Configuring automatic SMS and email communications (new patient welcome, confirmation & cancellation)

To access the configuration for New patient Emails, Appointment Confirmations and Cancellations and iCal options you will need to access automatic appointment reminder configuration.

Accessing the configuration window

1. Go to Configure - Automatic Appointment Reminders.
2. Click on Next to view the configuration window.

Most of these options involve selecting an email template. If you need to create or edit an email template have a look at our Create/Editing Email Templates article.

From here you can configure the various email options:

• New patient email
• Appointment confirmation
• Appointment cancellation
• Delay email delivery
• Prompt before sending
• Include iCal appointment information
• Appointment alarm
• Email signature

New patient email

This is typically a Welcome email, used as the initial email contact with a new patient. It can include useful information such as surgery hours, road map and available parking.
Select a template for automatically sending an email to each new patient.

Appointment confirmation

An email template for confirming a booking by means of an email from EXACT to the patient..

EXACT 13.956 introduced the option to send appointment confirmations via SMS, configuration is completed in the same place as email, to configure your SMS confirmation messages.

1. Go to Configure - Automatic Appointment Reminders.
2. Click on Next to view the configuration window.
3. The Appointment Confirmation option has two columns, Email and SMS, select the SMS field to configure your SMS template.
4. Once you have confirmed your choice, check the option Prompt before sending to be prompted when booking an appointment, this will give you the option to send either and Email, SMS or both appointment confirmations.
5. Once all settings are configured, click Next until Finish to save your changes.

Find out more by speaking with our Best Practice Consultants.

When sending a confirmation, by hovering over the SMS confirmation, a preview of the SMS will be shown with the merge fields showing the patient information.

Appointment cancellation

This is a template email for cancelling an appointment.

Specify an email template or leave blank to use no template (with no specified template you would need to manually create cancellation emails).

EXACT 13.963 introduced the option to send appointment cancellations via SMS, configuration is completed in the same place as email, to configure your SMS cancellation messages.

1. Go to Configure - Automatic Appointment Reminders.
2. Click on Next to view the configuration window.
3. The Appointment Cancellation option has two columns, Email and SMS, select the SMS field to configure your SMS template.
4. Once you have confirmed your choice, check the option Prompt before sending to be prompted when booking an appointment, this will give you the option to send either and Email, SMS or both appointment cancellations.
5. Once all settings are configured, click Next until Finish to save your changes.

Delay email delivery

This option is designed to avoid multiple confirmations going out to the patient. When an appointment is booked it is common to make a few alterations in the first few minutes of creating the appointment.

Setting a delay will avoid patients getting multiple appointment confirmations.

This setting is configurable in minutes, with a default of 10 minutes and a maximum of 99 minutes.

Prompt before sending

Normally this is a prompt to the receptionist where EXACT queries "Can I send this email now?"
If your practice uses the email delivery delay the prompt is likely unnecessary.

If you untick the box next to the patients email address this will stop the patient from receiving future communications as it will also untick the Email box on their details page so only select “Send” or “Cancel” if you don’t want to stop their future emails from sending.

Include iCal appointment information

A practice can configure EXACT to send email attachments with appointment confirmations. The patients open the attachments to insert an appointment booking into their personal calendars, with a pre-configured calendar alarm reminder.

Check this option if you wish to attach iCalendar (.ICS) format appointments to confirmation emails.
Patients will see this attachment, and can double-click to insert the appointment slot into their personal calendar.

Their calendar software will then ask for confirmation:

Online Booking: With a configuration that includes iCal, patients booking online will also receive a confirmation email with .ICS attachment.

Appointment alarm

This is a patient calendar pre-appointment alarm that can be included in the .ICS attachment.
Configurable, with a default of 60 minutes. Leave it blank to have no alarm.
It doesn't apply if the Include iCal checkbox is un-checked:

Note that the Appointment Alarm does not replace the normal appointment Email or SMS reminders in EXACT, it is a calendar-based reminder that works with the calendar appointment.

Email signature

If you do not use email templates but manually create emails, this is a means of having a standard footer or signature.
Configure an email signature or footer for automatically adding to any email messages that are not created via email template.
To add a signature or footer, click in the entry box, then select the required template file using the List or up/down buttons.
If the email template file does not already exist, you will have to create one. When you create a template, the footer or signature can simply be written into the template.

Select Next to go to the next configuration screen for setting up automatic appointment reminders