Setup Appointment Notifications

Guide on Customising Appointment Notifications in the Whautomate platform.

Whautomate sends default appointment notification messages, such as appointment Confirmations, Reminders, Rescheduling, and Cancellations, through WhatsApp, email, or SMS for Clients and Staff. You can customize these default appointment notification messages to fit your needs and branding.

How can I change my default appointment notification settings?

Important Note:

• If you are scheduling multiple appointments in bulk, clients will receive notifications for each appointment individually by default.

• To prevent multiple notifications from being sent, use the Bulk Appointment Trigger Automation to send a single, consolidated summary notification instead. This ensures clear and efficient communication with your clients.

For more details, refer to the setup guide here: Bulk Appointment Notification Setup.

Step 1: Go to the Whautomate app and click the Settings Option

Step 2: Select the Notification Option as shown in the below picture 👇

Step 3: Choose notification options like WhatsApp, Email or SMS for sending Notifications about Appointments

step 4: After the Selection click the Update button to save changes.

How to create a custom appointment notification so that the default notification will not be sent?

Note: To prevent the customer from receiving duplicate notifications, we need to uncheck all the notifications in the default Notification Settings and click the Update button. This will ensure that only the custom notification is sent and not the default one. If we don't uncheck the default notification, the customer will receive the same notification twice. 👇

Appointment Confirmation Notification

Step 1: Go to the Whautomate app then click the Automation menu and select the Add Rule button as shown in the below picture 👇

Step 2: Select the Create Rules from Scratch option to continue

Step 3: Choose the Appointment Updates as a Trigger

Step 4: Click the Add Condition button

Step 5: Choose the condition Field option like "Appointment Status" 👇

Step 6: Choose the condition Operator option like "equals" 👇

Step 7: Choose the condition Status option like "Booked" 👇

This condition status option is when a client or you book an appointment for a client, the status will be marked as "Booked". The client will receive a notification via WhatsApp and Email.

Note: Similarly, the condition status option is when a client or you Rescheduled or Cancelled an appointment for a client, the status will be marked as Rescheduled or Cancelled. The client will receive a notification via WhatsApp and Email.

(i) When a client completes an appointment then the status will be marked as Visited. The client will receive a notification via WhatsApp and Email. We can also apply this process for customers who are on the Waitlisted or for No-Show customers.

Important Note:

If you have already set up the Bulk Appointment Notification, you need to configure an additional condition to manage notifications effectively and avoid sending multiple notifications.

Set Up a Participant Frequency Condition

• Condition Field: Select "Appointment Frequency".

• Condition Type: Choose one of the following:

  • Individual: To prevent notifications from being sent for bulk appointment scheduling.

  • Bulk/Repeat: To allow notifications to be sent for each appointment when scheduling multiple appointments in bulk.

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Example Usage

• Bulk Appointments: If you are scheduling multiple appointments in bulk and want to send notifications for each appointment, set the condition type to "Bulk/Repeat".

• Avoid Multiple Notifications: If you want to prevent multiple notifications when scheduling bulk appointments, set the condition type to "Individual".

• Single Appointment: For individual appointment scheduling, ensure the condition type is set to "Individual" so the notification is sent. 👇

Step 8: Select an Action you want to notify your client of their appointment booked such as WhatsApp and Email.

For Eg. Select a Send a WhatsApp template message and fill in the required details. 👇

Step 9: Select a WhatsApp template message you want to notify your client for their appointment booked confirmation.

(a). Select the message template in the Message Template field and enter all the Parameters.

I used the Whautomate whauto_appointment_confirmation_message(en) WhatsApp default message template which was already created and approved by Meta. If you want to use your own custom WhatsApp message template, So first you need to create a new WhatsApp Message Template, you can select the Create New Template link. This will take us to the template page where we can submit our new template.

However, please note that any custom notification settings will be discarded, and we will need to set them up again after our new template is approved.

(b). When you enter (#) in the Parameter field, a list will pop up. You can choose from the options provided to fill out the parameter details.

Eg: #client.name = {{client.name}}, #business.name = {{business.name}}, etc.

