Online Booking Preferences

Online Booking Preferences Setup

Your Online Booking Preferences are used to tailor how appointments will be offered to your clients. Unlike many other online booking systems, OutSmart does not simply display your schedule and allow clients to book anytime they want.  Instead, we offer specific appointment slots based on your preferences and Hours of Operation.  The benefit is that clients will be selecting appointment times that are most convenient for you.

Of course, if you prefer to show all your availability all the time, there is a preference setting for that as well.

Note: All Online Booking Preferences affect the behavior of the Online Booking Page only.  You can still manually use the Calendar to schedule appointments at any time.

To setup your preferences, go to the Online Booking Preferences page:

1. Click on the purple Calendar button at the top right of the OutSmart Interface.  This will open your Calendar.
2. Click on the Settings button (it has a gear icon on it) to open the settings menu, and then click on the Online Booking Preferences option.  This will open the Online Booking Preferences page.

There are a few settings here that you can adjust to setup your Online Booking Page exactly as you want it.

Note To Admin Staff:  If you are logged in to an Admin account, you will see an additional Practitioner Selector in the Top Toolbar for this page.  This will allow you to select for which practitioner you are editing the Online Booking Preferences.  It is important to ensure you have selected the correct practitioner before proceeding with the rest of this tutorial.

Section 1: Online Booking Options:

• Online Booking Handle: If you see this option, it quite simply allows you to specify a name to be added to the URL of your personal online booking page.  Most people use their first name and last name.  There cannot be any spaces.  For example, JillSmart.
• Office / Practitioner Booking Page: If you see this text, then your Online Booking Handle has already been created, so you are instead presented with 2 links:  One for the Office Booking Page, and one for the Practitioner Booking Page.   The Office Booking Page is intended for clinics with multiple practitioners, while the Practitioner Booking Page is intended for use by a single practitioner.
• Turn Magnetic Booking Off:  Selecting this option will disable Magnetic Booking.  Simply put, Magnetic Booking is a system that will group your appointments together so that you can reduce awkward gaps during the day.  To learn more about Magnetic Booking, see this article.
• Default Scheduling Intervals: Scheduling Intervals take effect only when Magnetic Booking is turned off.  When Magnetic Booking is turned off, Scheduling Intervals will determine when to offer appointments to your clients.  For example, if your day starts at 9:00am, and you set Scheduling Intervals to 30 mins, then the Online Booking system will offer appointments to your clients every 30 minutes starting at 9:00am.  Scheduling Intervals can be set for every Event Type separately, or they can be set here as a global default for all Event Types.  If you have not specified a Scheduling Interval for an Event Type, then this global default will be used.  Scheduling Intervals set on a specific Event Type will override this global default.
• Break Between Visits: This setting allows you to specify a global default for a required break after every visit.  You can use the Event Manager to specify custom Breaks, call Buffers, for each Event Type.  If you do this, it will override this global default setting.
• Minimum Booking Notice: This setting specified the minimum amount of advance notice required for appointments booked online.  For example, if this is set to 24 hours, then any client who visits your page at 10:00am today can only book appointments after 10:00am tomorrow.

Section 2: Default Booking Confirmation

• Default Booking Confirmation Message:  This section contains the global default Booking Confirmation Message, which is used if no message is specified for a specific Event Type. (To specify unique Confirmation Messages for each Event Type, see this article).  You can add Questionnaires and Documents here as well, and they will be sent for every booking made, ONLY of you have not specified a unique Confirmation Message for the Event Type that was booked.

Section 3: Online Booking Events

• Online Booking Events: This section allows you to specify which of your Event Types you want to allow your clients to book online.  You can check off which events you want, and drag and drop to re-order the events as needed.

In each section, when you are done adjusting your settings, click on the Update button to save your changes.  If you do not click the update button, your settings will not be saved.