16 mins

2021 in review

Welcome

Well, that was another challenging year! Another year of business, not-quite-as-usual, but you persevered and continued to provide the best care possible for pet owners. It was the same for us, but even a ‘special’ year has highlights, so please read on for our 2021 highlights selected by the team behind the product.

Animana enhancements

Learn about the key improvements made to Animana during 2021

Data quality

Improving client and patient data quality

In 2021, we looked at ways to improve the data you store in Animana – to improve the data you enter, increase the usability of stored data, and maintain data security.

The quality of the data you store in Animana is crucial – the benefits of valid information can be directly linked to improving workload efficiency, easier client communication, and better patient health outcomes.

  • Data quality and the New Contact page

    In 2021, we introduced improvements to the New Contact page in Animana;

    • Mandatory fields were added, including; contact type, first name and surname (or a company name), street, city, postcode (except in Ireland) and country.
    • Phone fields had a substantial make-over, with a clearer layout with added number validation, and the default phone number type was changed to mobile. Also, the entry of at least one number was made mandatory, with an optional opt-out.

  • Filter by attachments in the patient and client files

    Find attachments quicker in the patient and client files.

Improving interoperability with 3rd parties

In 2021, we made much progress in expanding our partner offerings over the next few years. Whether it’s the simple import of a price list, registration of a microchip, connectivity to diagnostic equipment, or enabling pet owners to book their appointments online, Animana has always worked with partners to supplement its rich feature set. Animana customers have long asked for us to work with more partners, so in 2021 we ramped up our Application Programming Interface (API) capabilities, adding more opportunities for Animana to communicate with trusted partners.

This allows data exchange with approved partners such as;

  • Patient registration – the ability to create and retrieve basic patient information
  • Ability to query insurance company information
  • Ability to fetch, create and update product analysis group and supplier names
  • Ability to register clients
compliancy icon

Helping practices meet regulatory changes

2021 provided many challenges to track and keep up with new industry regulations, with significant changes to the registration of microchips in The Netherlands and financial regulation changes in Germany. In addition to supporting users in their compliance with these, we also were able to roll out requested changes to labelling and prescriptions.

  • Changes to microchip registration for dogs (The Netherlands)

    The changes to the Identificatie & Registratie (I&R) Hond rules regarding dogs’ microchipping provided more than a few queries in The Netherlands. We removed support for canine registrations through our Petbase integration to ensure your compliance. For users of our NDG integration, we quickly adapted the registration form to ensure continued functionality and compliance when registering animals.

  • Product registration number merge codes added

    Support was added in the Animana Content Designer for product registration codes to be added automatically to content such as labels, letters or emails.

  • Integral Chain Management export for livestock animals

    Exports for livestock animals have now been merged into one, which now includes herd CPH information.

Read more about Animana development

Are you curious about everything we did last year with Animana, and do you want to see it in a bit more detail? Check out our release notes on the various Animana software updates.

Communication improvements

We’re always working to improve the way we communicate with users, and this is something you regularly ask us to improve in our regular surveys. So let’s look at things we improved in 2021.

Start Page screenshot

The Animana Start Page

It’s a page you see every time you log in to Animana, but we also understand that it’s a page that is glossed over. In 2021 we tried to improve the communications posted on the start page, we;

  • covered a wider variety of content, adding tips and tricks to the type of content posted,
  • improved our communications about outages or problems in Animana,
  • improved the consistency and uniformity of images used,
  • posted more frequently (about once a week) to keep the content fresh.
Animana pop-up example

Pop-ups

We know that they may interrupt your workflow, but generally, we use these only when we’re really trying to get your attention, and 2021 was a year where we had a lot of important messages to communicate. This included the data quality-related changes we made to the New Contact page, the changes to microchipping in The Netherlands, and also the fallout from the Log4j vulnerability. We did, however, refine the pop-ups so that they;

  • featured more relevant content,
  • were more consistently designed.

We’ll continue to refine pop-ups in 2022 with a hope to make them more relevant, and less intrusive.

new feature alert buttons

Feature alerts

To help communicate change in Animana, in 2021, we introduced buttons at different phases during the implementation of a change or new feature and to draw attention. These buttons were placed within a relevant page in Animana. A click would launch a pop-up with more information;

  • “Coming Soon” – provides information about an upcoming change to the current page,
  • “What’s New” – provides information about a change to something on the current page,
  • Feedback button – opens a quick survey to provide feedback about the change,
  • “Warning” – provides important information about a problem associated with the current page.

Sharing our advice and best practices

From Customer Support to Product Management and from Customer Success to Marketing and Customer Education, many of our colleagues have worked in practice as veterinarians or nurses themselves. Most of us have even used Animana as the Practice Management System. The chances are that when you contact us, you are talking to a veterinarian or nurse with practice experience.

With all this knowledge and experience in house, we like to share it in our blogs, articles and tips and tricks. When you subscribe to our newsletter or check the Animana homepage regularly, you will see many of these articles.

Learning and support improvements

In 2021 we reviewed and optimised many of our learning and support resources, intending to overhaul them in 2022, and we’re excited to start rolling out these improvements shortly.

Improving help and learning resources

With software changes come the need for training. We’ve already mentioned some improved communications we rolled out in 2021. Still, the backbone of our training and learning resources is the Animana knowledge base, which is accessed in a couple of ways. The most direct way is to click the blue “?” icon in the bottom-right of Animana, enter your search term, and click the results to read the full article. This way, you’ll get directed to our in-application walk-through help too.

As mentioned already, in 2022, we’re looking to overhaul the way help is presented and used in Animana, so exciting times lie ahead.

Animana Help video
over 300

help articles in the knowledge base

over 60

help articles created or updated in 2021

over 110

in-application training videos across two courses

over 23000

users helped with in-application help in 2021

Get the most out of Animana with our tips and tricks

Whether you are new to Animana or have been using it for years, everyone will enjoy a tip or trick that will help you improve, whether it is a quick key combination, a new feature or a trick to work faster with Animana. They all have one thing in common, our tips and tricks allow you to get the most out of Animana.

Click below to check out our library of tips for Animana users.

Let’s talk about what IDEXX software can do for your practice

Complete the form below and we’ll get back to you.