General settings

General holds appointment behavior, scheduling and language settings. You need the System administrator permission to change them.

Open Configuration › General. When you’re done, select Save changes. You see General settings updated.

Switches

Setting	When it’s on	Starts as
Allow past-date appointments	Staff can create appointments dated before today. When it’s off, Meddesk refuses with Cannot create appointments for past dates.	Off
Shamsi calendar	Staff can switch date display to the Afghan Solar Hijri (Shamsi) calendar, and dates show in Shamsi until each person chooses otherwise. See Calendar. When it’s off, everyone sees Gregorian dates.	Off
Auto-populate appointment duration	When an appointment moves on from In Progress to any other status (such as Awaiting Checkout or Completed), Meddesk fills in the appointment’s duration with the time it actually spent In Progress.	On

Timezone

Timezone is your clinic’s local time. Meddesk uses it to decide what “today” means, for example on the Dashboard and in reports. Pick your city or region from the list. It starts as Europe/London, so check it when you first set up your clinic.

Refund window (days)

Refund window (days) limits refunds on invoices: only payments received within this many days can be refunded. It starts at 30. It’s used by the Invoice module. See that module’s page for details.

Languages

Languages lists every language Meddesk supports: English, Dari, Pashto, Arabic, Russian and Turkish. Tick the ones your staff may switch the app to. Each person then picks their own language from their menu.

Default language is the language used:

• for anyone who hasn’t chosen a language yet,
• for anyone whose chosen language you later untick (they’re moved to the default the next time they load Meddesk), and
• for any of your clinic’s own texts that haven’t been translated into someone’s language, such as your clinic’s name or a role’s name.

When you untick the current default language, the first remaining ticked language becomes the default.

Changing the default language

Because the default language fills every gap, every required text must exist in the new default language before you can switch to it. When you pick a different Default language, a note appears: Switching the default language to …. When you select Save changes, Meddesk checks this.

• If everything is translated, you see Everything is translated into …. Select Make … the default to finish.

• If something is missing, you see a list of the items that still need that language, for example a role name, an account name or a clinic setting. For each one:

  1. Select Open. Its editor opens in a new browser tab, already on the missing language.
  2. Add the text and save it.
  3. Come back to the Configuration tab. The list updates by itself. You can also select Check again.

  If you aren’t allowed to edit an item, it says Needs someone with edit access.

When nothing is missing, select Make … the default. You see “… is now the default language.”