When sending SMS messages via the Appointment Book, you have multiple SMS message templates to base your message on. These basically fall into two categories;

o      Practice-wide: Accessible to all Appointment Books, and all practitioners.

o      Appointment-Book-Specific: Limited to a specific Appointment Book, accessible to a specific practitioner.

When sending ad-hoc reminders, you can select any SMS template on which to base your message i.e. there is no connection between the SMS template's Appointment Book/Appointment Book Practitioner and the patients within the currently-selected Appointment Book. See Managing Appointment Books for information about using multiple Appointment Books.

When sending reminders via the scheduler, however, the Practitioner-to-Appointment-Book relationship is taken into consideration i.e. if an Appointment-Book-Specific template does exist, it will be used for sending the SMS reminders to patients of that Appointment Book's practitioner. If no Appointment-Book-Specific template is found (for a specific Appointment Book practitioner) the practice-wide template is used.

Configuring SMS Message Templates

1.      Within the Appointment Book, select SMS > Message Templates > Configure Templates. The Configure SMS Message Templates window appears.

 

2.      From the Appointment Book drop-down list, select to modify either

o      The Practice-Wide message. This message is available to all Appointment Books, and all practitioners.

o      A specific, alternative Appointment Book.

 

3.      (Optional) If you elected to modify a specific Appointment Book, you must also indicate which specific practitioner the message template is for, by selecting them from the Appointment Book Practitioner drop-down list. This list is not available to the Practice-wide message template.

4.      Modify the message as desired. You can free-type in the message region, or select from a list of field codes to insert. It is important to note that if you wish to use any of the field codes, you must select them from the drop-down list provided - you cannot free-type these field codes into the message body, as they will not be recognised as field codes if inserted in this fashion.

The message field accepts 160 characters - the capacity of one standard  SMS message. Any text you type beyond this 160-character limit will be displayed with a strike-through to indicate that it may be truncated. You can disable this character limit by clicking the button, and each additional set of 160 characters will cost 1 SMS Credit to send.

Estimating Message Length:

If you use merge fields, there is no guarantee as to the number of characters a given field will actually use when the real data is substituted at the time the message is generated and sent.

For example, if your message contains the merge field <Patient Given Name>, a resulting message may use 3 characters for patient 'Jim', but 12 characters for patient 'Velikkakathu'.

Therefore, in order to estimate the total characters used per message sent, each merge field has been designated a pre-defined character length. In the example image above, an estimation of 109 characters is suggested, but the actual characters required may vary from message-to-message (patient-to-patient).

The following table shows the merge fields available to select from, and the pre-defined character-length designated for calculating the estimation.

Merge Field	Calculated Length
<Patient Title>	3
<Patient Given Name>	15
<Patient Surname>	20
<Patient Full Name>	40
<Appointment Date>	8
<Appointment Time>	5
<Appointment Practitioner>	40
<Appointment Location>	7
<Appointment Day>	7
<Appointment Day (short)>	3

 

 

5.      Indicate whether patients can reply to messages sent with this template;

o      Patients cannot reply: If you choose this option, you have the opportunity to indicate the message sender to the patient. Enter a description of up to 11 non-numeric characters. Note that whilst this field accepts most 'special' characters, it will not accept the @ or ^ symbols.

o      Request a Reply: If you choose this option, patients will see a mobile phone number as the sender's identification. This mobile number is randomly-generated by MessageNet (the SMS service provider) when you first register for the service.

Patients have a variety of options for replying, and Pracsoft can be configured to interpret-and-act-upon these replies. See Configuring SMS Reply Behaviour below for information.

Inform your patients that they should reply YES to confirm, or (optionally) NO if they will not be attending.


If you are satisfied with the modifications to the template, click Save

 

o      Alternatively, click to revert the entire template to its original state. Note that the 'original state' is defined as that supplied with Pracsoft, not your 'previously-saved' state.

 

6.      Click to exit the Configure SMS Message Template window.

Configuring SMS Reply Behaviour

o      The Waiting Room:
Patients cannot reply to SMS messages sent from the Waiting Room.

 

o      The Appointment Book:
From the Appointment Book you can send SMS messages to individual patients, or to multiple patients simultaneously. Because these SMS messages are being sent from the Appointment Book, it is assumed that the messages relate to the patients' appointments.

When sending bulk SMS appointment reminders, in order to allow patients to confirm or reject their attendance at a scheduled appointment, Pracsoft accepts SMS replies from your patients, and then interprets-and-acts-upon those replies.

For example, if a patient replies "No" to your appointment reminder, Pracsoft can be configured to automatically remove their appointment from the Appointment Book.

The following information relates to configuring Pracsoft's acceptance of, and interpretation of, SMS reply messages sent by your patients.

1.      Within the Appointment Book, select SMS > Message Templates > Configure SMS Reply Behaviour. The Configure SMS Reply Behaviour window appears.

 

2.      This window is divided into three configurable sections;

o      Confirmation: When patients reply to confirm their attendance, typically they reply with either "Yes", or simply "Y". This section allows you to specify additional acceptable responses, such as "Ok".
Confirmation of attendance is displayed in the Appointment Book with the icon. See Status Legend for more information.

 

o      Cancellation: When patients reply to indicate they do not plan to attend, typically they reply with either "No", or simply "N". This section allows you to specify additional acceptable responses, such as "Nope". Furthermore, this section allows you to instruct Pracsoft to perform an action upon the patient's scheduled appointment (such as deleting it) when such a reply is received, and to record a comment against the deletion. See History of Deleted Appointments for more information about deleted appointments.
When a patient declines their appointment, this is displayed in the Appointment Book with the icon (provided of course that the appointment was not automatically deleted upon receiving the patient's response). See Status Legend for more information.

 

o      Opt out: Patients also have the ability to inform you that they no longer wish to receive SMS messages from your practice. Typically, they reply "Stop". This section allows you to specify additional acceptable responses, such as "S" or "Unsubscribe". When Pracsoft receives such a reply, it will automatically flag the patient's record to indicate that they no longer wish to receive SMS messages.

3.      Make modifications to these sections as desired. If you wish to add reply terms, ensure you separate each with a comma. Note that these reply terms are not case-sensitive e.g. if you add "yep", a patient can reply with "Yep", and it was be interpreted correctly.

4.      Click Save to confirm.