Appointment Reminder SMS Templates

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These are used to generate SMS text for appointment reminders - both those sent out by the system by the Appointment Reminder Sender, or when the Reminder button on the Workflow|Scheduling screen is used to send an ad-hoc reminder.

When sending SMS Appointment Reminders for appointments in a given schedule, the template used is determined by looking at the location set for that schedule (via Administration|Organisation|Schedule) and then using the SMS Appointment Reminder template set for that location (via Administration|Organisation|Practice Location).

This is the template selection screen for Appointment Reminder SMS Templates.

 

Create/Edit/View

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This is the create/edit/view screen for SMS appointment reminder templates.

These are used to generate SMS text for appointment reminders based on an expression. The template can be plain text, macros, or an XPath expression.

The screen is in two parts - the top contains the fields, the bottom allows the template to be tested.

The fields are as follows:

Name the name of the template
Description a description of the template. This should be used if necessary to clarify the purpose of the template.
Active uncheck this to deactivate the template.
Content Type

the template content type. One of Plain Text, Macro or Expression
Content

The content used to generate the SMS text. This should produce text no longer than 160 characters.

XPath expressions may use the following variables directly:

  • $appointment - the appointment act
  • $customer - the customer
  • $patient - the patient
  • $location - the practice location
  • $practice - the practice
  • $nl - new line character

These variables are also available to XPath expressions used by macros, if the Content Type is Macro.

The expression itself can be up to 5000 characters long so can be quite complex

 

The bottom part of the screen contains:

Customer allows a customer to be selected, to test the template
Patient allows a customer to be selected, to test the template
Message the generated message. The count shows the number of characters remaining.
Status this displays any error message, if the template fails to generate the SMS text

Example XPath expression

concat("Reminder: ",
        expr:if(expr:var("patient.name") != "", concat(expr:var("patient.name"), " has"), "you have"),
        " an appointment at " , $location.name," on ", date:formatDate($appointment.startTime, "short"),
        " @ ", date:formatTime($appointment.startTime, "short"), $nl,
        'Call us on ', party:getTelephone($location), ' for any queries')

The XPath expression above will generate an SMS message like:

Reminder: Muffett has an appointment at Main Clinic on 28/11/15 @ 9:00 AM
Call us on 041312345 for any queries

If the appointment has no patient, it will generate an SMS like:

Reminder: you have an appointment at Main Clinic on 28/11/15 @ 9:00 AM
Call us on 041312345 for any queries

Example XPath expression for Surgery

It is quite possible to generate difference messages depending on the type of appointment. This example generates a different message if the appointment type is 'Admit - Surgery'

expr:if($appointment.appointmentType.entity.name = 'Admit - Surgery',

concat("Reminder: East Island Vets Surgery Appointment", $nl,
        expr:var("patient.name")," ",
        date:formatDate($appointment.startTime, "short"),
        " @ ", date:formatTime($appointment.startTime, "short"), $nl,
        "Remember: water is OK but no food after 9pm ",date:formatDate(date:add($appointment.startTime,"-1d"), "short"),$nl,
        'If queries phone ', party:getTelephone($location)),

concat("Reminder: East Island Vets Appointment", $nl,
        expr:if(expr:var("patient.name") != "",expr:var("patient.name"), "is on")," ",
        date:formatDate($appointment.startTime, "short"),
        " @ ", date:formatTime($appointment.startTime, "short"), $nl,
        'If queries phone ', party:getTelephone($location))

)

For a surgery appointment with a patient 'Mr Moo' this will generate an SMS message like:

Reminder: East Island Vets Surgery Appointment
Mr Moo 15/12/15 @ 10:00 AM
Remember: water is OK but no food after 9pm 14/12/15
If queries phone 2915 3999

Date Switching

If you want to replace the date by 'today' or 'tomorrow' when appropriate, you can use the following as a replacement for the date:formatDate() call in the above:

        expr:if((date:formatDate($appointment.startTime) = date:formatDate(date:now())),"today",
        expr:if((date:formatDate($appointment.startTime) = date:formatDate(date:add(date:now(),"1d"))),"tomorrow",
        date:format($appointment.startTime, "dd MMM")))