Notifications Overview

• Last Updated: 3/19/2020
• 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 view and manage the available Customer Notifications:

• Click Settings
• Click Notifications
• Find the table labeled Customer Notifications

Customizing Customer Notifications

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: You can customize your email message by using the formatting tools in the Paragraph 1 and Paragraph 2 sections. Some commonly used tools are available to allow you to change the size, format, and color of text, insert hyperlinks and create bulleted lists.

• Status: To send the email, make sure it is Active. Inactive emails are not sent to Customers.
• 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.
• Greeting 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 greeting: 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 greeting text and have this field set to yes, the email will start with Dear Julie.
• 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 (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.

When all edits are complete, click Update to save your changes.

Want to send emails based on a custom Appointment status? Check out our article for setting up both a Custom Appointment Status and linking it to a User-Defined Email.

The system will automatically add a footer to the email. By default, the 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:

• Click Settings
• Click Emails
• Locate Custom text for email footer (preference #14) and enter your desired email footer information.
• Click Update

Staff Member Notifications

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

• Click Settings
• Click Notifications
• Find the table labeled Staff Member Notifications

Setting up 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. Here is a description of the four areas that can be customized.

Email Status

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.

Which staff members will receive each type of email

In this section, review the available options and make the choice that works best for your business. You can select to only notify the Staff Member assigned to the specific appointment, choose a designated Staff Member (such as a scheduling coordinator), or both.

If you choose either the 2nd or 3rd option, you should also enter an email address in the available field.

Custom messages in Paragraph 1 and Paragraph 2

Similar to Customer Notifications, you have two paragraph areas in which to enter additional information. You can also change the formatting of the message by creating bulleted lists, inserting hyperlinks or changing the size, format, or color of the text itself. Please note that any formatting changes only apply to the content in these paragraph areas.

Which pieces of information the Staff Member Notification will include

In the final section, select the Appointment or Customer information to include in the message body. This information will be provided to whoever receives the Staff Member notification.

In the Fields to include in email section, select (click the box) for each field and, if desired, set the display order by which fields will display in the email by utilizing the sort order column to the right side of each field. 

When you have completed customizing Staff Member notifications, please remember to click Update to save your work.

Email Preferences

Be sure to review the Email Preferences in the Settings section. Within this section, you can set default settings to fit your business model. Setting the defaults will establish how your Customer, Staff Member, 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. To view these preferences:

• Click Settings
• Click Emails
• If you make any changes, please Update to apply the settings to your account.