Finding your way around

Every page in Meddesk Console shares the same frame: a sidebar on the left with everything you can open, and a top bar with your personal controls.

The sidebar lists the areas of the app, grouped into sections. You only see what your role allows, and only the modules your clinic has turned on, so two colleagues can see different sidebars.

The core sections are:

Section	Entries
Overview	Dashboard
Patient Management	Patients, Appointments (with Clinical Desk, All Appointments, Calendar View and New Appointment) and Patient Portal (with Patient Users and Appointment Requests)
Staff & Administration	Staff Management, and Finance (with Transactions, Accounts, Exchange Rates and New Transaction)
More	Reports, Catalogs, Configuration, What’s New and Docs (these docs, in a new tab)

Modules add their own entries when your clinic turns them on, for example Laboratory in a Clinical Care section, or Treatments, Lab tests & panels, Medications List, Form Templates, Note Templates and Inventory catalogs under More › Catalogs. Catalogs only appears once at least one of them is available to you. Each module’s page says where its entries appear.

Some entries show a number badge, a live count of things waiting for you:

Clinical Desk: how many of your appointments have patients checked in and waiting.
Appointment Requests: how many requests from patients are still pending.

Entries with a small arrow open to show their sub-pages.

On a wide screen, select the menu button at the far left of the top bar (Collapse sidebar) to shrink the sidebar to icons and get more room. Select it again (Expand sidebar) to bring it back.

On a phone or small screen

The sidebar is hidden. Select the menu button at the top-left (Open menu) to open the Navigation menu. At the bottom of it, under Preferences, you also find the Theme and Calendar controls.

The top bar

From left to right:

the menu button (see above),
your clinic’s logo,
Search… (a magnifying glass on small screens), see Search below,
the calendar button (if your clinic uses the Shamsi calendar) and the theme button. On small screens these are in the navigation menu instead,
buttons added by modules your clinic uses, and
your name and picture, which open your menu.

Search

Press Ctrl K (⌘K on a Mac) anywhere in Meddesk, or select Search… in the top bar, to open search. Type at least two characters:

Records: patients by name, phone, email or ID (#123 finds patient 123), staff members by name or email, and, with their modules on, invoices by number (#45 or INV-45), lab orders by accession number, and treatment plans by name.
Pages: every page in your sidebar whose name matches, for example “calendar” or “new appointment”.

Use the arrow keys to move, Enter to open, and Esc to close. You only see records you’re allowed to open: patients need Read patients, staff need Read staff, invoices need Read invoices, treatment plans need Read patient treatments, and lab orders follow the usual lab access rules.

Select your name or picture to open it:

Your profile: your own staff profile.
Account settings: password, two-factor authentication and sessions. See Account settings.
Language: switch the language of the app.
Sign out.

Language

Open your menu and select Language, then pick a language. The whole app switches straight away, without reloading. The list shows only the languages your clinic has turned on (see General settings).

Meddesk remembers your choice in this browser. If your clinic later turns your language off, you’re moved to the clinic’s default language the next time you open the app.

Calendar: Gregorian or Shamsi

If your clinic has turned on the Shamsi calendar (the Afghan Solar Hijri calendar), a calendar button appears in the top bar. Select it and choose Gregorian or Shamsi to change how every date in the app is shown.

When Shamsi is turned on for the clinic, dates are shown in Shamsi until you choose otherwise.
Your choice is remembered in this browser.
If the clinic turns Shamsi off, everyone sees Gregorian dates.

Theme: light or dark

Select the theme button and choose Light, Dark or System. System follows your computer’s or phone’s own setting. Your choice is remembered in this browser.

Live notifications

While Meddesk is open, some events pop up as notifications in the corner of the screen:

Notification	Who gets it
Patient checked in: “name is checked in and ready for you”	The clinician assigned to the appointment, unless they checked the patient in themselves.
New appointment request: “name requested an appointment”	Everyone with the Approve appointment requests permission.

Modules can add their own, for example new WhatsApp messages.

Select a notification to open what it’s about.
Select × (Dismiss) to close it. When there’s more than one, Clear all closes them all. Closing a notification closes it in your other open tabs too.
Up to four are shown at once. If there are more, a line such as “3 more” tells you how many are waiting.

Notifications only appear while the app is open in your browser. They aren’t stored, so you won’t find old ones later. Lists and counts on screen also refresh on their own when something changes, so you don’t need to reload the page.

When a page says you don’t have access

If you open a page your role doesn’t allow, you see You don’t have access to this page. Ask someone in your clinic who manages settings to give your role the permission it needs (see Access roles), then select Go back.

If a link leads nowhere, you see We couldn’t find that page, with Go back and Go to dashboard buttons.