Front Desk 16.9 now has the ability for you to include a clickable link in your SMS to allow patient appointment details to be entered directly into their smartphone calendar.

To get started, it is important to customise your individual practitioner files to correctly display the practitioner name, profession and address location in the calendar file that is sent to patients. This is especially important if you have practitioner files for multiple locations.

To make changes to what the calendar reminder will display, open up your Practitioner file and select the Reminders tab. From here you can customise the Appointment Description, the Address and add some general Appointment Notes that will be added to all patient's calendar files.

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The next step is to send your SMS reminders as per usual from Appointment Book > Reports and Utilities.
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Simply tick the Add a calendar link to SMS reminders option when sending your reminders.
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To enable this by default for all SMS appointment reminders go to System Information > SMS and tick the ‘Automatically add calendar link to SMS reminders’ option.
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When the patient receives the SMS, the end of the message will include a link that they can click to add it to the calendar on their smartphone. The patient will now have the appointment in their calendar with a reminder set to appear 1 hour before the appointment is scheduled.
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Patients using an iPhone running the latest iOS will conveniently receive a second alert called ‘Time to Leave’ which will intelligently remind them at the time when they should start travelling to your practice.