Customising Notification Templates
Learn how to customise the SMS and email notifications your clinic sends for appointment reminders, booking confirmations, and cancellations — including per-appointment-type overrides.
Customising Notification Templates
Daobook sends automated notifications to your clients at key moments — when they book an appointment, as a reminder before their visit, and if an appointment is cancelled. You can customise the content of these messages to match your clinic's voice, and even set different templates for different appointment types.
What You Can Customise
These are the messages you can reword:
- Reminder text — a short text message sent before the appointment (from a week before to the morning of, as your reminder timing says)
- Reminder email — a formatted email sent at the same times
- Booking confirmation text — sent when an appointment is booked
- Booking confirmation email — sent when an appointment is booked
- Cancellation email — sent when you cancel a client's appointment
- Two texts for a client who cancels by replying NO — one when the cancellation is accepted, one when it's late
Each template supports variables — placeholders that are automatically replaced with real appointment details when the message is sent.
Managing Clinic-Wide Templates
Clinic-wide templates are the defaults used for all appointment types unless a specific override is set.
Step 1: Open Automatic Messages
Click Messages in the sidebar, then Automatic messages (owners and admins see it). Open the page for the message you want to change:
- Booking confirmation — the text and the email
- Reminders — the text and the email
- Changes and cancellations — the cancellation email, and the two texts a client gets after cancelling by replying NO
Every one of these is also listed on Messages → Templates, with its wording and where it's used; Edit there opens the same wording on a page of its own.
Step 2: See What Your Clients Get
Under What they get, each message is shown as your client receives it, filled in from a sample booking with you as the client. A text shows its length, how many SMS it uses and what it costs; an email shows its subject and opening lines. Each message says On or Off, and Recommended while it uses Daobook's built-in wording or Your wording once you've reworded it.
Step 3: Edit a Message
Click Change beside the message. Its wording opens in place, with a tick that turns the message on or off (Send this text or Send this email). Untick it and that message is turned off for all clients, regardless of their individual preferences. The two reply-NO texts have no tick of their own: they go while Also accept "reply NO to cancel" is ticked on the same page.
Texts use a plain text editor — type your message directly. The meter beneath it shows how many SMS each message will use and how much room is left before the next one starts. A reminder counts the reply prompt and link Daobook adds when it is sent, so the number you see is the number billed.
Emails use a rich text editor with a formatting toolbar. You can add bold text, italics, links, and bullet lists to create professional-looking emails.
Changed your mind? A reworded message has Back to recommended, which puts Daobook's built-in wording back.
Adding an Image or a File to an Email Template
An email template can carry a picture — a map of how to find the clinic, say — or a PDF. Drag the file into the email editor, paste it, or click the paperclip button in the editor's toolbar and choose it. The image appears in the editor where you dropped it; a PDF or Word file shows as a tile with its name and size. To take a file out again, click it and press the × in its corner.
When the email is sent, an image sits on its own line, centred and sized to fit the email; a document goes out as an attachment, with an "Attached: filename" line in the message so the reader knows to look for it. Files travel inside the email itself, so nothing is hosted publicly and there is no link that can expire. Image, PDF, Word and text files are accepted, up to 10 MB of files per template.
Step 4: Insert Variables
Variables are placeholders that get replaced with real data when the message is sent. Click the Insert Variable button below any editor to see the available options, grouped by category:
| Category | Variables |
|---|---|
| Client | Client First Name, Client Full Name |
| Practitioner | Practitioner First Name, Practitioner Name |
| Appointment | Time, Day, Date, Time Until, Appointment Type |
| Clinic | Clinic Name, Clinic Address, Clinic Phone, Clinic Email |
Click any variable to insert it at your cursor position. In the email editor, variables appear as green chips. In the SMS editor, they appear as styled badges.
For example, Time Until inserts a natural phrase like "tomorrow" or "in 3 days", which works well in reminder messages.
Step 5: Save Your Changes
Click Done, then Save Changes at the foot of the page. Until you save, a message you've changed says so under its preview. Your updated wording will be used for all future messages.
Testing a Message
Before trusting a new wording with real appointments, click Send me a test beside the message. It sends the saved wording, filled in with sample data:
- An email goes to your own email address, with a banner at the top saying it's a test.
- A text goes to the mobile number in your Practitioner Details. If you haven't added one, the page says so in place of the button.
Save first: the test sends what's saved, not what's still open in the editor.
Setting Up Appointment-Type Overrides
If you want a specific appointment type to use different notification wording, you can set an override. For example, you might want your "Initial Consultation" reminders to mention bringing health history forms, while "Follow-up" appointments use the standard clinic template.
Step 1: Navigate to Appointment Types
Go to Settings > Practice Info tab > Appointment Types. Click the edit icon next to the appointment type you want to customise.
Step 2: Scroll to Notification Templates
On the appointment type edit form, scroll down to the Notification Templates section. You'll see three subsections: Reminders, Confirmations, and Cancellations, each with email and SMS editors (where applicable).
Step 3: Add Your Custom Template
Type your custom message in the relevant editor. The editors work the same way as the clinic-wide ones — use the Insert Variable button to add placeholders, and the rich text toolbar for email formatting.
Any editor left blank will fall back to the clinic-wide default. You only need to fill in the ones you want to override. Automatic messages shows and tests your clinic-wide wording; when any appointment types have wording of their own, the page says how many under its messages, with a link to Appointment Types.
Step 4: Save
Click Update at the bottom of the form. The custom template will now be used whenever this appointment type triggers that notification.
How the Fallback Chain Works
When Daobook sends a notification, it checks for templates in this order:
- Appointment type override — if the specific appointment type has a custom template set, it uses that
- Clinic-wide default — if no override exists, it uses your clinic's default template
- Built-in default — if neither is set, Daobook uses a standard built-in template
This means you can set your clinic defaults once and only create overrides for appointment types that need something different.
Tips:
- Use Send me a test to check a message before relying on it for real appointments — a dropped image comes through in the test email exactly as clients will see it
- Watch the meter under each SMS template — its pill turns amber when a message will use more than one SMS
- The Time Until variable (e.g. "tomorrow", "in 3 days") is particularly useful in reminder messages as it gives clients a natural sense of urgency