Open Dental Forum

Hi, I am a freelance software developer who is in discussions with a client to create a plugin for Open Dental.

It is my understanding that a development key and Api key will be required to do the actual development, then the plugin will need to be whitelisted, for the practice in question to then use it.

I am looking for general advice on plugin development, if anyone with experience is willing share.

I have 10 years' experience developing enterprise software with .NET, WinForms, etc. - however I've seen the warning "It's very complex, with a high learning curve" and would love for someone with experience in this area to help me understand the scope of developing a simple plugin.

The functionality in question seems to be to display a custom form when a toolbar button is clicked. The form reads transaction information from the patient's account and also accepts a numeric input field to then present a calculated quote total.

Thank you in advance.

Your 10 years experience will be more than sufficient for making this plug-in. Also, I do not believe you need to worry about utilizing the API to pull off what you described. Our PluginExample project should be more than enough for you to get the gist on how to go about creating a plug-in library (dll) that the dental office can utilize. You will have access to all of our business methods and there is a high chance that we have a method already available for you to use to collect whatever data you need at which point you can then add your custom functionality as desired. No API necessary for that path IMO.
https://www.opendental.com/manual/plugins.html