Changelog

2.1.1

October 11, 2026

• Expand all and Collapse all at the top right of each Settings tab.
• Animations on every screen: the Front desk screen and op tablets get the Office Board's animations. New rooms, patients and Need help requests pop in, rooms with a patient show a live dot, patients waiting at the desk get an outline that pulses yellow, orange, then red (same timing as the Office Board), a room's box alternates between who's in it and who's next, and Running behind pulses on the op tablet. Screens set to reduce motion stay still.
• Setup guide for 2.0 and 2.1: new steps for Open Dental columns, the PIN sheet, the Front desk screen, checkout flags, the phone system and automatic updates, and "Choose who can open Settings" replaces the old Accounts step. The staff guide explains picking rooms, who assistants are helping and Remember my pick.
• Clearer update errors: when the update service can't be reached (an error like 404, a timeout, or no internet), Settings > Updates says to check the server's internet connection or contact support.
• Examples in Settings use made-up names.

2.1.0 front desk

October 11, 2026

• Updates install themselves: Settings > Maintenance > Updates shows a new version with Install now or Install tonight, and by default installs it overnight (3:00 AM, after the nightly backup) when no op is waiting on a request. A backup is made first, the installer is checked against the signed release, and screens show "VisitPing is updating" and reconnect by themselves. Go back reinstalls the previous version. Releases can go to test offices first.
• Checkout flags on the op tablet. Before a patient leaves, VisitPing checks Open Dental (read-only) for: a balance (after insurance estimates, write-offs and payment plans, split between the patient and family members by name), today's procedures not on a claim, claims outstanding over 90 days, insurance that ended, insurance not verified in 90 days, no next appointment with recall due within 30 days, and treatment not scheduled (by Open Dental priority, marked NEW TODAY or EXISTING). Forms not done is available and off by default. Each rule and its limits are in Settings > Front desk > Checkout flags.
• Check off, All done, Re-check. Each flag is checked off one at a time under the person's name (audited). Fixing something in Open Dental clears the flag on the next check, shown as "cleared on its own".
• SELF PAY and DISCOUNT PLAN tags from appointment note words (NP SPECIAL, SELF PAY, CASH by default), appointment colors, an Open Dental discount plan, or no insurance on file. When the note or color says self pay, insurance flags are skipped.
• Medical alert bar on the op tablet: premed, allergies and the Open Dental medical note.
• Room status: Turning over (automatic after a patient leaves), Running behind (5 to 20+ minutes), Checking out soon, and a pop-up when the op's next patient checks in. The next patient comes from the Open Dental columns of the people working in that room today (see Rooms below).
• Front desk screen at /desk: Patient ready and Speak to doctor go into that doctor's queue (with an optional note); Need help goes to everyone and the first "I'm coming" takes it; Rooms and Who's available as pills with details on tap; Available, Busy and Away, with Away from the Open Dental time clock (lunch, break) and On a call from the phone system; Heading to the desk with "I'll take Ava"; Left with open flags in a side tab; names hide after a few idle minutes until someone taps.
• Phone systems: RingCentral (direct, JWT app with Read Presence) and Mango Voice (through VisitPing's relay at phone.visitping.com, which keeps only extension and on-a-call). Only call state is read; never numbers, names or recordings.
• Phone alerts by job: Settings > Alerts picks which alerts go to doctors, hygienists, assistants and the front desk. Nobody gets alerts while Away. Staff turn them on from their own phone (Turn on phone alerts).
• Rooms each morning: at their first sign-in each day, doctors, hygienists and assistants tap every room they're in (big tiles). A provider's column patients go to whichever of their rooms is free first. Assistants can pick who they're helping instead, and keep only the rooms they cover. Doctors and hygienists can't pick a room another provider has today; assistants can join any room. "Remember my pick" (on by default) skips the question on later days with a "Looks right / Change rooms" note, and tapping your name shows My rooms today with Change. Front desk can pick rooms for someone who forgot.
• Open Dental columns (Settings > Ops): pick how your office uses operatories. "Each operatory belongs to a person": columns like "Marisol" or "Dr. Lin A", owners filled in from the dentist and hygienist set on each operatory in Open Dental, with the rest (assistant, EFDA, Invisalign, LOE) set here. "Each operatory is a room": OP 1 in Open Dental is Op 1, matched by name or by hand, and nobody is asked anything.
• Not in their rooms: a doctor's or hygienist's patients booked in another provider's column, or one with no room today, are listed on their op tablet and on the Front desk screen (OK clears one). Someone with patients today but no room shows on the Front desk screen with Pick rooms.
• Room alerts: everyone in a room gets that room's Next patient alert. Patient ready also goes to the assistants in the doctor's rooms; Speak to doctor and op requests go to the doctor only. Nobody gets an alert they sent.
• Front desk Rooms: pills show just the color, room and status; Show details has bigger boxes with the patient, the next patient, and the provider (bold) and assistants in the room. A room nobody picked says "Nobody today".
• Access roles replace the Admin switch. Admin is built in and locked. Office manager, Front desk and Clinical are starting points you can edit, and you can add your own. 41 permissions, PHI-marked. New roles start empty, nobody can give out a permission they don't have, only an Admin grants Admin, and every change is audited. Each person also has a job (doctor, hygienist, assistant, front desk, other), guessed from Open Dental.
• Settings reorganized: Setup guide; Screens (Office Board, Ops, Front desk); Team (People, Alerts); System (Open Dental, Security, Maintenance, License). Each tab has shortcut chips at the top, and cards fold to a one-line summary. People only see the tabs and cards their access role allows.
• Reports: flags checked off and left open, patients who left with open flags, who checked them off, and Need help response times. New checkout flag log CSV.
• Privacy: patient names, amounts and notes are never written to disk or put in phone alerts. Day state and logs keep appointment numbers and staff only.
• Open Dental access: also reads procedurelog, procedurecode, claim, claimproc, insplan, inssub, patplan, carrier, insverify, recall, allergy, allergydef, discountplan, discountplansub, sheet, clockevent, schedule, scheduleop, operatory and definition. The read-only login already covers this.

