Automatically send patients an SMS or email before their upcoming appointments, on a schedule you specify.
Appointment Reminders automatically send patients an SMS or email before their upcoming appointments, on a schedule you specify. Each reminder includes a link to confirm, reschedule, or cancel — and patients can also reply to an SMS reminder to confirm or cancel directly.
First: complete the shared Messaging Setup — it covers SMS configuration, how templates work (including Draft with AI), staff logins, and prerequisites. This guide covers the reminder-specific setup only.
This guide applies to both Optomate Touch and Sunix Vision; where they differ, look for the Optomate / Sunix callouts.
The fastest way to get reminders running:
To customise the message, schedule, manage-link behaviour, or which appointment types are included, read on.
New practices start with default reminder templates, so you may not need to create any. To add or customise one, go to the Templates tab → New Template, set Scope to Appointment and choose the Channel. You can write it yourself or use Draft with AI — see how templates work.
| Placeholder | Description |
|---|---|
{PATIENT_FIRST_NAME} | Patient's preferred/given name |
{PATIENT_NAME} | Patient's full name |
{APPOINTMENT_DATE} | e.g. "Friday, 28/03/26" |
{APPOINTMENT_TIME} | e.g. "10:30 AM" |
{OPTOMETRIST_NAME} | Optometrist's name |
{PRACTICE_NAME} | Practice name |
{PRACTICE_PHONE} | Practice phone number |
{APPT_LINK} | Manage appointment link (confirm/reschedule/cancel) |
For SMS reminders where multiple family members share a mobile number, a note listing the other family members' appointment times is automatically added after {APPOINTMENT_TIME} / {APPOINTMENT_DATETIME} — no placeholder needed.
{PATIENT_FIRST_NAME} has an appt with {OPTOMETRIST_NAME}
on {APPOINTMENT_DATE} at {APPOINTMENT_TIME}. Confirm: {APPT_LINK}
or reply Y/N
{PRACTICE_NAME} {PRACTICE_PHONE}You can also create Manage Link templates (Scope: Manage Link). These are the separate "tap to manage" messages that staff can send manually from the Staff Dashboard, independent of the automated reminder. Each practice gets one default SMS template and one default email template seeded at setup; you can edit them or add additional templates per channel.
For example, after booking an appointment, staff can send a manage link to the patient so they can reschedule or cancel their appointment without calling the practice. The channel (SMS or email) is chosen automatically based on the patient's contact preference at send time.
Reminder rules control when appointment reminders are sent.
If there are no reminder rules yet, the Quick Setup wizard on the Reminder Rules tab creates a sensible starting rule and the templates it needs in one step. Use it as a starting point — everything is editable afterwards.
To create additional rules or edit an existing one manually:
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | Rule name (e.g. "2 day reminder") |
| Days before | How many days before the appointment to send (e.g. 2) |
| Send time | Time of day to send (e.g. "10:00 am") |
| SMS Template | Which template to use for the SMS |
| Excluded appointment days | Skip reminders for appointments on certain days of the week |
If certain appointment types need a different message (e.g. "Please wear your contact lenses"), add a Template Override:
When an SMS contains a manage link ({APPT_LINK}), patients can tap it to view their appointment and take action:
Neither system deletes a cancelled appointment — it stays in the book — but what happens to the slot afterwards differs, and it's a meaningful difference:
Optomate: the appointment is kept in the book with a Cancel status (a cancelled icon on the appointment). The slot is freed, so Your Booking can automatically rebook that time for another patient.
Sunix: the appointment is also kept in the book, with a ???? status — but unlike Optomate, Your Booking will not automatically re-offer that slot. It stays held until staff action it in Sunix (clear it or reuse it as normal). The ???? status is simply how a Your Booking or patient-initiated cancellation shows up — expected behaviour, not an error.
Manage links are disabled a configurable number of hours before the appointment (default: 24 hours). After that, patients see a message to call the practice instead. This setting is in Settings > Booking Rules > Block reschedule/cancel within (hours).
When staff send a manage link manually from the Staff Dashboard, the channel is auto-picked from the patient's contact preference (SMS or Email), and the pre-filled template comes from the Default Manage-Link Templates card on the Config tab. The card has two selectors side by side — one for SMS, one for Email — each listing active templates with scope Manage Link and the matching channel that contain {APPT_LINK}. Set both once so staff don't have to pick a template every time. New practices have both defaults pre-set to the seeded templates from day one.
Some appointment types shouldn't offer a manage link (e.g. diabetes appointments where dilation is required and rescheduling isn't straightforward).
If you used Quick Setup with Enable now ticked, this is already done.
Reminders are now active. The system will send SMS messages at the configured time each day for appointments matching your rules.
When a patient replies to a reminder SMS, the body is stored in your practice system (see Patient Replies) and the reply also triggers an appointment update:
| Reply | Appointment Status | Appointment Comments (Optomate) | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Y or Yes | Changed to Confirmed | Reply body appended | Appointment confirmed |
| N or No | Set to Cancelled (stays in the book) | Reply body appended | Cancelled — what happens to the slot afterwards differs by system, see Step 3 |
| STOP | No status change | [OPTOUT] marker + reply body appended | Patient opted out of marketing. Future recall messages are suppressed. |
| Any other text | No status change | [MSG] marker + reply body appended | Recorded for staff review |
Optomate: sending and replies also set the appointment status, which shows as an icon on the appointment in the book — a blue mobile-phone icon when the reminder SMS is sent, a green mobile-phone icon once the patient confirms, and a cancelled icon if they cancel. The appointment comments record the same events in text:
[Sent SMS <timestamp>]when the reminder goes out, with the reply text and timestamp appended on reply, e.g.[Reply 27/03/26 10:30 AM]: Yes.Sunix: when a reminder SMS is sent, an
[SMS]marker is added to the start of the appointment's Notes so staff can see at a glance in the appointment book that a reminder went out (the message also appears under the patient's Previous Patient Letters). A Yes reply sets the appointment status to Confirmed (shown as Conf in the appointment book); a No reply sets the status to ???? and leaves the appointment in the book rather than deleting it (see the cancel note in Step 3). The reply text itself is saved to the patient's Patient Notes, not the appointment.
After each reminder batch finishes sending, the system schedules a summary email to the practice. The delay is configurable per rule via the Summary email delay (hours) field on the rule editor — most practices use 24 hours so the summary captures next-day Yes / No replies before landing in the inbox. Three sections:
The summary includes direct links back to the staff dashboard tabs that need attention, and goes to the practice email configured in the practice settings.
For SMS-delivery, duplicate-message, and "no template found" issues, see Messaging Setup → Troubleshooting.