Setting Up Classic Action Links in Emails

• Pricing Tier: Silver & Gold

• Appointment Version: Single & Multiple 

Action Links allow Customers to confirm, cancel, and reschedule their Appointments through a link in their email notifications. Action Links will automatically be available for any account (excluding Value Added Reseller accounts) subscribing to the Silver price tier or higher. 

Two versions of Action Links are available in the application and, depending on which Customer View you are using with your scheduling system, you'll set it up differently. In this article, we'll review the Classic Action Links feature that works with the Classic Customer View. If you are using the NextGen Customer View, you'll want to head over to our Appointment Action Links Plugin article for more information.

NOTE: The Action Link functionality will need to be activated for each email in the Emails section of Settings. By default, it is not enabled.

Customers will be provided with a link to do the following:

• View their Appointment details
• Confirm their Appointment
• Reschedule or cancel their Appointment
• Remove their waiting list entry

Action Links can be included in any Customer notifications:

With the customizable email templates, administrators can select and insert the Action Link block into any message. If you are interested in learning more about and seeing an example of how to insert this information into your emails, check out the Action Links example.

How It Works

How to Enable Classic Action Links

1. Click the Settings tab
2. Select the Emails link 
3. Adjust the Action Link Settings as shown below.

You can specify the following settings for the Action Links:

• Show the Action Link: Set this to "Yes" or "No" to enable/disable the link.
• Show the 'Confirm My Appointment' link: Set this to "Yes" if you would like to give your Customers the option to confirm their Appointment and change the status of their Appointment in the system. This setting is not available with the Waiting List Confirmation E-Mail.
• Display text before the link: Enter the text you would like displayed just above the link in the e-mail. Something similar to "Use the link below to view, confirm, or reschedule your appointment." would be appropriate here.
• Return the customer to this URL: You can specify where to send the Customer after they have completed one of the actions (confirm, reschedule, cancel). This will send the Customer directly to the URL you specify. If you leave this field blank, it will return them to your Customer view home page.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you enable/disable the notification Action Links under either the Appointment Change E-mail, the Appointment Confirmation E-mail, or the Appointment Reminder E-mail, it will be enabled/disabled for all three notifications. If you enable/disable the functionality under the Waiting List Confirmation E-mail, it will only affect the Waiting List Confirmation E-mail.

Inserting Action Links into Emails

As noted above, the customizable email notification templates allow you to control the messages that include the Action Link Block. If offering Action Links to your Customers, you may want to consider including them in the following messages:

• Appointment Confirmation email
• Appointment Change email
• Appointment Reminder email

Check out our Customizing Your Appointment Email Notification Templates article for more information on how you can enhance your email messages and take advantage of the options for your email design.

Customer Use of the E­mail Action Links

After the Action Links are enabled, Customers will receive a link within the designated emails. Here's an example of one of the emails:

When Customers click on the link provided in their e-­mail, they are taken to a page similar to the following:

From this page they can:

• View the details of their Appointment
• Confirm their Appointment (This will change the status of their Appointment from "Scheduled" to "Confirmed")
• Reschedule their Appointment (This will cancel the current Appointment and take them back to the Customer View site where they can select a new Appointment date. All of their selections for staff, service, room, etc. will be pre-­selected for them.)
• Cancel their Appointment (If you allow customers to cancel their Appointments this link will be provided for them. It uses the rules you have set for allowing cancellations from the Customer View site. If you require a cancellation reason or have cancellation notifications turned on, it will also trigger the appropriate feature)
• Remove their waiting list entry

How To Get Started Using Action Links

First, your account must be on the silver or higher subscription tier. If you are already using the email notifications, simply navigate to your Emails page and check "Yes" under "Show the Action Links." Then, return to your notification templates and add the Action Links Block merge field into the emails where you want it to be offered. For more information on how to do this, read our Customizing Your Appointment Email Notification Templates article.