Staff Dashboard Guide

Daily operations guide for practice staff using the Your Booking dashboard.

Getting Started

Go to https://yourpractice.yourbooking.au/staff and log in with the credentials provided by your practice manager.

You'll see a row of tabs across the top: Appointments, Recalls, Sent History, Call Queue, and Print Queue. If reminders or recalls ran today, a stats summary also appears at the top showing counts like messages sent, confirmed, and failed.

Note: If your practice doesn't have the Recalls & Reminders module enabled, you'll only see the Appointments tab. The other tabs become available once the module is turned on.

Appointments

This tab shows appointments created on the selected date, sorted by time booked (newest first). Use the arrows or Today link to change the date. The list refreshes automatically every 60 seconds.

Each row shows when the appointment was booked, the patient's name, the scheduled date and time, appointment type, optometrist, and current status.

Sending a manage link

After a patient books (or is booked in), you can send them a manage link — a message with the appointment details and a link where they can reschedule or cancel. The channel (SMS or email) is picked automatically from the patient's contact preference; if there's no mobile, the email path is used.

  1. Click Send Link next to the appointment
  2. A preview of the message appears (read-only) so you can check it before sending
  3. Click Send

If you've already sent a link, the button changes to Resend.

Sending or resending a reminder

Click Remind next to an appointment to send the reminder message. It uses the same template the automated reminder would have used. Handy when an appointment was booked after the day's reminders ran, or to nudge a patient who hasn't replied.

Sending or resending a follow-up email

For appointment types with a follow-up email configured, a Send button appears in the follow-up column. Mainly useful for manually-booked appointments — online bookings auto-send the follow-up. The button changes to Send again once it's been sent.

Recalls

Use this tab to preview what an upcoming recall run will send, and to send recalls on demand when needed.

Previewing a run

  1. Choose a recall rule from the dropdown
  2. Choose a run date from the list of upcoming scheduled dates
  3. The preview loads, split into two sections

Initial recalls — patients due for the first contact in this rule's chain. The preview shows everyone whose due date is on or before the selected run date and who hasn't been processed yet. Picking a future date doesn't filter to "newly due in that period" — it includes the whole backlog up to that date, so a run that hasn't fired in a while will catch up the next time it runs.

Pending follow-ups — follow-up sends scheduled to fire in this specific run's window (between the previous scheduled run and the selected one). These don't accumulate the same way; only the follow-ups timed to this run appear.

Each row shows the patient's name, recall type, due date, which channel would be used (SMS, Email, Letter, or Phone), and the template name. Follow-up rows also show the step number and its delay (e.g. "follow-up #2 (90d)").

Badges at the top show totals: N total, N initial, follow-ups broken down by step, and N skipped if any rows are being skipped. The reason for each skipped row appears next to the patient's name in the list.

Sending manually

The pending follow-ups section is read-only — those send automatically by the system on schedule. The initial recalls section is the actionable part:

Rows that can't be sent show a Ban icon instead of a checkbox, with the skip reason (e.g. "opt out", "no channel") next to the patient's name.

Sent History

This tab shows everything that's been sent — reminders, recalls, and manage links.

Searching for a patient

Use the search box in the top right to find a specific patient's message history. You can search by:

When searching, the view switches to a flat timeline showing all reminders and recalls for that patient across all dates. You can stop or resume recall follow-ups directly from the search results.

Clear the search (click the X) to return to the normal batch view.

Filtering

Use the type buttons to show only Reminders, Recalls, or Manage links. Use the date buttons for quick presets (Today, Yesterday, Last 7 days) or pick a custom date range.

Reading the results

Each row is a batch — a group of messages sent at the same time. You can see the type, when it was sent, and summary counts (sent, delivered, failed, replies, opt-outs).

Click a batch to expand it and see individual messages. Within each batch:

Stopping a recall sequence

If you need to stop a patient's recall follow-ups for any reason (for example, they have moved away and no longer want recalls):

The easiest way is to search for the patient by name, then click Stop on their recall row.

Alternatively, from the batch view:

  1. Expand the batch containing their recall
  2. Click Stop on their row

All future follow-ups for that patient's recall are cancelled. If you need to undo this later, find the stopped item and click Stopped.

Call Queue

When a recall rule schedules a telephone call, it appears here. This is your list of patients to call.

Making calls

  1. Click a patient to expand their details
  2. You'll see their name, gender, age, address, and mobile number — tap the number to dial directly from your device
  3. If a call script was configured, it appears here as a guide for the conversation
  4. Use the notes field to jot down anything during the call — notes save as you type

Recording the outcome

The outcome buttons are split into two groups based on whether the patient picked up.

Patient answered — terminal outcomes; the row leaves the queue:

Button When to use What happens
Booked You booked them an appointment Recall is marked as sent in Optomate; row leaves the queue
Didn't book You spoke but they didn't book Row leaves the queue; the recall chain may continue with a later step if the rule has one
Reschedule They asked to be re-contacted later Row leaves the queue; staff manually creates a new recall in Optomate
Don't contact again They asked never to be contacted again Row leaves the queue; the recall chain stops for this patient

Patient didn't answer — no resolution; the row stays in the queue (except for the channel switch):

Button When to use What happens
Left message You left a voicemail Appends a timestamped "Left message" note; row stays for retry
No answer The phone rang out Appends a timestamped "No answer" note; row stays for retry
Send via SMS / Email / Letter Switch channel — patient has a usable non-phone preference Sends the recall via the patient's next-preferred channel (or queues for letter print) and removes from the call queue
Give up Shown when no alternate channel is available Recall is closed; row leaves the queue

The switch-channel button label depends on the patient's settings: it shows the channel name when one's available ("Send via SMS"), or Give up when there's no usable alternate.

If you see an Attempt 2 or Attempt 3 badge next to the patient's name, the row has previously been marked Left message or No answer without a final outcome.

Print Queue

When a recall rule schedules a letter, it appears here for printing.

Printing letters

  1. Tick the letters you want to print, or use Print Next N to quickly select a batch (10, 20, 50, or 100)
  2. Click Generate PDF — the PDF opens in a new browser tab
  3. Print from your browser as usual
  4. Back on the dashboard, click Mark as Printed to clear the selected items from the queue and mark the recalls as sent in Optomate.

Adjusting print settings

Expand the Print Settings section to change the PDF layout:

Setting Default
Page size A5
Font Montserrat
Font size 11 pt
Line spacing 1.4x
Top margin 35 mm
Left/Right margins 15 mm
Bottom margin 15 mm

Changes save automatically and are remembered for next time.

Summary Emails

After each reminder or recall batch runs, the practice receives a summary email. This email is delayed (default: 24 hours) to give time for delivery confirmations and patient replies to come in before the summary is generated.

The summary includes:

The delay can be adjusted per rule in the admin settings. A shorter delay (e.g. 4 hours) gets you the summary sooner but may miss late replies.