**Please note that this feature is enabled by request only as it can significantly increase the volume of emails and texts that are sent from an account.**
The Automated Messaging Triggers is a feature that allows you to send custom messages to clients or staff notifying them if there have been any changes, updates or important information regarding the appointments or classes they are booked for. In an effort to avoid spam coming from our servers, we activate this feature only for Business and Enterprise account holders (not bots 😊 ) who ask for it.
Within the Automated Messaging Triggers users will have the option to define a reason, staff, or location before sending a specific appointment template to clients/staff either individually or in bulk. As an example, this email can be configured to be sent out a certain number of hours before/after the appointment start time to get feedback from the client about how it went or to serve as an additional reminder.
The Automated Messaging Triggers come in handy when you have a message you want sent to your clients based on an action taken or a timeframe. For example if you wanted to send an email to your clients based on the status of the appointment changing from Open to Open-Confirmed, you can set a specific trigger message to be sent.
On this page we will go over:
Before setting up your triggers you want to make sure your appointment templates are first set up. The Appointment Triggers Templates are located in Messaging > Appointment Templates > Appointment Triggers (choose your type: Email or Text Message).
For a refresher course on how to edit or clone appointment templates click here.
To access your current Automated Triggers or to create a New Trigger you will go to Messaging > Automated Messaging Triggers. On this page you will have the option to Create a New Trigger or edit and delete previously created Triggers.
On this page you will find the following call to action buttons:
Once you have clicked the button "Add New Trigger" you will be taken to the Update Event Screen where you will define the properties of your trigger(s). To keep with our example above we will label this trigger "Confirmed Appointments" and we will assigned it to all locations, staff and services. We will then set the trigger to send based on status change, specifically the status change from open to open-confirmed
Under the Update Event section you will choose the properties your trigger is assigned to.
Now that you have selected the properties that define your automated trigger message it is now time to decide who gets the message, what type of message it is and which appointment triggers template you want to send to this audience.
In this section we are choosing to send the message to the client via email and the template we choose for our confirmed appointment trigger which is called "Appointment Triggers - Confirmed Appointments." As a reminder this Appointment Trigger template was created under Messaging Settings > Appointment Templates > Click view next to Appointment Trigger > Cloned the default template.
Once you have set the below fields we will click save event.
Under Messages you have the following to select:
Now that we have set our Automated Messaging trigger into action from here on out when a client confirms their upcoming appointment(s) they will automatically receive the Appointment Template labeled "Appointment Trigger - Confirmed Appointment" email notification.