Skip to content
OutSmart Guide

Sending a Booking Link

A booking invitation is a link you send to one patient for one specific appointment time.

When the patient opens the link, your online booking page loads with the practitioner, the event type, the date and the time already chosen for them. They review the details and click Confirm to take the appointment. Nothing is booked until they do.

This is one of two ways to reach a patient on your waitlist. The other is the general Email or SMS message, which tells the patient you have openings and asks them to get in touch. Use a general message when you want to offer a few possible times and let the patient choose. Use a booking link when you have one particular time in mind and want to save the phone call.

Before you send one: the time is not reserved

Sending an invitation does not hold the appointment. That time stays open to everybody, including patients using your online booking page.

If somebody else books it first, the invitation link stops working and shows the patient a page saying the time is no longer available, with a button to choose another time. The message the patient receives tells them the time is not held, so they know to act quickly.

How to send one

  1. On the Waitlist card, find the patient’s entry and open its list of available times.
  2. Click the time you want to offer them.
  3. Choose Send Booking Link.
  4. The invitation panel opens. It shows the patient’s name, the time you are offering, and the practitioner.
  5. Choose how to send it, set a deadline if you want one, then click Send invitation.

If the patient is not on your waitlist, you can send an invitation from the calendar instead. See Sending a Booking Link From the Calendar.

Choosing how it reaches the patient

The panel gives you three options, and you can use more than one:

  • Email. You can edit the subject line and the message. The same variables available in the general waitlist message work here, so you can drop in the patient’s first name, your office name and so on. There is a preview before you send, and you can save your wording as the default for next time.
  • Text message. The wording is written by us and cannot be changed, but the panel shows you exactly what the patient will receive. Text messages are only available if the practitioner’s plan includes SMS. If it does not, the option appears greyed out with the reason.
  • Copy link. Copies the invitation link so you can send it yourself, any way you like.

The panel also shows the email address and phone number the message will go to. If either is wrong, correct it there and the change saves to the patient’s record. Ticking the text message option records that the patient has agreed to receive texts.

Setting a deadline

You can give the patient a reply-by deadline of 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, one week, or no deadline at all.

The offer ends at whichever comes first: the deadline you set, or the appointment time itself. So a deadline of one week on an appointment that is three days away expires in three days.

A deadline cannot be extended. If a patient needs more time, send them a new invitation.

Offering times your booking page would not

An invitation can be for a time your online booking page would never show a patient. That includes times outside your posted hours of operation, times sooner than your usual minimum notice, and times that do not line up with your normal appointment intervals.

This is intentional, so you can fit a patient in when it suits you both.

An invitation can never double-book you. If anything at all already occupies that time, you will not be able to send the invitation.

What the patient sees

The email or text message tells the patient which practitioner, which appointment, and the exact date and time being offered, along with a button or link to accept it.

Opening the link takes them to your online booking page. The practitioner, event type, date and time are already filled in, and the page states that the appointment is not booked yet. When they click to confirm, the appointment is created and appears on your calendar.

If the link no longer works, they see a page with your clinic’s branding that explains why, names the time that had been offered, and gives them a button to pick a different time. That page covers all four reasons a link stops working: somebody else booked the time, the deadline passed, you cancelled the invitation, or the link has already been used.

Following up on invitations you have sent

Invitations sent from the waitlist appear on the Invited tab of the waitlist card. Every invitation, including ones sent from the calendar, appears on the Booking Invitations dashboard card.

From either one you can Resend the invitation, Copy link to send it another way, or Cancel it to withdraw the offer.

While a patient has an invitation outstanding, their waitlist entry moves off the Available tab, so nobody on your team offers the same patient another time by mistake. The entry returns to Available on its own if the offer lapses, and immediately if you cancel it. When the patient books, the entry is marked as booked and leaves the list.