The shared foundation for automated patient messaging — reminders, recalls, pre-visit emails, and feedback.
The shared foundation for automated patient messaging — appointment reminders, recalls, pre-visit emails, and feedback requests. Set this up once; the feature guides build on it:
This guide assumes the booking system is already installed and working (see the Installation Guide for your practice system — Optomate or Sunix — and the Setup Guide). It applies to practices on either Optomate Touch or Sunix Vision; where the two behave differently, look for the Optomate / Sunix callout boxes.
You can start on the shared sender and upgrade to a dedicated number later, or vice versa — contact support to change tier.
For recalls and feedback (Optomate only) — additional Optomate API permissions are required. Reminders themselves don't need anything beyond the base booking system permissions.
| Resource | Read | Create | Update | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patient Recalls | Yes | Yes | Read to fetch due recalls; Update to mark as sent | |
| Recall Types | Yes | Required for recall type sync and template mappings | ||
| Patient Notes | Yes | Yes | For recall and feedback reply handling — YourBooking writes each reply to a new patient note (Create); Read displays the note on the staff dashboard. Existing notes are never modified. |
The booking system already requires Appointments (Read/Create/Update) and Patients (Read/Create/Update). If these were not enabled during initial setup, add them now in Optomate under System Settings > API Access > Access List.
When you select Patient Recalls in the access list, four channel checkboxes appear at the bottom of the dialog: SMS, Email, Letter, and Telephone. Tick the channels that Your Booking will handle. This tells Optomate that those channels are managed externally, so Optomate won't send them itself. Only tick the channels you plan to enable in Your Booking — you can come back and add more later as you roll out additional channels (see Per-channel rollout).
Sunix: there are no API permissions to set up. The Your Booking agent reads due recalls and writes reply notes directly to your Sunix system, so you can skip the permission table and the channel-checkbox step above. You still choose which recall channels Your Booking handles — that's done when you enable recall automation (see Recalls Setup).
Anywhere YourBooking configures behaviour per appointment type — reminder template overrides, manage-link ineligible list, feedback filters, pre-visit emails — the type has to be visible to YourBooking first.
Optomate: YourBooking can only target types marked Available Online in Optomate. Optomate's API exposes only those types; types flagged as staff-only or walk-in-only are invisible to YourBooking. If you have a type you use for walk-ins or phone bookings (often deliberately excluded from online booking so staff can distinguish manual bookings at a glance) and you want to apply per-type rules to it, the workaround is:
- In Optomate, mark the type as Available Online.
- In YourBooking's admin, open the type and turn off all three patient-eligibility flags (New / Recent / Inactive). The type becomes invisible to patient-facing booking but remains available for all per-type configuration (reminders, pre-visit emails, feedback filters, ineligible manage-link list, etc.).
Sunix: there's no "Available Online" flag — every appointment type syncs through, so you can apply per-type rules to any of them. To keep a type out of patient-facing booking while still using it for per-type rules, leave its New / Recent / Inactive patient flags off (same as step 2 above).
If your booking page is embedded in your website via an iframe, recall and manage links need to route correctly into the embedded page. This is configured during onboarding — contact support if you're unsure whether your setup is correct.
If your business has multiple branches, reminders and recalls are configured per-branch — see setup-multibranch.html for the cross-branch setup workflow.
https://yourpractice.yourbooking.au/admin0430 253 404)Notifications go to your practice email and include the patient name, reply text, and a link back to the staff dashboard. Leave both on unless you specifically don't want immediate notifications.
Reminders, recalls, pre-visit emails, and feedback all send from templates you manage in the Templates tab. A template has a Scope (what it's for — Appointment reminder, Recall, Feedback, Pre-visit, Manage Link) and a Channel (SMS, Email, Letter, or Telephone). Email templates also have a subject and an optional branded HTML body.
New practices start with a set of default templates, so you may not need to create any from scratch — you can edit the defaults or add your own.
To create one:
Tip: If you already have a similar template, use the Copy from existing template dropdown in the modal to clone its content as a starting point. The dropdown is filtered by the scope and channel you've selected, and only appears when creating a new template (not when editing). The name field stays as you've typed it; only the body fields are overwritten.
When you want to customise a default or add your own, the editor can draft it for you:
Anything the AI produces is a starting point — review it and use the live Preview before saving. If it ever uses a placeholder that isn't recognised, you'll see a warning so you can fix it.
Templates use placeholders like {PATIENT_FIRST_NAME} and {APPOINTMENT_DATE} that Your Booking fills in per patient when the message is sent. The set of available placeholders depends on the template's scope and channel — the full, current list (with sample values) is shown right in the template editor. The reminder-specific and recall-specific placeholders are listed in their feature guides:
Use Preview in the editor at any time to see exactly how a template will render with sample patient data and your practice branding.
Create login accounts so your staff can access the Staff Dashboard.
/staff)Staff log in at https://yourpractice.yourbooking.au/staff/login.
You can promote/demote users between Staff and Admin roles, or deactivate accounts using the toggle in the Users card. You cannot deactivate your own account.
See the Staff Dashboard Guide for full documentation on the staff interface. The dashboard has the following tabs:
Patients can reply to reminder and recall SMS messages. Every reply body is stored in your practice system — YourBooking does not retain the free text on its own servers. The staff dashboard's Sent History tab records that the reply happened (patient, timestamp, YES / NO / STOP / MESSAGE category) and the practice receives an email with the full text at the moment the reply arrives.
Where the reply text lands depends on your practice system.
Optomate:
Reply to Where the text lives How to find it Reminder The appointment's COMMENTSfieldOpen the appointment in Optomate — the comments show [Sent SMS <time>]followed by[Reply <time>]: <body>Recall A new Patient Note on the patient's record Open the patient in Optomate → Notes tab — look for Recall SMS reply (stop)orRecall SMS reply (message)Feedback A new Patient Note on the patient's record Same — labelled Feedback SMS reply (stop)orFeedback SMS reply (message)Opt-out / STOP The patient's Marketing preference is set to "Exclude" and a Patient Note records the STOP text The preference change is audit-visible; the note contains the exact words the patient sent YourBooking writes the Patient Note at the moment the reply arrives, so the note is timestamped with the reply time. The note's
DESCRIPTIONfield identifies the reply category so staff can scan the notes list quickly —stopfor opt-outs,messagefor anything else.Sunix: every reply body — reminder, recall, or feedback — is saved as a patient note on the patient's record, visible in Sunix's Patient Notes panel. Open the patient and look for a note titled with the reply type (e.g. a recall opt-out or message). A STOP reply also updates the patient's recall preference so future newsletters and recalls are suppressed. Either way, the staff dashboard's Sent History tab records that the reply happened.
The feature-specific actions a reply triggers are covered in each guide: reminder replies (confirm/cancel the appointment) and recall replies.
Patient replies are emailed to the practice immediately with the full body, so reception sees them without having to open your practice system. Notifications are controlled by the Reply notifications toggles in the SMS Configuration card (both default on).
Notifications go to the practice email configured in the practice settings, and include the patient name, reply body, and a link back to the staff dashboard. They are sent in addition to recording the reply in the Sent History tab and the patient's record in your practice system.
Feature-specific checks are in each guide (reminders not sending, recalls not sending). The checks below apply to both.