How to create an Appointment Booking Rule

To create an Appointment Booking Rule, please follow the steps below:

Open ClinicOffice
Open the Patient Contact Centre (located at the top under the patients button as a drop-down)

Click Create New Rule
Select Appointment Booking Rule
Give the new rule a name (required) and if you wish a description

The appointment rule editor has four tabs that relate to various settings

Rule Criteria

Trigger

Trigger when an appointment is created, with tolerance of this many day(s)
The figure defines a window of days centered around the day the appointment booking rule is run:

A value of 0 includes only appointments created today.
A value of 1 includes appointments created yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
A value of 2 includes appointments created from the day before yesterday to the day after tomorrow (i.e., five days total).
And so on.
Also trigger when appointment is booked
When ticked the rule will run when an appointment is booked
Send even if an appointment is in the past
Even if the appointment date is in the past the rule will still run

Appointment Criteria

Any of the options that contain selections will run only for those selections. If you choose a certain clinic the rule will only run for those clinics.
If nothing is selected the rule will run for all option types in that field

Patient Criteria

As above any selections made from the options will only run for those options.
If nothing is selected the rule will run for all option types in that field

Message to Patient

When updated this will contain the message or messages that will be sent to the patient via SMS / email when a new appointment is booked.

How should this message be sent?

Depending on the selection made either one, two or no tabs will appear.

Below each tab, you can enter the message you’d like to send to the patient. You can also insert merge fields, which will automatically update when the message is sent—personalising the information for each patient.

The template button enables you to save and load templates you have made.

Message to Practitioner

When updated this will contain the message or messages that will be sent to the practitioner via SMS / email when a new appointment is booked.

How should this message be sent?

Depending on the selection made either one, two or no tabs will appear.

Below each tab, you can enter the message you’d like to send to the practitioner. You can also insert merge fields, which will automatically update when the message is sent—personalising the information for each practitioner.

The template button enables you to save and load templates you have made.

Rule Schedule

The Rule Schedule allows you to either set time-based reminders to run the rule or have it run automatically according to the defined schedule.

If “Run Automatically” is selected, the following settings can be configured:

Run this rule every
Specify how many days, weeks, months, or years between each run, and set the time of day the rule should execute.
Only run on these days
Choose which days of the week the rule should run. For example, if you don’t work weekends, deselect Saturday and Sunday.
Next run is scheduled for
Displays the next scheduled run date. This is automatically updated after each run.
Only for these users
The rule will only run for the currently logged-in user.
Only run on this computer
The rule will only execute on the specific PC or laptop selected.

PLEASE NOTE: Rules will only run if someone is logged in to ClinicOffice.