The AI receptionist

The AI receptionist answers your clinic's phone when your front desk can't — after hours and when calls overflow during the day — and books real appointments from your live schedule. This article covers what it can do, how it stays current, and where you manage it.

What it does

When a patient calls your linked number and the receptionist is turned on, it greets them and can handle the whole call on its own. It can:

• Look up a caller's record. It confirms identity by asking for the patient's full name and date of birth before pulling up an account.
• Create a new patient when the caller isn't in your system yet.
• Quote open times and book an appointment from your real schedule, then write the booking back into your clinic's calendar.
• Find, reschedule, or cancel an existing appointment for a verified caller.
• Handle emergencies safely. If a call sounds like a dental emergency, it does not book a routine visit — it points the caller to your on-call line, and to 911 for anything life-threatening.
• Take a message or hand off to a person when a request needs human attention.

Note: Reschedules and cancellations are recorded for your front desk, but your team still needs to move or remove that appointment in Open Dental to finish the change. The receptionist won't do that part for you.

How it stays current

To quote times that are actually open, the receptionist reads your live Open Dental schedule — up to about a month ahead — and books against it. That's what keeps it from offering a slot that's already taken.

You can refresh that schedule two ways:

• Sync now. On the Receptionist page, use Sync now from Open Dental to pull a fresh read on demand. A full month can take a few minutes; the page shows progress and the last-synced time updates automatically when it finishes.
• Automatic daily sync. Turn on Refresh availability automatically every day and pick a time. At that time each day, the clinic PC opens Open Dental and refreshes availability for you — no clicking required. Choose a time shortly before your after-hours calls usually start, such as late afternoon.

A small indicator on the Receptionist page shows how fresh your availability is. If it turns amber and reads "stale," the schedule hasn't been refreshed in over 12 hours, and the receptionist falls back to your configured providers until you sync again.

Tip: Automatic daily sync needs the clinic PC to stay signed in with the Open Dental connection running. The PC can be asleep — it will wake to sync — but a full shutdown won't. As a backup for when a sync hasn't run, set a list of bookable providers so the receptionist can still offer same-day times.

Reviewing your calls

Every call the receptionist handles is saved under Calls. The list shows each caller, when they called, how long the call ran, and the outcome — Booked, Rescheduled, Canceled, Message taken, Emergency, or Transferred.

Open any call to see the full detail: the recording, the transcript, the exact actions the receptionist took, and a short summary of its reasoning. This is the fastest way to confirm a booking went through or to follow up on a message.

Where to manage it

Open Receptionist in the sidebar. There you can:

• Turn the receptionist on or off. When it's off, calls to your linked number are not answered by the AI.
• Set your greeting — the first thing callers hear. Leave it blank to use the default.
• List bookable providers as a fallback for when the live schedule hasn't synced.
• Manage the sync — run it now or schedule the daily refresh, as described above.

Your phone number is connected to your clinic during setup, so inbound calls are matched to your workspace automatically. After that, the controls above are yours to adjust any time. Remember to Save changes when you're done.

Note: Messages the receptionist takes are passed to your front desk to follow up on. A built-in message inbox is coming soon; for now, open the call in Calls to read the full message a caller left.