Additional Messaging

Appointment Reminder Settings can contain additional messaging. Additional messages can be reminders or appointment follow-up messages. They can be sent before or after appointments.

Only SMS text and Letter generation is supported by Additional Messaging.

SMS text

Text messages are automatically delivered to the client’s mobile phone.

Message content

The message itself can be altered to suit the context of the appointment. For example, the user’s name or the organisation’s name can be put in the message.

Merge Fields are available for inserting information in to the message when it is being sent. For example, the client’s name, the date of the appointment and the time of the appointment are all added to a message using merge fields.

When

The user can select a trigger for the message. These can be

• days before
• hours before
• day appointment was created
• day of appointment once completed
• days after the appointment (if completed)

Time of Day

The time of day the text reminders can begin sending can also be determined. For example, the user may decide that mid-morning is a good time for their clients to receive the text message.

We say “begin sending” as after that time if additional appointments are added to the relevant day, further reminders may be sent out at a later time.

Letter Reminders

Letters are converted from Word templates to PDF format and are automatically sent to the user’s email address. The user can control the following:

Content The reminder setting holds a Word document with diarybook merge fields embedded in the normal text.

When

The user can decide how much time before the appointment date the letter should be generated. A common setting is to generate the letter on the same day that the appointment was created.

The user can select a trigger for the message. These can be

• days before
• hours before
• day appointment was created
• day of appointment once completed
• days after the appointment (if completed)

Appointment Status

The message can further be refined so that it only sends to appointments with particular status flags.

This refinement can also be used after the appointment time.

Include Confirmed Appointments

This is a tick box that tells diarybook to include appointments that have already been confirmed by the client. Use this when there are multiple reminders before an appointment and you want to ensure the client receives them all.

Attendance Status

This option allows you to ensure that a message is only sent when the appointment has completed or failed to complete. If filtering by Attendance Status you can choose one or more of the following: