In this page we're going to cover how to create a substatus of the Open status and apply it to a messaging trigger.
- 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 important information regarding the appointments or classes they are booked for.
- Substatuses allow you to label your appointments with your own process jargon. Let’s say your business offers appointments at a client’s home, as an example this business will be a cleaning service. For whatever reason when your staff member shows up to clean your client’s home the appointment does not happen, we can use substatuses to further explain. For instance we can create a substatus of “No Show” as “Not Home” or a substatus of “Cancelled” as “client conflict.”
In the following example we'll assume I travel to my client's offices to provide my notary services, there may be times when I'm running late due to traffic and I want to TimeTap to send my clients a text message when I mark my appointments as "Running Late", to accomplish this we will first:
- Create a substatus of the Open status
- Create a trigger template
- Create a automated messaging trigger
While in the Calendar Settings screen scroll down to the “Account Level Calendar and Appointment View Defaults” section and locate the “Open Appointment Substatuses” section:
In the “Open Appointment Substatuses” section click the + button to add a new substatus:
Enter "Running Late" in the Substatus field, in the "Statuses that can be moved to this substatus" dropdown 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:
Click the Save button in the “Account Level Calendar and Appointment View Defaults” section:
Begin by going to Messaging → Appointment Templates and locate the templates "Appointment Triggers" and "Appointment Text Message Triggers":
The "Appointment Trigger" template will allow you to create an email template and the "Appointment Text Message Triggers" will allow you to create a text message template. In this case I was clients to receive a text message when an appointment is marked as "Running Late", they are more likely to check their cell phones for notifications than their inbox, I'll click View next to the "Appointment Text Message Triggers" template:
In the Templates in Category screen 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 trigger, in this case I'll choose the option to clone the default message to create a template just for my "Running Late" trigger:
In the Template Profile screen I'll add a name for this template and click Save:
Click the Edit button in the Template section to add the message to your template:
Add your message in the Body field and click Save:
A new window will appear
- Internal Description: This will be the name of your trigger will be (internal use only)
- Add Event For: assign the type of event this trigger will be tagged to - an appointment (one on one service) or class session
- Locations To Send For: Identify which location(s), if not all, will be assigned to this trigger message
- Staff To Send For: Identify which staff(s), if not all, will be assigned to this trigger message
- Services & Classes to Send For: Identify which services and classes, if not all, will be assigned to this trigger
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Trigger Based On: This field is the action that will initial the trigger message to send. In this section you can choose:
- Time (months, weeks, days, hours before/after appiontment),
- Status Change - From Open to Completed, Open to Canceled, Pending Payment to Open, ETC..
- On Creation - when a service or class is created your trigger message will be automatically sent out to the clients assigned to that Reason
For this example I'm going to name my automated messaging trigger "Running Late", I'm going to assign this event to appointments, I'll also send it for all locations, all staff, all services & classes. I will also set the automated trigger to be based on status change:
In the "Status Changes From" dropdown I'll select Open and in the "to" dropdown I'll select Open - Running Late, you can select any status and substatus combination if you want to add a different trigger based on status change:
Under Messages you have the following to options to select:
- TO: This is who the trigger message will be sent to. In this field you will choose either Client or Staff
- Type: You have the choice to send an email or a text message to your clients or staff
- Template: Here you will choose from the templates you created in the appointment templates. As you can see we have listed out some examples to show the selection process
- Add Another Message: Click this button to add another message where you will have the same fields to choose from. If your first message is sent to the client via email and now you want to sent another message to client via text OR if you want to send a message to staff as well you can set up multiple messages within the Trigger
- Save Event: Once you have finished setting the properties of the Trigger you will then press Save Event to put it into motion
- Cancel: If you decide you no longer want to set up this trigger click cancel to exit the process
I'm going to choose to send the message to the client, text message type and the Running Late template I created earlier:
After all the necessary selections are made click the Save Event button:
After the event is listed it will be added to your list of automated triggers, 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 is currently set to Open, I'm going to change the status to substatus Running Late so TimeTap can send the client a text message letting him know that I'm running behind schedule:
I'm then going to confirm the substatus change to trigger the automated message:
After the automated trigger is activated the template chosen will be sent to the client:
