Notifications Overview

• LAST UPDATE: 8/19/2015
• PRICING TIER: All
• APPOINTMENT VERSION: Single & Multiple

Notifications are the emails that are sent out to your Customers and Staff Members. Email notifications are sent out automatically based on actions taken within your account. These actions include: adding, updating, and cancelling appointments. 

Notifications are split into two types:

• Customer Notifications
• Staff Member Notifications

Customer Notifications

To locate the customer notifications:

GO TO: Settings tab > Notifications > Customer Notifications

Customizing Customer Notifications

The Customer Notifications are separated by each appointment-related action.  For each e-mail that gets sent to your customers, you can select the link and customize the following information:

NOTE:

Email notifications are text based and should not include HTML code. You can add website links in the body of your emails by entering them as "www.abc.com". These links will only appear as clickable if the user has HTML enabled through their email service provider.

 

• Status
  Set the email as Active (emails are sent) or Inactive (emails are not sent)

• From
  Any text added to the “From” option will show in the header of the applicable email notification.
• Reply-To
  When a customer sends a reply to a notification, the email address added to the “Reply-To” section will automatically show in the email reply.
• Bcc:
  Include an email address to send a Blind Carbon Copy (abbreviated Bcc:) of the notification.

• Subject
  This is what will appear in the subject line when the email is received by the customer.

• Salutation Text
  Any text entered here will display at the beginning of the email. An example of a salutation would be "Dear" (as in Dear Joe).

• Use customer's name in salutation?
  If you set this to "yes", the customer's name will show at the beginning of the email. For example, if the customer's name is Julie, the email will show "Julie" at the beginning of the email. If you have, for example, "Dear" as the Salutation Text and have this field set to "yes", "Dear Julie," would show in the email.

• Paragraph 1
  Text entered here will display as the first paragraph of the email. Any line breaks you use will appear as line breaks when the email is received.

• Paragraph 2
  Any text entered here will display below the customer's appointment information (appointment date, time, etc.) that is automatically inserted in the email.

• Closing
  Examples of closings include "Sincerely", "Thank You", "Regards", etc.

• From
  This is typically the name of a person or the company.

The system will automatically add a footer to the email. By default, he footer includes the organization name, address, phone number and web site address (if applicable). If you would prefer to use a different footer, you can add a custom footer with the following email preference:

GO TO: Settings tab > Emails > Preference #14

 

Staff Member Notifications

The Staff Member Notifications are located on the same page as the Customer Notifications by going to:

GO TO: Settings tab > Notifications > Staff Member Notifications

Setting up the Staff Member Notifications

Staff Member Notifications are internal email notifications that the system automatically sends to your staff members upon the occurrence of specified actions. The internal emails sent to staff members in your organization are different than the ones sent to customers. These emails are preset, but you can select the fields of data to be included.  Like the Customers Notifications, the Staff Member Notifications are separately defined according to appointment-related actions. For example, if you would like your staff members to receive an email notification when an appointment is scheduled, you would click on the Appointment Notification Email link to customize it.

Once you have accessed one of the specific Staff Member Notification pages, you must first set the notification to Active or Inactive. The Active setting will allow the system to send the specified type of notification to your staff members. Two additional staff member email decisions must be made:

1. Which staff members will receive each type of email – either the staff member assigned to the specific appointment, a designated staff member (such as a scheduling coordinator), or both. 

2. Which pieces of information the Staff Member Notification will include – your options include both appointment and customer specific information. For example, if you choose to notify your staff members when customers schedule appointments with them, you can also decide what information to include in the staff member email. This is done by utilizing the Fields to include in e-mail section. Please note that you can even choose the order that the fields will display in the staff member email by utilizing sort order column to the right side of each field.

Email Preferences

Be sure to review the Email Preferences in the Settings sections. Within this section, you can set default settings to fit your business model. Setting the defaults establishes how your customer emails, staff member emails, and system emails are sent.  Pay particular attention to Email Preferences 1-6 which relate to the default settings for notifications sent when appointments are created in Site Administration. These preferences can be found by going to:

GO TO: Settings tab > Emails