This Sessions Health tutorial teaches you how to setup and manage your availability for online booking.
Sessions Health's online booking feature allows your existing or new clients to self-schedule appointments online. Once an appointment is requested, you'll receive a notification to accept or decline the appointment.
To get started, you must first enable online booking from the Account Settings > Portal tab by clicking on the check-box next to Online Booking.
Permissions: Enabling online booking requires administrator permissions. If you don't have permissions, please contact your account administrator regarding this feature. Once enabled, individual practitioners without administrative permissions can setup their availability.
You can then manage your availability by going to Account Settings > Portal and clicking on the Manage Availability button in the Features section. You may also find this by clicking on the Manage Availability button in the upper right section of your calendar view.
To create an initial schedule, first set up your availability. Identify your default weekly schedule (you can add or delete specific dates and times at a later step).
Note: Setting your availability establishes the timeframe that clients can book online. Online booking will always consider other appointments and events already on your calendar to avoid double booking.
Schedule
Click the + sign to add additional hours for a particular day.
Click the Copy icon to duplicate a particular day's schedule across other days.
Click the Trash icon to delete a schedule.
Setup date overrides
Once you've created your first schedule, you can set Date Overrides for dates and times that deviate from your default online booking schedule. For example, you can remove an entire week or just an hour of a day if you know you're going to be unavailable.
Date overrides
Note: Both you and members with a Scheduler and/or Administrator role will be able to view and modify your availability settings.
The next step is to determine the services you want to make available for new or existing clients. Services enabled for new clients will allow anyone with a link to your portal URL to request an appointment without an account. Services enabled for existing clients will allow clients that you've invited to your portal and have their own account login to request an appointment.
Note: You can choose from a list of services that you've enabled in the Billing Settings > Services tab of your account.
Use the Customize Label button to create a client-friendly name when this service appears in the client portal.
Service configuration
Note: We do not have a separate widget to embed online booking onto your website, however, you can simply provide a link to your unique portal URL, which you can find in the Account Settings > Portal tab.
Each schedule allows you to select which locations apply. Select which of your account's service locations should be available for the schedule you are creating.
Locations
Display Name is what the client will see as an option when choosing a location,
Description is shown when they're confirming the request. The description is useful for providing parking and directions to physical locations or telehealth instructions for telehealth locations.
The last step in the setup process is for additional configuration options that you may set from Calendar > Manage Availability > Active Services:
Additional configuration
Time Zone
Setting the time zone binds the selected time zone to the hours and days you configure for your availability. However, the calendar is always displayed in the local time where you are currently located.
Example: If your online availability time zone is Central Time, but your client is in New York while looking at your scheduling calendar in the client portal, the times will be displayed in Eastern Time for your client.
By creating multiple schedules, you have a lot of flexibility in managing how clients schedule. You may create a schedule for telehealth and another for in-person. You may create a schedule for a particular service such as groups or family therapy.
Step 1. Click the Plus icon
Clicking the icon at the top of the screen will allow you to create an additional schedule.
Create an additional schedule
Step 2. Setup Services
Click the button that contains the number of services for this schedule to change what services are available.
Edit services
Click the button that contains the number of locations for this schedule to make changes to the locations. You may select which locations this schedule should apply to and set the display name and description for just this schedule.
Edit locations
The following are just a few examples of how you may create multiple schedules to support your needs.
Example 1: A therapist provides telehealth on M, W, F and provides in-person therapy on T, Th. They offer the same services every day. This therapist may create two schedules. The first schedule may be configured for just the telehealth location. The availability for this schedule will be set for M, W, F and no availability on other days. All services will be included. The second schedule may include just the in-person location. The availability for this schedule will be T and Th. All services will be included.
Example 2: Someone may choose to setup a schedule for each service they offer and assign one or more locations where it's available.
Example 3: Therapists can use additional schedules as an addendum to an existing schedule. A therapist can create one default telehealth schedule for all services every afternoon, but then add a custom schedule to allow for telehealth consultations on Tuesday mornings.
Example 4: A therapist provides telehealth and in-person therapy but only does consultations using telehealth. They may create two identical schedules except one will use the telehealth location and include the Consultation service. The other schedule will use the in-person location and not include the Consultation service. Clients scheduling through the client portal will only be able to schedule consultations according to the therapist's telehealth schedule.
Clients may also cancel appointments through the client portal. To do so, they may click the '...' menu next to the appointment they wish to cancel.
Clients may cancel appointments through the portal
After clicking the Cancel Appointment option, clients will be presented with a confirmation modal that prompts for a cancellation reason.
Cancellation reason
Clients will see a confirmation once they completely cancel.
Cancellation confirmation
The client will receive a confirmation email as well.
Client email confirmation of cancellation
The assigned practitioner and anyone with the scheduler role will receive an email notification that displays the client id, cancellation notice, reason, and a link to review the cancellation.
Review cancellation email
The practitioner may Unlock the appointment to be active again. They may click Edit to change the status of the cancellation or apply a fee.
Unlock or edit a cancellation
If the practitioner edits the cancellation, they will be presented with the same options as when cancelling an appointment from the calendar.
Once an appointment request is submitted, you (and any schedulers you have setup on your account) will receive an email notification. You'll also see an indicator in the Calendar menu of a pending request.
From there, you'll be able to Accept or Decline the request.
Note: Your client may return to the portal to cancel their request as long as the appointment is pending your approval, regardless of your portal cancellation settings. If you've accepted the appointment, your portal cancellation settings will be applied.
Once you've setup your client portal and enabled online booking, you may add your client portal URL link directly to your website for new client bookings. You can find your client portal URL in Account Settings > Portal.
We suggest bypassing the initial landing page and add /request to the end of your URL, which is the direct link for new clients to book an appointment. For example, your new client booking URL may look like https://examplepractice.sessionshealth.com/request.
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