This covers the importance of keeping the providers and services up to date for your Online Booking and some features you can utilise.
Amending the provider setup
As providers come and go to your practice you’ll want to keep the Online Booking configuration up to date with who the patients can book with.
New/Existing Patient Website Bookings
The above shows how to add a provider into the New Patient/Existing Patient types of Online Bookings. These are for patients booking through the link on your website. As can you can see you need to set:
The default NHS and/or Private appointment length as well as the service code.
What clinic settings you want it to default to, the three options being:
‘Specific Clinic’ - meaning you can set a clinic that should be in the provider’s diary for the online bookings to go in.
‘All unbooked non-clinic time’ - (recommended) which would allow the Online Bookings to go in any open time that isn’t zoned out with a clinic.
‘All unbooked time’ - This one allows the Online Bookings to go in any open time regardless if there are clinic zones there or not.
What confirmation template you’d like to be sent automatically which sends when a patient books online. There will more than likely be one already created for you for email and SMS called ‘OBAPPCON’.
You can have different settings for each service available on your Online Booking website link; see ‘Updating the reasons/services available online’ below for details.
Recall Online Bookings
This shows how to add a provider for Online Recalls. The only configuration needed here is the clinic settings and confirmation templates. This is because when the patient receives their recall link they’ll only be able to book for the dental/hygiene recall appointment you set them on their patient file.
To go live with Online Recalls you need to ensure your recall settings are up to date as well. See the bottom section ‘Ensuring your recall settings are current’.
Planned Online Bookings
This is how you add providers for planned Online Bookings. You need to set the clinic settings and confirmation templates as before. Additionally under ‘Sending Templates’ you need to set what email/SMS templates you’d like when sending patients links for outstanding planned appointments. You’ll most likely have ones we’ve created for you already called ‘OBPLANNED’.
If you’d like some guidance on how to send planned links to patients then click here. ← PLACEHOLDER
Updating the reasons/services available online
After defining all the providers you’d like for Online Bookings you also need to decide what services you want patients to choose from; this part is just for the new/existing patients booking for your website.
In the above example a service is added for ‘Oral Hygiene Visit’. What you need to set for Online Booking reasons are:
The private price you’d like to display. You don’t need to set an NHS price here as the Online Booking page will always display the latest NHS fees under the NHS tab.
The deposit you to be taken for the service. This is only for private appointments.
If you don’t see the ‘Deposits’ section then you don’t have the Online Payments facility.
3. The providers you’d like available for it under ‘Configure Providers’. Exact will then ask you if you want to add every provider, all dentists or all hygienists. However you can add, edit and remove providers to it one by one if you prefer.
4. For each provider you can then amend the appointment lengths & code, clinic settings and confirmation templates if this needs to be different for this Online Booking reason.
Features you can turn on/off
These are some other options you can enable/disable for your Online Bookings depending on your preferences:
‘Display Call Me option’ - enabling this allows patients booking through the Online Booking link on your website only to request a callback from the practice. You’ll see see which patients have requested a callback from the ‘Online Appointments’ tab in your appointment book.
‘Open Recalls’ - This is for recalls only. If unticked then patients will only see dates & times from the date their recall is due onwards. If ticked and a patient receives their recall link earlier than they are due in then they could book in before their recall date if they wanted to.
‘Appointment Stacking’ - This determines how much availability our Online Booking will show within any gaps in your diary. If unticked then it will show the first appointment time out of every gap whereas if ticked then it will show all availability on half hour intervals.
Ensuring your recall settings are current
0 Comments