How-To: Schedule Appointment Reminders using Apptoto

There are multiple ways to schedule appointment reminders using Apptoto once you’ve connected your calendar.

Approach #1) Manually

Apptoto allows you to schedule reminders manually through the Apptoto appointments interface.  You can find it on the “Calendars” tab in Apptoto.  Also, if you enable our daily report email feature, you’ll find a link that takes you directly to tomorrow’s appointments in the email, making it easy to manage the reminders each day.

Here is a screenshot of the new Apptoto appointment interface:  (Please note that the old interface is still available if you’re an existing user and prefer it over the new one)

You can add participants to each appointment:

And then choose which messages to send or schedule to be sent for the participants:

When you click on a message type, it lets you add the message to the participant.  Here you can choose when the message should be sent and what it should say:

When a message is scheduled to be sent, Apptoto will show the appointment in bold and tell you the number of messages scheduled:

Apptoto also makes it easy to schedule (or unschedule) reminders for multiple appointments at a time by clicking the checkboxes on the left and then using the “Options” drop down at the to execute bulk actions:

Approach #2) Using “Auto-Messages”

If you have a calendar attached to Apptoto that is dedicated to appointment scheduling and Apptoto is successfully able to find contact information for those appointments, then you should consider using “Auto-Messages.”

By turning on “Auto-Messages” in your Apptoto account, Apptoto will automatically schedule and send messages for you based on the templates that you define on the “Messages” tab.  The templates are very flexible and you should be able to tailor the messages to your businesses’s needs.  If you need help doing so, please let support@apptoto.com know.

With “Auto-Messages” turned on, you can go back to using your Calendar as you normally would and Apptoto will simply work in the background sending reminders and updating your calendar for you!

You can turn on “Auto-Messages” by clicking the “Auto Messages” toggle at the top of your screen when you are signed into your Apptoto.com account.

When you first turn that option on, it will ask you which Messages to turn on by default.   Here is a screenshot:

If that toggle isn’t displayed, then that means you are using our “Conditional Templates” feature and you’ll have to enable each template individually on the “Messages” tab.

While the “Auto-Messages” approach is the most convenient, it is also the most nerve-racking for users.  It’s a bit scary to let Apptoto start sending messages to all your appointments.  We do encourage users to use Auto-Messages as it is the most reliable and has the best chance of reducing no-shows and reliably reaching your clients.  However, if you don’t feel comfortable turing on “Auto-Messages”, you can also try using our “In-Event Commands” as described below.

Approach #3) Using “In-Event Commands” with “Auto-Messages” turned off

Another approach is to use Apptoto’s “In-Event Commands“.  These commands let you tell Apptoto which appointments should receive messages without having to actually log into Apptoto.  You can simply add the commands directly to the appointments on your calendar.

The most basic command is [APPTOTO].  That command tells Apptoto to automatically schedule any messages that are enabled on the “Messages” tab in your Apptoto account.

So for example, if you have the following messages enabled on the “Messages” tab:

And you add the command [APPTOTO]  (it must have the square brackets) to an appointment on your calendar like so:

Then Apptoto will automatically send a Call and SMS Reminder to 650-555-1212 the day before the appointment.  Note that it will NOT send an email to frank AT apptoto DOT com, because the Email Reminder is not enabled on the “Messages” tab.

In this example, if you wanted the email to be sent for this particular appointment you could add the command [EMAIL] to the appointment.  Like so:

The In-Event commands can be put anywhere in the appointment (i.e. in the title, location, or body).

Approach #4) Using “In-Event Commands” with “Auto-Messages” turned ON

Lastly, a slight variation on the previous approach is to combine Approach #2 and #4.  We see users do this if they want explicit control over which messages are sent to different appointments.  It involves disabling all the messages on the “Messages” tab, but enabling the “Auto-Messages” feature.

The advantage to doing this is that you don’t have to include “[APPTOTO]”.  You can simply put [CALL] or [EMAIL] or [SMS] in those appointments that should receive the corresponding messages.