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OutSmart Guide

Adding SmartForms V2 To An Appointment Type

Attaching a form to an appointment type is the difference between sending intake forms one at a time and never thinking about them again. Once a form is attached, every patient who books that appointment gets it on their own, whether they booked online themselves or your reception team booked them in.

This is set up once per appointment type, in the calendar’s Event Manager.

Attaching a form

  1. Open the calendar and click the gear button at the top right.
  2. Select Event Manager.
  3. Find the appointment type you want and click edit on its row.
  4. Scroll to the Booking Confirmation section.
  5. On the Include SmartForms row, make sure the switch is set to SmartForms V2.
  6. Pick the forms you want from the list. You can attach more than one.
  7. Save the appointment type.

That’s the whole setup. From this point on, the forms go out automatically.

Choosing between SmartForms and SmartForms V2

An appointment type sends one or the other, never both. The switch on the Include SmartForms row is where you choose, and the list underneath shows only forms of the version you picked.

This is deliberate. A patient booking one appointment should get one set of forms through one route, not two sets arriving by two different methods with two different ways of filling them in.

If you flip the switch while forms are already attached, OutSmart warns you first and names exactly which forms will be removed. Nothing is discarded quietly. If you say yes, the other version’s forms come off the appointment type and the ones you pick next take their place.

Which one to choose:

  • SmartForms V2 for anything you build yourself, and for any form you want patients to fill in without creating an account.
  • SmartForms for forms built from the OutSmart clinical question library, and for forms already in use that you don’t want to rebuild.

One practical difference worth knowing. With SmartForms, the confirmation message is required: leave the message blank and the forms never go out. With SmartForms V2, the forms go out either way. Writing a confirmation message is still worth doing, because it’s what the patient reads above the form links.

When the forms actually go out

Attached forms are sent at two moments:

  • The patient books online. Forms go out with the booking confirmation, automatically.
  • You book the patient and click Save & Send. Same forms, same email. This works from the new calendar, the older calendar, and the waitlist card, so it doesn’t matter where reception books from.

Clicking plain Save books the appointment without sending anything, forms included.

Who the forms go out for

Forms attached to an appointment type are sent for every practitioner who takes that appointment, not only the person who set it up. If your clinic shares an appointment type across the team, one person configures it and it works for everybody.

Two things follow from that, and both are worth knowing before a colleague asks:

  • The form shows the practitioner the patient is actually seeing, not the person who attached it. The patient sees the right name and photo.
  • That practitioner can read the answers, even when the form belongs to a colleague. They don’t need to be given anything separately.

An appointment type sends one set of forms. If it’s shared across the clinic, everyone sends the same set. It cannot send different forms for different practitioners.

Forms that can no longer be sent

If a form you attached is later archived, or a colleague stops sharing it with you, the appointment type keeps the form listed but shows a note against it explaining why it can’t be sent. It’s skipped when the confirmation goes out, and everything else on that appointment type carries on as normal.

The form is never removed from your setup without telling you. Swap it for another one when you’re ready.

Common questions

Why did my patient get one email with several forms instead of one each?

By design. The booking confirmation carries a link for every form the patient needs, in one message. A patient booking an appointment with four forms attached gets one email with four links, not four emails.

The exception is the Send form button you use to send a single form by hand. That sends its own email, because it really is one form.

My patient says they didn’t get a form. Where do I look?

In order:

  1. Check the patient has an email address on their record. No email address means nothing was sent, and nothing appears to have failed.
  2. Check the appointment type actually has forms attached, and that the switch is on the version you think it is.
  3. Check the appointment status. Forms go out with the booking confirmation, so if the appointment was booked with plain Save rather than Save & Send, no confirmation was sent.
  4. Check their spam folder, then resend from the patient’s Smart Forms tab.

Can a patient fill out a form without a patient portal account?

Yes. SmartForms V2 sends the patient a personal link that opens the form directly. No account, no password, no portal login.

Does attaching SmartForms V2 force patients to create an account when booking?

No. Patients can book without creating an account exactly as before.

This is a real difference from SmartForms, which does require an account, because those forms are read through the patient portal. If your booking page currently forces account creation because of attached forms, moving that appointment type to SmartForms V2 removes the requirement.

Two separate limits. The patient has 60 days to click the link, and once they open it, 90 days to finish and submit. See Expiries And Link Timing for what patients see as a deadline approaches and how to give someone more time.

A patient already had this form outstanding. Why weren’t they sent it again?

Because they still have it. If a patient has an unfinished, unexpired copy of the same form, booking another appointment doesn’t send a second one. The form stays on their list and their original link still works, including any answers they’ve already saved.

If they finished it, or their copy expired, the next booking sends a fresh one.

I set up the appointment type. Will forms still go out when a colleague sees the patient?

Yes. Sending is authorised by the attachment, not by who is booked. Whoever takes that appointment, the patient gets the forms.

I removed a colleague’s access to a form. Can they still see answers already submitted?

Yes, and this is deliberate. Removing sharing stops future sends. It never hides answers already collected. A practitioner who administered a form keeps access to what their patient submitted, because those are clinical records they may be relying on.

I archived a form that’s attached to an appointment type. What happens?

New sends stop. Forms already with patients are unaffected, and submissions already collected stay exactly where they are. The appointment type shows the archived form with a note explaining why it isn’t going out.

Can one appointment type send both SmartForms and SmartForms V2?

No. One or the other. See Choosing between SmartForms and SmartForms V2 above.