How do I send a message to clients when you change the status of an appointment?

On this page we're going to cover how to create a substatus of the appointment status and apply it to a messaging trigger. We will make use of the following features - 

• Automated Messaging Triggers is a feature that allows you to send custom messages to clients or staff notifying them if there have been any changes, updates or other important information regarding the appointments or classes they're booked for. 
• Substatuses allow you to give your appointments custom statuses that match your business' jargon. Let’s say our business offers appointments at a client’s home, and for this example our business will be a cleaning service. If for whatever reason when a staff member shows up to clean a client’s home and the appointment does not happen, we can use these substatuses to further explain the situation for our records. For instance, we can create a substatus of the No Show status that clarifies that the client was Not Home, or we can create a substatus of Cancelled that clarifies that there was a Client Conflict.

In the following example we'll assume I travel to my client's offices to provide my notary services, and there may be times when I'm running late due to traffic. If I want TimeTap to send my clients a text message when I mark my appointments as "Running Late", I'll need to do the following -  

• Create a Substatus of the Open Status
• Create a Trigger Template
• Create an Automated Messaging Trigger

While on the Configurations page I'll need to scroll down until I see the “Account Level Calendar and Appointment View Defaults” section and then scroll down a bit more until I locate the Open Appointment Substatuses field - 

In the Open Appointment Substatuses field I'll need to click on the + button to add a new substatus to the Open status - 

Enter "Running Late" in the field that appears under the Substatus column, and in the 'Statuses that can be moved to this substatus' column only leave Open selected. This means that only when the appointment is an an Open status will you be able to assign the Running Late substatus to it- 

Click on the green Save button in the Account Level Calendar and Appointment View Defaults section to save your new substatus - 

I'll begin by navigating to Messaging > Appointment Templates and locating the 2 templates labeled Appointment Triggers and Appointment Text Message Triggers - 

The Appointment Triggers category will allow you to create an email template and the Appointment Text Message Triggers category will allow you to create a text message template. For this example, I want clients to receive a text message when an appointment is marked as "Running Late", as they would be more likely to check their cell phones for notifications than their email inboxes. To do this I'll need to click on the View button next to Appointment Text Message Triggers - 

On the Templates in Category page I can choose to view the default template and edit it, or I can clone it and create a template specifically for my "Running Late" automated messaging trigger. in this case I'll click on the Clone button to create a template just for my "Running Late" messaging trigger - 

On the Template Profile page I'll need to add a name for this template and click on the green Save button - 

I will then click on the blue Edit button under the Template section to add a custom message to my template - 

And then I'll add a short message in the Body field and click on the green Save button - 

A new window will appear where you can fill out the following fields - 

1. Internal Description - Give the messaging trigger an internal label.
2. Add Event For - Determine the type of event that will trigger the message to get sent - includes Appointments, Class Sessions, Disclaimer Forms and Invoices as choices.
3. Locations To Send For - Select which locations, if not all, will be included for this messaging trigger.
4. Staff To Send For - Select which staff, if not all, will be included for this messaging trigger.
5. Services & Classes to Send For - Select which services & classes, if not all, will be included for this messaging trigger.
6. Trigger Based On - Determine which action will cause the triggered message to send. Includes the following choices - 
   • Time  - Months, weeks, days, hours and minutes before/after the appointment.
   • Status Change - From Open to Completed, Open to Canceled, Pending Payment to Open, etc.
   • On Creation - When an appointment gets created, the triggered message will automatically get sent out to the clients/staff.

Under Messages you'll also have the following fields that you can define - 

• To -  Determine who the trigger message will be sent to - options include Client and Staff.
• Type - You have the choice to send an email or a text message to your clients or staff.
• Template - Select a template created under the Appointment Templates to use in the messaging trigger.

For this example, I'm going to name my automated messaging trigger "Running Late", I'm going to add event for Appointments and I'll send it for all locations, all staff and all services & classes. I will also set the automated trigger to be based on Status Change. For the 'Status Changes From' dropdown, I'll select Open and in the 'to' dropdown I'll select Open - Running Late - 

I'm going to choose to send the message to Client, of type Text Message and will send the Running Late template I created earlier - 

After all the selections have been made I'll need to click on the green Save Event button. After the event gets saved it will get added to your list of automated messaging triggers, and you'll also have the option to edit it or delete it by clicking the correspond button under the Actions column - 

The appointment in the image below has a status of Open and I'm going to change the substatus Running Late so that TimeTap can send the client a text message letting the client know that I'm running behind schedule - 

I'm then going to confirm the substatus change to trigger the automated message by clicking on the blue. Change Status button - 

Once the automated messaging trigger gets activated, the template will get sent to the client's mobile phone -