Your Open Dental database already holds every answer on this site: the recall list, the unscheduled treatment, the claims that were never sent, the payment that was deleted at 2:14. Open Dental is unusual among practice systems in two ways that matter here. Its schema is public, so every table name below is one you can look up yourself. And it keeps a real audit log that names the person, the time and the workstation.
How does Calibic connect?
A small Windows service runs on the server that hosts your Open Dental database, MySQL or MariaDB. It connects with a database user that has SELECT grants only. On top of that grant, the session itself is opened read-only, so the server refuses a write even if one were attempted, and the connector code exposes no way to send one. It makes outbound HTTPS calls only; nothing listens for connections from outside, and no port is opened.
If one database serves several offices, the agent reads one clinic number and keeps the offices apart. It has been tested on Open Dental 24.1 and 26.1.
What exactly is read?
| Open Dental tables | What you get in Calibic |
|---|---|
appointment, histappointment, schedule, scheduleop, operatory, appointmenttype |
Daily Huddle, Front Desk, schedule, appointment checks. History gives before and after date, provider, chair, status and user |
procedurelog, procedurecode, treatplan |
Production, Treatment, unscheduled treatment, Revenue Recovery. Deleted procedures are excluded from production |
payment, paysplit, claimpayment, adjustment |
Collections, End of Day, AR aging |
claim, claimproc, insplan, inssub, patplan, benefit, carrier |
Insurance and claims, benefits left, PPO write-offs by carrier |
recall, recalltype, commoptout |
Smart Recall, reactivation, hygiene lists |
patient (name, birth date, contact, status, guarantor) |
Client Finder, Segments, call lists |
referral, refattach |
Referral sources, if the office fills in Referred By |
provider, userod, definition, preference |
Scorecards, names, your own labels, the version number |
securitylog, deletedobject |
Protect: who, when, from which workstation; sign-ins; deletions |
perioexam, labcase, procnote dates |
Revenue Integrity. Dates and counts only |
What is never touched?
Nothing is written, edited or deleted. Nothing is read from the Social Security number column, address lines, clinical note text or password columns. Insurance subscriber ids are kept to the last four digits. The free text of securitylog stays in your database. Open Dental’s module-access rows, which record someone opening a screen rather than changing data, are read and ignored on purpose, so Protect does not fill up with “someone opened the chart”.
Where is Open Dental strong, and where is it limited?
Strong: the audit log carries a real user, a timestamp and a workstation name, so Protect can say who. Appointment history carries before and after values. Sign-ins are logged.
Limited: the audit log carries old and new amounts for write-offs and for newly created payments and adjustments, but an edit to an existing payment carries none, so those checks are marked limited on the Coverage page. The numeric permission codes have changed across versions; a code Calibic does not recognise is ignored rather than guessed. A shared login such as “billing” is never treated as a person.
How do I set it up?
- Sign up. A Business Associate Agreement is sent with every sign up; Calibic is built for HIPAA and does not claim a certification.
- You or your IT contact create a MySQL user on the Open Dental server with SELECT-only grants. Calibic sends the exact statement.
- Run the installer once, as an administrator, on the server that hosts the database. It checks that the database opens before it finishes.
- First numbers appear within minutes. History loads newest first, in small steps with pauses, so a busy server is not slowed.
- Check the source badge (“Open Dental, synced 4 min ago”) and the Coverage page, which lists every check as active, limited or not available, with the reason.
Change checks run every 10 to 60 seconds and a full pass every five minutes. If the agent goes silent for 45 minutes during office hours, you get an email.
Status
LIVE. Updates to the agent arrive on their own; the previous version is kept until the new one has run cleanly.
Next step
If you run Open Dental’s own reports today, start with the guides and see what Calibic adds on top: recall report, unscheduled treatment, production report, audit trail and security log and remote access. The comparison with Open Dental’s built-in reports says plainly where the built-in ones are enough. For the audit side, read Protect; for Dentrix offices in the same group, the Dentrix integration explains why the two systems differ on “who did it”.