Plugin users - Pop up warnings as of Open Dental v 21.4

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rhaber123
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Plugin users - Pop up warnings as of Open Dental v 21.4

Post by rhaber123 » Wed Jan 26, 2022 8:07 am

To update or not to update to Open Dental Version 21.4?

INTERRUPTION of your plugin services?

Open Dental would like all vendors to use their new API. If we like it or not, this need to be done. Not an easy task, but Thank you Jordan for doing it.

Many International and local OD users are happy with their additional services provided, through plugins/addons, by multiple Vendors.

MOST plugins but not ALL are Whitelisted now and dental offices should not panic. your office is OK and the office owner or the vendor are not doing anything wrong.

OD will be using popups warnings to tell the users that you are using a plugin. This will start as of Open Dental version 21.4


When you update to OD V21.4, Warning messages will be used in this OD version , and they will get slowly more aggressive, and they will pop up more and become more annoying when you update to newer versions of OD.

If you update to v22 (beta) , you may have more pop up warnings.

If you are an international or local OD user, and if someone wrote an addon for your office, Test the OD updates on your home computer before you update at your office.

If you update to OD newest versions, you may get stuck with these annoying popups if your vendor will not use the API in your country, and you don't have another service.

Or you have to remove the plugin, and there will be no more popups.

The API not ready but still improving.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7650

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jordansparks
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Re: Plugin users - Pop up warnings as of Open Dental v 21.4

Post by jordansparks » Wed Jan 26, 2022 1:37 pm

No, there will absolutely be no interruption of any plugin with version 21.4. All plugins are whitelisted. In fact, we also made the decision to let international users continue to use plugins moving forward, regardless of our decision to phase them out in the US. International customers don't have as many options for things like text messaging, so we can't take their current functionality away from them. For customers in the US the current plan is to let plugins work for a long time. Yes, you would start to see warning messages. but not too soon. Probably not even in 22.1. Any warnings will be subtle at first.
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

rhaber123
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Re: Plugin users - Pop up warnings as of Open Dental v 21.4

Post by rhaber123 » Wed Jan 26, 2022 6:26 pm

From Open Dental Website:
.

Guidelines for Companies:
You are not allowed to send queries to the database that would alter data in any way. You are instead required to use our API.

Transition Timeline:
We need to give you time to transition to the API. Here's a rough idea of how that transition will work. Version 21.4 has been released and will show small innocuous warnings. The warnings are mild enough that customers shouldn't be concerned and they shouldn't call anyone. Every three to four months, as new versions are released, users will see more notifications in more places. They might eventually start to see some popups as well, but not too soon. So it will be a gradual process that should give you plenty of time. Eventually, the popups will become much more frequent and aggressive, and the warnings will use harsher language with words like "unsafe" and "dangerous".

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jordansparks
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Re: Plugin users - Pop up warnings as of Open Dental v 21.4

Post by jordansparks » Thu Jan 27, 2022 10:36 am

The part of our website that you quoted is not about plugins. There are two different ways that 3rd parties can currently make changes to our db:
1. Plugins, the topic of this thread.
2. Queries, which is what you quoted from our website.
Yes, they are related, and the warning timeline might be similar, but they are not the same thing.
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

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dcrider
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Re: Plugin users - Pop up warnings as of Open Dental v 21.4

Post by dcrider » Thu Jan 27, 2022 12:37 pm

In which version should we expect popup messages for Plugins developed in-house that leverage OD code such as PayPlanCharges.Insert()?

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jordansparks
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Re: Plugin users - Pop up warnings as of Open Dental v 21.4

Post by jordansparks » Thu Jan 27, 2022 1:35 pm

You developed a plug-in in-house for your own use and you are not distributing it to others? And you are inserting PayPlanCharges? That's interesting. I can't quite figure out why you are doing that, but I can still talk about it. We would encourage you to use the API. This would be especially important if you were adding new functionality. But if you already built a plug-in for this, and if it's already working for you, then it might make sense to keep using it like that for a while. You would get some more insistent warnings over time, but they would most likely only happen when starting up Open Dental on each workstation. You could just train your staff to click through the increasingly scary warnings. No big deal. If we ever do eventually really lock people out of plug-ins, I strongly suspect that there would be exceptions for existing in-house use.
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

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dcrider
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Re: Plugin users - Pop up warnings as of Open Dental v 21.4

Post by dcrider » Thu Jan 27, 2022 1:48 pm

That makes me feel a bit better. We have around 8 Plugins we've developed in-house that do a variety of things, but our 3 largest we call "Calculators". 1 is used year-round and the other 2 are for seasonal promotions we run. They have their own UI and based on user selections we programmatically create (or sometimes update) Payment Plans.

We do not distribute our Plugins at all. They are developed and used solely in-house, so I'm glad to hear an exception can be made for those Plugins.

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jordansparks
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Re: Plugin users - Pop up warnings as of Open Dental v 21.4

Post by jordansparks » Thu Jan 27, 2022 2:48 pm

How many offices are we talking about? That's a lot of work for just one office.
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

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dcrider
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Re: Plugin users - Pop up warnings as of Open Dental v 21.4

Post by dcrider » Mon Jan 31, 2022 6:56 am

As of right now, about 25 offices in 4 States.

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