The Open Dental 25.3 Features That Will Actually Make Your Day Easier
My Top 3 Favorite New Features in
Open Dental 25.3
(And Why I’m Actually Excited About This Update)
Open Dental 25.3 is officially stable (released December 30, 2025) and honestly… this is one of those updates where you can feel they listened to what busy dental teams actually need.
There are a lot of changes in 25.3, but these are my top 3 favorite new features because they hit the sweet spot of what most practices are craving in 2026:
Faster internal communication
More accurate insurance estimates (without messy workarounds)
Less stress when managing providers + exams on a busy schedule
Let’s get into it.
1. Intra-Office Chat (Built Right Into Open Dental)
If your office is like most, you’re probably already using something to message your team during the day, texting, Teams, Slack, a random app, sticky notes, or yelling down the hall (classic).
Open Dental 25.3 adds a built-in Chat feature inside the program (Manage Module → Chat), which means your team can message each other without bouncing between tools.
Why I’m excited about this:
This could be a huge time + money saver in 2026.
A lot of dental offices are paying for outside messaging tools, and many teams also end up using options that aren’t truly appropriate for sensitive conversations. Having a built-in option reduces the “app overload” and keeps communication closer to the workflow.
What it actually does:
Start 1:1 or group chats
Send messages with rich text, emojis, links, and “important” flags
React to messages or reply to a specific message
Edit your own messages
Add/remove users from chats as needed
Important Note (don’t skip this)
Open Dental is clear that Chat is not private and conversations can be queried in the database, so it’s not for HR issues, personnel topics, or anything truly sensitive. Also: Chat isn’t available for Open Dental Cloud users (so if you’re cloud-based, this one may not apply yet).
How I’d use it in real life:
“Room 2 is seated, can you come for the exam?”
“Hygiene needs a quick check on #19 before they dismiss.”
“Heads up: Mrs. Smith arrived early, we can pull her back.”
“Can someone verify this fee schedule before I post?”
Less chaos. Less hallway hunting. More clarity.
2. Exclusions + Age Limits Now Consider Tooth Number (Finally!)
This one is a big deal for teams who care about estimate accuracy.
In Open Dental 25.3, you can now assign tooth numbers (and ranges) to an exclusion or age limit within insurance benefits.
Why this matters:
Before this, many offices had to rely on plan notes or tribal knowledge like:
“Insurance covers this… but not on molars”
“It’s covered only on anterior teeth”
“Only covered through a certain age, and only for specific tooth ranges…”
That kind of info tends to live in someone’s brain (or a note that nobody reads), which means estimates get inconsistent, and that leads to:
Uncomfortable financial conversations
Write-offs you didn’t expect
Patients upset because “someone told me it was covered”
What changes in real workflows:
Now, instead of writing a plan note and hoping the right person interprets it correctly, you can build those limitations directly into the benefit setup so it impacts:
Treatment planning accuracy
Insurance estimates
Less back-and-forth up front
This makes treatment plans more accurate because the software can actually “understand” the rule.
If you’re serious about reducing front desk stress and tightening collections, this is one of those unsexy upgrades that quietly makes everything smoother.
3) Appointment Mirroring (A Scheduling Stress-Reducer)
Appointment mirroring is one of those features that seems small until you realize what it does for provider flow.
With 25.3, you can now mirror an appointment so it shows in two operatories without creating a second appointment.
Translation: the provider can visually see where they need to be, especially for exams, without scheduling hacks.
Why I love this one:
It lets providers create and use their own appointment views while still being able to visually see when they need to step away for an exam.
That’s huge for:
Multi-provider practices
Hygiene-heavy schedules
Offices where the doc bounces between ops
Days when the schedule looks “fine” on paper but feels chaotic in reality
Mirroring makes it easier to plan a day that actually works for the clinical team, and anything that reduces that constant “where am I supposed to be right now?” feeling is a win.
Where you’ll find it:
You’ll see new options across:
Appointment View Edit
Preferences
Edit Appointment Window
In the Edit Appointment screen, there’s a Mirror checkbox (which creates the mirror appointment in the operatory of the secondary provider as set in the Hygienist field). Your appointment view also needs to be set to show mirrored appointments.
Final Takeaway: Why These 3 Features Matter for 2026
Open Dental updates can sometimes feel like “cool, I guess,” but these three changes are different, they directly support what dental teams are struggling with right now:
Communication overload → Chat reduces app-switching and chasing people down
Insurance estimate confusion → tooth-based limits/exclusions reduce guesswork and surprises
Schedule stress → mirroring supports real provider movement and fewer bottlenecks
If you haven’t updated yet, talk with your IT support and make a plan, and once you’re on 25.3, remember:
you can access the most current help pages using the ? from any window inside Open Dental.
