Text Reminders

The Timeline's 'Text Reminder' will send a text template (that you can edit to your liking) to your patients. By default, this includes the patient's name(s), the practice name, and the appointment date, and time(s).

To access this event and it's settings:

1. Login as an 'Administrative' User.
2. Navigate to 'Settings'
3. Click on the 'Texts & Emails' tab
4. Choose the 'Timeline' sub-section:
5. Select the 'Text Reminder' event.

You will see the following settings:

• Enable/Disable event
• How many days before the appointment to send the text reminder
• Don't send based on 'x' days from the creation date and actual appointment date
• Time of day to send the text reminder (Military Time)
• Enable/Disable separate template(s) if your patients are classified as 'premed' 

The Flex text reminder will not only send your patient's their reminders, but will consolidate multiple family members who have an appointment on the same day. This is to reduce how many text messages that go out to your patients for the same reminder. If a family has the same phone number, Flex will recognize that and use the 'family' template which will include all the patient's names and their appointment times for a specific day.

To view these different templates, simply click on the 'edit text templates' button:

You will notice handlebars such as {{practicename}} you may remove these completely, but inserting words inside of the braces will cause an error and you will be presented with an error message. 

Please be aware these 'brackets' are pulling information from your database directly. For a helpful resource on handlebars, click here.

In my example below I have enabled the text reminder, have it sent to go out nine days prior to the appointment, sending out at 12:20 pm, and using the separate premed message for premed patients:

Your 'Second Text Reminder' will follow suite with the above, however this allows you to send a secondary text reminder closer to the appointment if needed.

✅Notes: Reminder texts are a helpful way to keep patients informed about their upcoming appointment. Just so you're aware—these texts don’t confirm the appointment in Open Dental. And if reminders are enabled, patients will still receive the text even if they’ve already confirmed their appointment. Want to dive deeper into how confirmations work? Check out these articles:

1. Email Confirmations↗️
2. Text Confirmations↗️

If you found this information helpful, please like and/or comment below!

If you have questions, please contact Flex Support.

Thank you!