one per room for visits booked without a doctor — in the order your rules produce. Each list says which rules made it, so when somebody asks "why is he before her", the answer is on the screen.
Today's board is the day by status: waiting, in the room, seen, did not attend. It answers "where is everybody up to", and it cannot answer "who is next" — a status column is a stage, not a line. Cards inside each column follow your order, but the single numbered line only exists on the queue screen.
The doctor's own today's patients list reads the same order as both.
Reordering by Hand
Where Desk order is one of your rules, each row on the queue screen takes a drag handle. Drag a patient and the whole line is saved, first to last.
Two things worth knowing:
- Dragging changes only the order. The visit's time, date and status are untouched.
- A day nobody has dragged reads exactly as your other rules would have it. Positions are only recorded once somebody actually moves a patient — so putting Desk order at the top of your list does not scramble anything by itself.
A visit booked into a day that has already been arranged goes to the end of the line, leaving your arrangement alone. And an arrangement belongs to one doctor on one day: it never carries over to tomorrow or across to a colleague.
What the Patient Sees
A patient opening their appointment link on the day sees how many people are ahead of them — a number, and nothing else. No names, no priorities, no phone numbers. The page says the number is a guide, because the line does move during a day.
A patient your clinic is holding out of the queue is not shown a number that is not true. They are asked to speak to reception.
A patient whose visit is not today sees their appointment date, as before.
Common Questions
We changed the order in the middle of the morning. What happens to the patients already seen? Nothing. The order is worked out afresh each time a screen is opened, so it applies to whoever is still waiting. Patients already seen are done.
Does changing the order move any appointments? No. Nothing about a visit is rewritten — not its time, not its date, not its status. The order is a way of reading the day, not a change to it.
Two doctors want to work differently. Can they? Yes — give each their own order. Just remember that a branch order, if one exists, takes over inside that branch.
We set an order for a doctor and it is not being used. Check whether the branch has an order of its own, or whether Use the clinic order everywhere is switched on. Either one takes over, and the doctor's row will say so.
Do we have to check patients in? Only if you want Arrival to count, or if you use a late rule — both read the check-in. Otherwise it is a record you keep because it is useful.
Without Internet
Checking patients in and arranging the line keep working with no connection. The board you are looking at is the copy already on the device, and every check-in and every drag is sent when the line returns.