Navigating the App

Every screen is built the same way: the sidebar down the left, the top bar across the top, and the page area in the middle. Because those three never move, you're never really lost - the sidebar and your avatar are your two reliable anchors.

Nothing described here deletes or changes a record on its own, so click about and explore.

If you learn three things

The sidebar

Your sidebar will be shorter than this, and that's normal. Items are hidden when your role can't use them, so a front-desk login shows less than the owner's - Catalogue and Controlled drugs are the two most people won't have. You may also see an item this list doesn't mention: features are sometimes trialled with a few clinics before being offered widely.

To shrink the sidebar to icons, click the panel icon in the top bar just right of the logo. Hover any icon for its name. Wattle remembers the choice on that device (it lives in your browser, so clearing browser data resets it).

The top bar, left to right

• The Wattle logo - always takes you home.
• The panel icon - hides and shows the sidebar.
• Back (←) and forward (→) - like your browser's. Faded means there's nowhere to go that way.
• Breadcrumbs - the "you are here" trail, like Patients › Fluffy. The last item is where you are; the earlier ones are clickable.
• Search & Command - see below.
• The bell - a red dot means unread. It gives a small shake when something arrives. Full detail in Notifications.
• Your avatar - your name and email, then Account, Clinic Settings, Billing, Appearance, a Getting started button that brings back the welcome checklist, the light/dark toggle, Lock (see Your PIN), and Log out.

Account vs Clinic: Account settings are about you (your email, your avatar). Clinic settings are about the whole practice (the clinic name, the logo everyone sees). Two different pages.

Search & Command (⌘K)

The most useful tool in the app. It does two jobs:

• Search - type a patient's or client's name. You can also find a pet by its owner - type the owner's name, phone or email. Handy when someone rings and you can't recall the animal's name.
• Numbers - type a patient number, client number or visit number and you land on the record. This is the place to paste a reference from an email, an invoice or a note.
• Commands - type a feature name ("Schedule", "Billing") to jump there, or a quick action ("New Patient") to start it.

Each result carries a second line so you can tell similar names apart - for a patient its species, breed and age; for a client their phone or email; for a visit the pet, the date and how the visit finished.

A bare number can mean three different records, so you are shown all of them. Patient numbers, client numbers and visit numbers are counted separately and run alongside each other, so 1026 can be a pet, an owner and a visit at the same time. Results are grouped under Patients, Clients and Visits and you pick the one you meant. Inside the Patients list or the Clients list a number can only mean one thing, so there you go straight to it.

↑ and ↓ to move, Enter to go, Esc to close.

• Type at least 2 letters before patient and client results appear. One letter shows only navigation commands - so type "pa", not "p".
• Search matches more than names: species and breed and the owner's name, phone and email for patients; email and phone for clients; and the record's own number for all three.
• Visits are found by number only. To browse a pet's visits, open the pet and use its Visit History tab.
• Inactive and deceased records still appear, under their own heading below the active ones, and tagged with their status. An archived visit is found too and says Archived. You are never told a record does not exist just because it is no longer in daily use.
• Only the first few matches show. Type more, or open the full Patients or Clients page.

Light and dark mode

Avatar → the Light mode / Dark mode toggle. It shows the opposite of where you are now, ready to switch you.

There's a third option, System, which follows your computer's own setting. Choose it from Appearance in the avatar menu, where all three sit in one dropdown.

Your choice is remembered per device, per person. A colleague on the same computer gets their own.

On a phone or tablet

• The sidebar slides out over your work when you tap the menu button, top-left. Tap outside it or the button again to close.
• Breadcrumbs are hidden to save space - lean on the back arrow and the big page title.
• The forward arrow may be hidden too. Expected.

Everything else behaves the same. ⌘K isn't on a touch keyboard, but tapping the search box works identically.

Gotchas

• Quick Actions don't all open the same way. New Patient, New Client and New Invoice open a full page; New Appointment opens a pop-up over whatever you're looking at. Not a glitch. Esc or the X closes a pop-up.
• The settings gear inside the notifications panel isn't built yet. Clicking it may show an error or a missing page. Ignore it - adjust what you're notified about from Account instead.
• Can't see a menu item? Either permissions, or that feature isn't switched on for your clinic.

Next

How the app talks to you · Buttons & symbols · Glossary