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BE Connector IMS Manual (Confidential -Birdeye users only)

Updated today

Introduction

The BE Connector application is a native Windows application. Most healthcare businesses use a Practice Management System (PMS) to manage their patients. The BE Connector application helps integrate the PMS and our system so that review requests are automatically sent to patients after their appointment is complete.

The installation and setup process is driven by an intuitive wizard. To set up the integration, you first have to download and install the app on the machine that has access to the PMS. Once the integration is complete, the BE Connector will start pulling data from the PMS and send the data to the server for further processing. Review requests are sent as per the configurations and preferences set by the business.

NOTE

We do not have a partnership with this integration. Please do not contact their support team for any technical or configurational issues.

We do not support the cloud version of this integration via BE Connector

System Requirements

  • Operating System: Windows XP Service Pack 3 and above

  • Windows Server OS 2012 or 2016

  • IMS (V29.x)

  • Net Framework Versions: 4.6.1 and above

Gather information required during Installation

To install BE Connector on your system, you need the information listed below:

  1. IMS related information

    1. IMS Version

    2. IMS DSN Name

    3. IMS Username & Password
      This information is generally auto-picked by the connector

  2. Account-related information

    1. Login credentials

    2. Business ID and API Key

  3. Filters and setup-related information

    1. Appointments statuses to be checked-in

    2. Provider ID for mapping, if mapping with enterprise business number

Install & Setup BE Connector

Step 1: Download & Install

Begin by running the BE Setup.exe file. Click here to download the file.

Alternate link: Click here.

When the file download is complete, run BE Setup.exe in administrator mode. To select an installation folder, click the ‘Browse’ button. Now, click on the ‘Install’ button to begin the installation process.

IMPORTANT

If BE Connector is detected on your computer, you will be asked for reinstallation. Click on the ‘Ok’ button to reinstall it. Click on the ‘Cancel’ button to exit the installation.

The blue bar at the bottom of the pop-up shows the progress of the installation.

Once the installation is complete, the admin tool will be automatically launched.

Auto-update will also begin if you install an older version of the application. In other cases, the application will check for updates periodically once every day after executing the service. Click on the ‘More details’ button to see the ongoing update status. You will be able to see the progress while the application is pulling in the latest updates. If the application is updated, no updates will be available to install.

NOTE

Make sure that the BE Connector installation folder is added to the 'Exceptions' list of the antivirus software installed on the system. If the BE Connector folder is not whitelisted, the antivirus will remove files from the BE Connector installation folder and corrupt the setup file. This step needs to be performed after completing the installation and before logging in to BE Connector.

Step 2: Add BE Connector to the Exclusions list of the Antivirus

Add BE Connector installation folder to Windows defender’s exclusions list. For more information, visit the link below:

Make sure that the BE Connector installation folder is whitelisted by adding it to the 'Exceptions' list of the antivirus software installed on your system. If it is not whitelisted, the antivirus can remove files from the BE Connector installation folder and corrupt the setup file.

NOTE

This step needs to be performed after completing the installation and before logging in to BE Connector.

Step 3: Login

As soon as the application is updated, you will be redirected to the login window. You need to enter the ‘Business ID’.

NOTE

If the business ID was registered in the past, or there is an active installation already on the server, you can either recover the old settings or initiate a new installation.

In case you choose a fresh installation, BEC will ask for login details. Fill in your ‘Username’, and ‘Password’ in the respective fields and click on the ‘Login’ button.

NOTE

The ‘Business ID’ should be the client’s Business ID (It will be reflected on the next screen automatically).

If a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) is not signed for your business, you will be prompted to sign the BAA within the application.

NOTE

This screen will not appear if the BAA has already been signed.

Covered entity, address, state, country, and zip code: refers to the company name with an address, state, country, and zip code.

An official email address: this can be the email address of the owner or of the business.

The legal signee's full name: can be the owner or the one who is on the call while signing the BAA (we keep the owner's name when their IT team phones us).

The legal signee's job title: can be owner, office manager, doctor, receptionist, etc.

Mail recipient’s email list: [A Non Mandatory field]. This field will only contain email addresses, and if there are multiple addresses, only a comma should be used as a separator.

NOTE

If this recipient list is received from BEConnector, BAA Email will be sent to these emails, similarly to how we provide the Signee Email. If the text box is left blank, we will send a BAA email to all account owners.

The client must confirm his consent by providing a digital signature and clicking on the ‘Accept’ button.

The client must ensure correct details are in this form before they sign it, and the terms and conditions checkbox is checked before clicking on the ‘Accept’ button.

