Principle's integrated online bookings system allows your patients to request appointments directly from your website. These online bookings will appear in the Appointment Requests page where they can then be confirmed or declined. This article will cover the setup and workflows involved in Online Bookings.
Viewing the Booking Link
Find your Online Booking link in the top right of the Appointment Requests page under the Scheduling section of your main menu. Add this link to your website to allow your patients to book directly online.
Configuring the Online Bookings Page
When a patient books online through your website they will see a page similar to this:
1. Available Treatments
The treatments available for your patients to select online are determined using Treatment Templates, found via: Settings > Treatment Templates.
The order of the templates here in Treatment Templates will be reflected on the online booking page. Each Template can be configured by clicking the the Pencil icon or deleted with the Rubbish Bin icon.
Configuring Treatment Templates for Online bookings
Within each Treatment Template are options to:
Name the Template. This is how the Treatment will appear on the Online Bookings page.
Link the Template to a Treatment. When the appointment is confirmed, this is the treatment that will be assigned.
Set the duration of the Template. This will dictate how much time is needed for the booking and will affect which time slots are offered to the patient when selected.
Make it Available for Online bookings. Only Templates with this option checked will appear on the Online Bookings page.
Select which Practices (if applicable) are offering this Treatment.
Select which practitioners offer this Treatment.
Override the default Treatment linked to the Template. Individual practitioners may want to link the Template to different or personalised Treatments.
Override the default duration. Some practitioners may want extra or less time for this type of booking.
2. Available Times
Once a Patient has selected a Treatment on the booking page from your Templates, they will then be asked to select a timeslot from the available practitioners:
There are two ways you can make timeslots available for your patients to book online:
Allow patients to book anywhere there is unallocated space on your timeline (as long as the gap is long enough to meet the Treatment Template duration as configured above).
Use Pre-Blocks to pre-allocate certain sections of time on your Timeline for online bookings.
To use the Pre-Block method, head to Settings > (Brand) General and find the Online Bookings section and ensure the toggle for "Restrict Availability to Pre-Blocks" is set to On:
From here you can also configure the message your patients will see when completing an Online Booking.
If using the Pre-block method for Online Bookings, Pre-blocks will need to be added to the Timeline with the "Can be Booked Online" option ticked. These can be made from the Timeline as one off's or from the practitioners profile as recurring Pre-Blocks similar to a roster.
Within each Pre-Block are settings to restrict the Type of appointment which is allowed to be booked for that period of time as shown in the example below where a Pre-Block is being used to reserve time for Emergencies:
Confirming Online bookings
Once an online booking is placed, the timeslot on the timeline will be reserved and an entry in Appointment Requests will be created:
The Appointment Requests page allows you to confirm or decline the Online Booking:
When confirming an Online Booking, Principle will compare the patient details with your patient records and suggest any patients that match the details provided. This ensures that duplicate patient records aren't created:
If no matching record is found, a new patient record will be created using the supplied information from the online booking.
If the Online Booking is being placed on behalf of someone else (for example a parent making a booking for their child), The confirmation step will ask you to match both the parent and the child to records already existing in your database.
Once the records are matched and the appointment is confirmed, the placeholder Appointment Request on the Timeline will be replaced with the actual appointment and Treatment details.