Standing column
This week in the office: the diary
Diary work is front-loaded. The fortnight is rebuilt on Monday and closed off on Friday, and the three days between are for the bookings and corrections that arrive while it stands.
Where scripting is available, the current weekday is flagged on the strip and in the list.
- MondayThe fortnight ahead is rebuilt from the session templates. Holds carried over from Friday are confirmed against the practice’s reply or released back into the diary.
- TuesdayTelephone bookings entered and referenced. Any request that does not fit a template is written on the exceptions sheet rather than squeezed in.
- WednesdayRoom clashes checked across the fortnight — two sessions on one room at one time is the error this day exists to catch.
- ThursdayChanges the practice asked for in writing are applied, and the reference of every moved appointment is listed back to it.
- FridayThe week is closed: cancellations reconciled against the released-slot list, Monday’s running order printed and sent, open holds listed by reference.
- SaturdayNo desk cover. Cancellations left on the answering mailbox are listed on Monday morning, not acted on.
- SundayNothing is handled. The diary stands as it was printed on Friday.
Construction
How a fortnight is built
A diary is not typed out appointment by appointment. It is generated from a session template and then corrected. The template is four figures and a room: the time the session opens, the time it closes, the appointment length, and the turnaround gap that follows each appointment. Those four figures decide how many slots exist, and the slot capacity sheet on the front page is the arithmetic the office uses before agreeing to any of them.
The template is signed off
One template per room per weekday, agreed in writing with the practice. Where a weekday runs two sessions — morning and afternoon — that is two templates, not one long one with a hole in the middle.
Fourteen days are generated
The office always holds two weeks forward. On Monday, the new fortnight is generated and the week that has passed is archived to the diary file rather than deleted.
Known closures are cut out first
Bank holidays and any day the practice has told the office it is shut are removed before a single slot is offered, so no appointment is ever offered into a day that does not exist.
Carried requests are placed
Requests on the waiting order are placed into the new slots, oldest request first. The order is a dated list, not a judgement.
The running order is printed
The practice gets a printed running order per room per day, by reference, with the open holds listed at the foot of it.
Definition
A hold is not a booking
When a request cannot be matched to a slot with certainty — the caller is unsure of the week, the room is not named, two people have asked for the same time — the office writes a hold. A hold occupies the slot, carries a reference, and expires. It is never printed on the running order as an appointment.
Holds are listed to the practice twice: at 16:45 each weekday, and again on Friday when the week is closed. A hold that has not been confirmed by the Friday close is released, and the slot goes back to the top of the waiting order. The office does not decide for the practice whether a hold should become a booking; it only reports that the hold is about to lapse.
Holds exist because a guessed booking is more expensive to unpick than an empty slot. An empty slot costs one telephone call; a wrong one costs the diary, the room and the running order.
Corrections
Cancellations and reinstatement
A cancellation is two separate acts and the office keeps them separate. First the slot is marked released, with the date, the time the notice came in and how it came in. Second, the slot is offered on. Both are written down, because the common dispute is not whether an appointment was cancelled but when the office was told.
| Notice reaches the desk | What the office does | Where it is recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Before 12:00, two or more weekdays ahead | Slot released and offered down the waiting order the same day. | Cancellation list and diary |
| After 12:00, the weekday before | Slot released and offered on the following morning at 09:00. | Cancellation list, carried to next day |
| On the day | Slot marked released and left empty; the practice is told by reference, and decides whether it wants it filled. | Cancellation list only |
| Over a weekend | Listed Monday at 08:30 with the timestamp the mailbox recorded. Nothing is moved over a weekend. | Monday cancellation list |
Reinstatement
A cancelled appointment can be put back only while the slot is still released. Once it has been offered on and accepted, the slot is gone, and the request goes to the waiting order with its original date, so nobody loses their place by having cancelled correctly. Reinstatement is applied on the written request of the practice, never on a caller’s word alone, and the reference is reported back once it is done.
Limits
What the diary desk will not do
The office will not lengthen a session, add a slot outside a template, or double-book a room, whoever asks. Each of those is a change to the template, and a template changes in writing, from the named person at the practice who holds that authority, and from nobody else. The office will also not rank one request above another on any ground except the date it was received.
Nor does the office hold a reason against any appointment. The diary carries a reference, a room, a time and a name. Anything else belongs in the practice’s own system, which is where the office puts it — see office and data.