If the recipient's email list is provided, then we send emails to the recipient's list, else we send a confirmation mail to all the business owners. The signed agreement will be uploaded on Salesforce under the main business.

Step 4: Setup Connection

Once you have logged in to the BE Connector application, click on the ‘Setup Connection’ button to start the connection set-up process.

Now, you will be redirected to a page where you have to enter the connection details. After entering the details, click on the ‘Verify’ button.

There are three sections detailed below:

Connection with Integration

Here, you can add details related to PMS, such as the PMS installed, its version, user access details, and more. Note that different PMS require different connection details.

To start the setup, select the name of the installed PMS from the drop-down list of ‘Integration’.

By default, the PMS version, server and datasource details are auto-detected. In case auto-detection fails, the client must provide this information.

BE Server connection

It includes your Business ID and API Key. You can find these details on the 'Developers' page under the 'Account' tab on the left navigation rail.

IMPORTANT

  • In the case of a ‘single location’ setup, the Business ID should be the ‘Location business number’

  • In the case of an ‘enterprise’ setup, the Business ID should be the ‘Enterprise business number’.

‘Business Detail Confirmation’ dialog box

Verify the business details as shown. If the details are correct, select the checkbox present at the bottom of the dialog and click ‘Next’. If the business details are not correct, click ‘Back’ and then start BE Connector with the correct business ID."

Integration + BE server connection

This step checks for the business type (SMB or Enterprise) and registers the business ID and machine on the BE Server accordingly. This step also verifies existing server entry of the same business. The user does not need to provide any input here.

Once you fill in all the details, click on the ‘Verify’ button for the application to validate the details. The application will test the connection by pulling and pushing the three most recent contacts if the business number provided is ‘location business number’. For enterprise accounts, you need to set up individual locations.

CASE: Integration is already created with a different uuid

This error occurs when an already configured BE Connector is moved from one machine to another. Proceeding to which the connector uses the machine’s unique ID as a check. In such cases, the second machine will display the below-mentioned pop-up once the ‘Verify’ button is clicked. By clicking on ‘Yes’ the connector will overwrite the previous machine’s unique ID with the current one.

NOTE

View and copy the displayed message on the ‘Connection with Integration’ screen

These messages are displayed in ‘Green’ or ‘Red’ up on clicking the ‘Verify’ button. Sometimes, the messages exceed beyond the visible area on the screen. You can now view the entire message by double-clicking the displayed message.

Copy to Clipboard

Click on this button to copy the message to Windows clipboard and paste it (using Ctrl+V) wherever it’s required.

After the connection is successfully verified, the connector will automatically detect if it is an enterprise account or a single location account:

  • If the connector detects a single location account, no further steps are required and you will be asked to go back to the ‘Main menu’.

  • In the case of an ‘enterprise’ and ‘multi-location’ account, you need to map your ‘Practice’ and ‘Provider’ IDs. For this, you need to click on the ‘Map locations to practices’ button.

For Single Location accounts

The system will then verify the details. Upon successful verification, you can view the success notifications under the ‘Connection with Integration’ and ‘BE Server connection’ sections. As mentioned earlier, if the detected ‘Business ID’ belongs to a single-location account, the setup will be successfully established between the PMS and our system. Now, you can click on the ‘Back to main menu’ button.

If you wish to view the test results, click on the ‘See test results’ button at the bottom. You can test it further by sending ‘Review requests’ to these test results by clicking on the ‘Send review requests’ button.

For Enterprise accounts

If the Business ID detected is an enterprise account, you will view the ‘Map locations to practices’ button. Click on the button to configure practice and provider details.

Upon clicking the ‘Map locations to practices’ button, the user is asked to map the practice and the provider IDs. To map the practice ID and provider ID for a given location, navigate to the location under the ‘Locations’ tab. Click on the corresponding drop-down menu under the ‘Practices & providers’ tab and select the desired option. Once the location is successfully mapped with a practice ID and a provider ID, you can see a ‘green’ tick next to the location.

There are a few indicators to represent the status of each mapping:

  • No Ticks [Refer to Image 1]: If you do not see any ticks next to a location, the location is not mapped with any practice or provider ID yet. Those locations are open for configuration.

    [Image 1]

  • Green ticks [Refer to Image 2]: When locations are mapped through the present connector, a green tick will appear for the mapped location. Hover over the ‘Green tick’ to view the message, as shown in the image below. A green tick will also show on practice and provider IDs in the dropdown for which the mapping has been done in the current connection.