2.0.1

• Fixed: after installing 2.0.0 the VisitPing service wouldn't start (Windows error 1067). The installer now bundles Node.js 22.23.3, which supports the option the service uses to trust the office's certificates.

2.0.0 individual accounts

• Staff sign-in on the screens. The people come straight from Open Dental's user list (Settings > People > Staff); there's nothing to type in. Hidden Open Dental users never appear, and each person has a switch to leave them out of VisitPing. Print PIN sheet prints a one-time PIN slip for everyone switched on who doesn't have a PIN yet; each person picks their own 4 to 8 digit PIN the first time they sign in. Open Dental passwords are never read. A badge tap works too: HID OMNIKEY readers in keyboard mode type the card number, and VisitPing tells a tap apart from typing by its speed. Turn it on with Settings > People > Staff sign-in after printing the sheet; it's off after upgrading, so nothing changes until an office is ready.
• Collapsible staff list: one row per person with their on/off switch always visible; tap a person for their Open Dental details, activity, PIN, badge, Microsoft link and Admin switch.
• Microsoft sign-in for staff (optional): turn it on under Staff sign-in. Shared screens show "Sign in with Microsoft" next to the names (it always asks for the password, so the next person can't reuse it); each person links their Microsoft account once by picking their name and entering their PIN. No email field. A PIN or badge still works. Google Workspace sign-in is planned.
• Admins from the staff list: the Admin switch lets a person open Settings with their linked Microsoft account, or with their Open Dental username and PIN plus an authenticator code (set up the first time; 10 recovery codes). A PIN alone never opens Settings. Microsoft accounts already allowed under Security > Microsoft sign-in, local Settings accounts and emergency access still work.
• Personal devices without an owner: a device set to Personal with "First person to sign in" belongs to whoever signs in first, and stays signed in so alerts keep working.
• Colors: doctors and hygienists show their Open Dental provider color (for checking it's right). Everyone else can pick a color with the + swatch, used on the sign-in screen and later in chat.
• Who's using this screen? Shared screens (op tablets, front desk) show a lock with everyone's name until someone signs in, then a name chip with Switch in the top bar. They lock again after 5 minutes without a tap (Settings can change this). Patient names stay hidden while a screen is locked.
• Three kinds of screens under Security > Devices: Shared (PIN or badge), Wall display (view only, nobody signs in, nothing can be changed from it) and Personal (one person's own phone or computer, which always acts as them, so a doctor's "On my way" from a lock-screen alert still works).
• PIN safety: PINs and badge numbers are stored only as hashes. Easy PINs (1111, 1234) are refused. Five wrong PINs lock that person out for 5 minutes; a badge tap still works. A new PIN from Settings signs the person out everywhere.
• Open Dental access: VisitPing now also reads userod (user number, name, linked provider or employee, hidden flag and group, never the password column) and usergroup. The read-only login already covers this.
• Who did it: the audit log records the signed-in person and the screen they used for every request, On my way, Doctor's here and alert sign-up, plus every sign-in, sign-out (including idle lock), failed try and lockout. The audit CSV has a new device column. The request log adds who sent and who ended each request.
• Linked to Open Dental: link a person to their Open Dental provider or employee record so their name fills in on op tablets, and a doctor's screen opens their own list.
• Status changes still come from Open Dental, so the status log can't say who moved a patient; VisitPing doesn't write to or read user activity from Open Dental.

1.0.0 first release

• Office Board for Open Dental: check-in columns from your Appt Confirmed statuses, wait timers with color alerts, Dr + Hyg, premed and new-patient flags, a Family pill when family members (same guarantor or super family) are scheduled at the same time, "Expected soon", and patients moving into ops.
• Ops list shows who's in each op; if one patient is marked in two ops at once in Open Dental, both ops are flagged with a warning.
• Op tablets and doctor screens: staff call the doctor with one tap; doctors get pop-ups, chimes, reminder pings and alerts on Windows, iPhone, Apple Watch and Android (even with VisitPing closed), with On my way / Doctor's here.
• Settings with a Setup guide (hides itself once setup is done, or any time with Hide guide), Open Dental connection test, statuses, ops, people, request buttons and chimes, screens, reports and a printable staff guide.
• Security: read-only Open Dental access, admin accounts with two-factor or Microsoft sign-in, approved devices only, tamper-evident audit log, HTTPS with an office certificate, encrypted secrets and nightly encrypted backups.
• Licensing: 30-day trial, then Buy monthly or yearly in Settings > License; the license installs itself and renews automatically.
• Light and dark: every screen follows the device's light/dark setting (Auto), with Light or Dark overrides in the bottom-right controls, remembered per device.
• Windows installer with its own Node.js, a self-restarting VisitPing service, firewall rules and clean upgrades, plus a license agreement page.
• Fonts served from your own server: screens no longer load fonts from Google, so nothing on a screen contacts outside services.
• Terms and Privacy links in Settings > License, next to the Buy buttons.