Available Personalisation Variables:

Client Variables

{{client.name}}, {{client.preferredName}}, {{client.age}}, {{client.gender}}, {{client.email}}, {{client.phone}}, {{client.calendarSyncURL}}, {{client.photoURL}}, {{client.address}}, {{client.emergencyRelationType}}, {{client.emergencyContactName}}, {{client.emergencyContactPhone}}

Business Variables

{{business.name}}, {{business.address}}, {{business.phone}}, {{business.mapDirectionUrl}}, {{business.operatingHours}}

Appointment Variables

{{appointment.practitioner}}, {{appointment.date}}, {{appointment.time}}, {{appointment.previousDate}}, {{appointment.previousTime}}, {{appointment.clientName}}, {{appointment.addToCalendarURL}}, {{appointment.partialAddToCalendarURL}}, {{appointment.location}}, {{appointment.service}}, {{appointment.addons}}, {{appointment.detailsURL}}, {{appointment.partialdetailsURL}}, {{appointment.cancelURL}}, {{appointment.partialcancelURL}}, {{appointment.rescheduleURL}}, {{appointment.partialrescheduleURL}}, {{appointment.practitionerRole}}, {{appointment.price}}, {{appointment.timezone}}, {{appointment.businessTimezone}}, {{appointment.dateInBusinessTZ}}, {{appointment.timeInBusinessTZ}}, {{appointment.previousDateInBusinessTZ}}, {{appointment.previousTimeInBusinessTZ}}

Step 10: After filling in the details Click the Save button

Make sure to check out the section below to learn how to set up Appointment Reschedule and Reminder notifications 👇

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Appointment Reschedule Notification

Step 1: Choose the Appointment Updates as a Trigger

Note: Implement the automation trigger in the upper section, which is utilized in the Appointment Confirmation Notification

Step 2: Choose the condition Status option like "Rescheduled" 👇

Step 3: Select an Action you want to notify your client of their appointment rescheduled via WhatsApp.

For Eg. Select a Send a WhatsApp template message and fill in the required details. 👇

Step 4: Select a WhatsApp template message to notify your client of their appointment rescheduled confirmation.

(a). Select the message template in the Message Template field and enter all the Parameters.

I used the Whautomate whauto_appointment_rescheduled_message(en) WhatsApp default message template, which was already created and approved by Meta. If you want to use your own custom WhatsApp message template, So first you need to create a new WhatsApp Message Template, you can select the Create New Template link. This will take us to the template page where we can submit our new template. 👇

(b) Please enter (#) to choose from personalisation variables in the parameters E.g. client name, business name, etc.

Available Personalisation Variables for WhatsApp and Email Template Mentioned in the upper section:

When a client or you reschedule an appointment, the existing appointment reminder is automatically canceled. Therefore, it's important to set up a new appointment reminder notification for the rescheduled appointment. 👇

Step 5: After filling in the details Click the Save button.

Appointment Reminder Notification

Step 1: Add one more Action into the Appointment Confirmation or Reschedule Automation Rule. to notify your client of their appointment reminder notification via WhatsApp.

For Eg. Select a Send a WhatsApp template message and fill in the required details. 👇

Step 2: Select the Add Wait & Schedule Time button so you can set up a notification wait time and Schedule a specific time to send a notification

Note: I have arranged for appointment reminder notifications to be sent to the client 1 day before the appointment at 9:00 AM. You have the flexibility to personalize your appointment reminder notifications according to your preferences.

(a) Eg. This notification will be sent 1 Day before the appointment and at 09:00 AM 👇

Step 3: Select a WhatsApp template message to notify your client of their appointment reminder notification.

(a). Select the message template in the Message Template field and enter all the Parameters.

I used the Whautomate whauto_appointment_reminder_message(en) WhatsApp default message template, which was already created and approved by Meta. If you want to use your own custom WhatsApp message template, So first you need to create a new WhatsApp Message Template, you can select the Create New Template link. This will take us to the template page where we can submit our new template. 👇

(b) Please enter (#) to choose from personalisation variables in the parameters E.g. client name, business name, etc.

Available Personalisation Variables for WhatsApp and Email Template Mentioned in the upper section:

Step 4: After filling in the details Click the Save button.