    [Image 2]

  • Grey Ticks [Refer to Image 2]: A ‘Grey’ tick indicates that the location is already mapped with a practice/provider ID via another connector with the same enterprise ID. In this case, the corresponding drop-down menu will be disabled, and a ‘View details’ hyperlink will be visible next to it. Click on the link to see the details of the PMS mapped with the location. Hover over the ‘Grey’ tick icon to view the message.
    To map the child business on the machine, you need to remove the previous mapping. Once removed from another instance, that location will be open for configuration.

  • Duplicate mapping [Refer to Image 3]: While mapping, if you try to map the location with a ‘provider’, or a ‘provider’ and ‘practice’ ID which is already mapped with another location, there will be an error due to duplication and you will get an error message in red next to the drop-down menu. Hover over the ‘?’ icon to view the message. To fix this error, click on the drop-down menu and select a different option.

    [Image 3]

‘View details’ button for Grey Ticks

For locations which are previously mapped with a practice/provider ID via some other connector, you can view the details of the connection by clicking on the ‘View details’ button.

‘See test results’ for Green Ticks

For locations which are successfully mapped, you can view the test results by clicking on the ‘See test results’ button to test each location and send review requests. You can test it further by sending ‘Review requests’ to these test results by clicking on the ‘Send review request’ button.

If the connection is successful for at least one location, a success message will appear under the ‘Setup connection’ button.

If there is an error in the credentials you have entered or not a single location is mapped successfully, the connection cannot be established. In such a case, you will be asked to setup the connection once again.

Step 5: Advanced Settings

Advanced filters

Once the connection is set, you can set up advanced filters for an enterprise or single-location account. Click on the ‘Setup filters’ button under the ‘Setup advanced filters’ section to proceed.

When you click on the link, you will be asked to select the appointment statuses for which you want to allow the contact to check-in. By default, the connector smartly selects the appropriate appointment status. For example, statuses like ‘cancelled’ and ‘rescheduled’ are deselected by default.

While setting up advanced filters, a comprehensive list of appointment statuses is automatically pulled from the PMS and displayed on the BE Connector when the connection is successful.

Modify the selection as per your requirements and click on the ‘Save’ button. The selected options will be highlighted in ‘Green’.

(This image is for reference purposes only. Actual filters will be different and will be integration-specific)

NOTE

A user will have the ability to customize Appointment statuses. All such statuses will be visible in the above screen. So, ask the user beforehand about the filter(s) that needs to be selected.

Map additional filters

IMPORTANT

This functionality is available for SMBs only.

It will allow the user to create filters in line with the location filters (Eg: Practice/Provider) which means you can choose to allow sending review requests for certain providers or practices for SMB too. This functionality was earlier available for enterprise businesses only.

NOTE

Unlike enterprises, this is an optional step for SMBs. For enterprises, these steps should be mandatorily followed. To proceed, follow the steps detailed for enterprise.

There would always be a single location listed in the location filter window i.e. with the same business number as that of SMB.

Campaign creation with custom field

Many times, clients want us to provide filtration for customized fields or any specific criteria (e.g procedure codes). BE Connector provides this facility via ”Campaign”. To know how to use campaigns for this, please visit this link. BEConnector- Basic troubleshooting guide

NOTE

Currently only procedure codes are being enabled for all. Its custom field name is “pms_appointment_procedure_code”. For any other field, support can ask engineering to build support.

Step 6: Configure Scheduling (Optional)

Once this step is successfully completed, you can move on to the next step to configure how you would like to schedule the review requests to go out. Begin by clicking on the ‘Configure scheduling’ button.

NOTE

Here you have the option to customize and schedule the application’s operational settings. You can select the days when you would like the application to run. This can be done by simply checking the square boxes beside the day’s name.

You can then select the start time of the application and the interval between each runtime. The application will auto-detect the time zone. The ‘Next run time’ indicates when the application will next run. You will also have the option to set the ‘Number of retries’ in case of failure, and the ‘interval (in minutes)’ between each retry.

‘Enable nightly sync’ - By default, the BE Connector switches to hibernate mode during the night (08:00 PM to 08:00 AM). Enabling this option would make BE Connector active during the night as well. If this option is not selected, BE Connector would not carry out any activity between 8 PM to 8 AM.

Once you have selected all settings, click on the ‘Save’ button to save your preferences.

NOTE

Minimum time span between two executions is 1 hour. You cannot select a time span of less than an hour to pull/push the operation.

Click on the ‘Cancel’ button to cancel any unsaved changes and close the configuration screen.

You can view a success message at the bottom if the settings are successfully saved. The ‘Reset to default settings’ option on the bottom left of the page will help you configure default settings. In such a case, the application will execute daily at 5:00 PM, with settings ‘24’ Hours, ’0’ minutes, 3 retries and 2 minutes of interval time in case of failure.

