Appointment Reminders
- Videos for appointment reminders
- Setting up and customizing appointment reminders
- Adding reminders to your appointments
- Sending email appointment confirmations
- Sending telehealth links
- Trouble-shooting appointment reminders
- Frequently asked questions
Videos for appointment reminders
These Sessions Health tutorials teach you how to setup and customize appointment reminders.
Setting up and customizing appointment reminders
Each appointment may have up to 5 appointment reminders. At this time, only 1 text reminder may be sent for each appointment. You may configure appointment reminders to go out at any interval up to two weeks prior to the appointment. Time intervals may be set using weeks, days, hours, or minutes.
Note: If the Business Email is assigned in Account Settings, that's the email address used if someone replies to an email reminder If not assigned, we'll always use the practitioner's email as the Reply-To. So, if your practice wants emails to go to practitioners directly, you'll want to remove the Business Email.
Enabling appointment reminders
Permissions: This feature requires administrator permissions. If you don't have permissions, please contact your account administrator regarding this feature.
Appointment reminder messages may be enabled under Account Settings > Communications. Click the toggle to turn appointment reminders off or on. Select from the Default Reminders dropdown whether your default reminders are Email, Text, or Email and Text. Check the box for Send time of scheduling confirmation by default to make sending appointment confirmations checked by default on new appointments.
Customizing appointment reminders
Appointment reminder messages are customizable. There are two places where the template may be changed:
- At the account level from Account Settings > Communications
- At the client-level at the bottom of the Details tab
Permissions: Account-level customization requires administrator permissions. If you don't have permissions, please contact your account administrator regarding this feature.
You can configure the following default settings:
- Default reminders: If all or most of your clients will be receiving email and/or text messages, for example, you can make those default so you don't have to manually set up each time you schedule an appointment.
- Email/Text templates: Customize the messages that get sent to your clients and include a number of "tokens" to insert into the templates.
- These tokens and their definitions include:
- Appointment Location: For in-person sessions, this will display the location address and Additional Instructions if assigned. For telehealth sessions (those using a service location with a place of service code of "02" or "10"), it'll pull in both the URL and Additional Instructions field values in place of the location address.
- Appointment Time: This will use the start date and time of the appointment. If the client has a time zone assigned (via the client's Details tab), the client's time zone will be used. If not, the location's configured time zone will be used.
- Client First Name: First name of the client.
- Client Last Name: Last name of the client.
- Practice Name: Name of the account, configured in Account Settings.
- Practice Phone Number: Phone number tied to the account, configured in Account Settings.
- Practitioner Name: Full name of the practitioner
- Include *.ics attachment: This will include a *ics. file in your email reminders. These allow your clients to quickly add the appointment to their own calendars. The appointment details in the *.ics file include the date and start/end times of the appointment, your name, address/location (if not telehealth), URL (if telehealth), and information in the Additional Instructions field of the appointment (if telehealth).
Note: Customizing appointment reminders from the Account Settings > Communications tab sets the default reminders for any new appointments you setup, given that the client doesn't have a custom appointment reminder already setup in Clients > [Client Name] > Details. Setting a custom appointment reminder for a client will override the appointment reminders in Account Settings > Communications.
Adding reminders to your appointments
After you enable appointment reminders, new appointments will include reminders by default, however, you may also manually add reminders to an appointment by clicking on the Add Reminder button in the Appointment Reminders section of the appointment.
Sending email appointment confirmations
To send an appointment confirmation, check the Send email confirmation immediately box under the Appointment Reminders section on the appointment popup. The email appointment confirmation will use the same email template configured in your account for appointment reminders.
When you click the Save button, an email confirmation will be sent to the client.
Note: When editing appointments, the checkbox for sending an appointment confirmation will be displayed but it will never be checked by default. To send an appointment confirmation on an edited appointment, be sure to check the box, then click Save.
Sending telehealth links
We recommend setting up your telehealth URL in Account Settings > Telehealth. Doing so will automatically fill in the URL in each appointment that is using a service location with a Place of Service Code of either 02 or 10. See our Telehealth article on details for configuring your telehealth.
When the URL field contains your telehealth link in for your appointments and you add the appointment location token (displayed as %{appointment_location}) in your reminders, the URL will be included in your reminders.
Note: If your appointment location is assigned a Place of Service Code other than 02 or 10, it will include the address of your location.
For static URL links like Zoom and Doxy, we recommend setting that in Account Settings > Telehealth, however, if you are strictly telehealth, you may enter the static URL link directly into the custom appointment reminders without using the location token.
If your links are unique to each session (Google Meet, for example) they will not automatically update. You will need to manually enter those into the URL field of each appointment. You may still use the location token to include the URL in your reminders.
Trouble-shooting appointment reminders
To check on the status of an appointment reminder for any session, you may click into the appointment and hover over the status icon at the bottom of the pop-up.
There may be a number of reasons why a client did not receive an appointment reminder. Below are some items to confirm to make sure appointment reminders are being sent.
Make sure appointment reminders are enabled in your account
You can confirm this by going to Account Settings > Communications and ensure appointment reminders are set to Enabled.
Your client-level reminders may be overriding your default account-level reminders
Because client-level appointment reminder settings will override account-level reminder settings, make sure the client reminders aren't disabled, or don't contain a custom message you weren't expecting. You can check this by going to the Clients > [Client Name] > Details tab and scroll down to the Appointment Reminders section. You can remove any custom client reminder settings by clicking on the "..." and select Remove Customized Settings. This will assign your client the account-level reminder settings found in the Account Settings > Communications tab.
Confirm your client's preferences are enabled to receive text, phone, or email communications
Appointment reminders are tied to a client's contact preferences. For example, if a client chooses not to receive email appointment reminders, they won't be sent. You or your clients may set and change contact preferences at any time. To view a client's contact preferences, go to the Clients > [Client Name] > Details tab and scroll down to the Contact Preferences section.
Re-scheduling your appointment after your reminders were sent
Currently, if you re-schedule your appointment, but reminders were already sent for the original appointment, your appointment reminders won't reset to the new appointment. We recommend cancelling the original appointment and setting up a new appointment so reminders are set. Sessions Health will be improving this workflow in the future so re-scheduled appointments will reset reminders.
Frequently asked questions
How much do appointment reminders cost?
We allow email, and text reminders for no additional fee. Each appointment may have up to 4 email reminders and 1 text message reminder.
Is there a way to turn on appointment reminders for every session I put on the calendar? Or do I have to go in and individually enable each one?
As long as your client's contact preferences allow it, you may send reminders for every appointment. If you setup a reminder for a recurring appointment, all future appointments will also be setup with those same reminders.
Why don't my appointment reminders have the link for the Telehealth session, and how do I check the status of appointment reminders?
Under Account Settings > Communications, please check that you have added the Appointment Locationvariable. That is where the telehealth link from your appointment will be displayed in your reminder. Use the Preview option to confirm your reminders appear the way you'd like.
To check the status of appointment reminders, you may click on any appointment in question on the calendar. You'll see a section within the Appointment Details:
Hovering over the blue checkmark will give you more details about the reminder (ie, if sent, it will provide you with information around when it was sent, etc.).
Why aren't my appointment reminders working? There may be a few reasons your reminders aren't delivering as expected. Please see trouble-shooting appointment reminders.
Why is my custom reminder message not showing up in the reminders I send?
- Confirm you didn't change the appointment reminder message after the reminder was sent.
- If you have setup a reminder at the account-level, but set a different message at the client-level, the message at the client-level will override the account-level message.