‘IST’ is an abbreviation for Indian Standard Time. It is the time zone of the local machine.

The ‘Reset to default settings’ are the best practices for scheduling.

Step 7: Setup Triggers

After you have configured the scheduling and other integration settings. The next step is to configure the contact triggers. To begin, click on the 'Setup Triggers' button.

Daily appointment

Enabling the daily appointment trigger will allow BE Connector to check in daily contacts. It is enabled by default and cannot be edited.

Re-setup/ Reconfigure

If you have to reconfigure something, you can re-login to BE connector using the same business ID. The user can set up an entirely new business too.

Case: Setting a different business ID on an existing BE Connector setup.

In case BE Connector is already setup on a machine and you need to change the business ID, the user must login with the new business ID.

The reason is that the Configuration Screen doesn’t allow the user to enter a random business ID.

After login, BE connector verifies the connection with PMS as well as BE server. If the connection is successful, you will see the following message.

Now, you can change any information and proceed accordingly.

NOTE

The older settings will be permanently overwritten with the new settings on BE Connector. So, the user needs to be sure about the input provided on any of the configuration screens.

Case: “Invalid API key” due to upsell.

When a business is upsold, its API key may change against the existing business ID. As this API key is necessary to authenticate for BE Connector, this causes the error mentioned above.

In this case, the BE connector needs to be re-configured with the correct pair of business ID and API key. The support team must log in to the machine and change the business ID/API key. This should be done if either the API key needs to be updated, or both the business ID and API key.

Steps:

  1. Log in to the machine with the existing/new business ID.

  2. Click on the ‘Setup connection’ button.

  3. Enter the correct set of business ID and API key.

  4. Click on the ‘Verify’ button.

Update Location Properties

For update location properties, please visit the document - BE-Connector - Update Location Properties

How to Uninstall

In case you want to uninstall the application, navigate to the control panel of your computer, select the 'BE Connector' application and double-click on it.

On the next pop-up, you will be able to see the following options:

  1. Uninstall Only

  2. Uninstall & Deactivate Integration

Uninstall Only

On selecting this option, all the BEC components will be removed from the client’s machine, leaving the integration active in the backend.

Uninstall & Deactivate Integration

If you wish to place a request for deactivation of the Integration after uninstalling it, click on the ‘Uninstall & Deactivate Integration’ button. Upon clicking this button, BE Connector’s all components will be removed from the client's machine and the integration will be disabled from the backend.

Now, when you attempt to reinstall the BE Connector setup, the recovery option that pulls all information from the backend won't prepopulate the integration properties, the integration properties will be deactivated against the particular office from the backend!

IMPORTANT

Use this option if you don't want to reinstall BEC on the same machine for the same business.

Once the application is successfully uninstalled, you will see the following screen with a success message. Click on the 'OK' button to complete the uninstall process.

Appendix

Update Option on Admin Tool

In case there is a new update on S3 server of BE Connector, an ‘Update Available’ button will be visible on the setup screen. Click on the button to download and install the latest updates.

[Scope- This option is provided to reduce the support team’s response time for already set up businesses, in the case of an engineering-level issue. It will reduce their response time against a patch to almost ‘0’ hours. In the case of a patch deployed on S3 server, the support team can immediately contact the business, click this button and deploy the latest files on the client’s machine. Earlier only BE window service could take the update at the start of a new day and it was increasing the response time additionally by 24 hours.]

BE System Tray App

This app is designed to provide basic information on the health of BE Connector as well as allow users to fix the integration settings without having to login to the BE Connector Admin tool. By default, it will not be visible and will be present in the system tray with the icon

. You can open this by

  1. Either double-click on the icon.

  2. Or right-click on the icon and click on Show Status.

Once you click:

  • If integration has not been set up, you will view a window as shown below.

  • If the integration is live and running, you will view a pop-up window as the image suggests below.

Information for each label of the ‘Status’ tab:

Integration: Displays the name of the integration/CRM with the version of CRM, which was defined during the integration setup.

Current Version: Refers to the current version of the BE Connector installed on the machine.

Last Updated On: This shows the date and time when the BE Connector was last updated.

  • An ‘Update Available’ button will appear if the BE Connector is not on the latest version, which indicates an up-to-date version or the latest version is available to download.

  • Users can update the BE Connector by clicking on the ‘Download Now’ button, it will take some time to update based on the network bandwidth and system resources.

Integration Connectivity: You will view two possible values for this field:

  • ‘Active’ status states that the connectivity of integration/CRM with the BE Connector is functional and working.

  • The ‘InActive’ status means the connection is broken and needs to be fixed by following the below

    1. You w

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