Automatically send patients an SMS or email before their upcoming appointments, on a schedule you specify.
Appointment Reminders automatically send patients an SMS or email before their upcoming appointments, on a schedule you specify. Each reminder includes a link to confirm, reschedule, or cancel — and patients can also reply to an SMS reminder to confirm or cancel directly.
First: complete the shared Messaging Setup — it covers SMS configuration, how templates work (including Draft with AI), staff logins, and prerequisites. This guide covers the reminder-specific setup only.
This guide applies to both Optomate Touch and Sunix Vision; where they differ, look for the Optomate / Sunix callouts.
The fastest way to get reminders running:
To customise the message, schedule, manage-link behaviour, or which appointment types are included, read on.
New practices start with default reminder templates, so you may not need to create any. To add or customise one, go to the Templates tab → New Template, set Scope to Appointment and choose the Channel. You can write it yourself or use Draft with AI — see how templates work.
| Placeholder | Description |
|---|---|
{PATIENT_FIRST_NAME} | Patient's preferred/given name |
{PATIENT_NAME} | Patient's full name |
{APPOINTMENT_DATE} | e.g. "Friday, 28/03/26" |
{APPOINTMENT_TIME} | e.g. "10:30 AM" |
{OPTOMETRIST_NAME} | Optometrist's name |
{PRACTICE_NAME} | Practice name |
{PRACTICE_PHONE} | Practice phone number |
{APPT_LINK} | Manage appointment link (confirm/reschedule/cancel) |
For SMS reminders where multiple family members share a mobile number, a note listing the other family members' appointment times is automatically added after {APPOINTMENT_TIME} / {APPOINTMENT_DATETIME} — no placeholder needed.
{PATIENT_FIRST_NAME} has an appt with {OPTOMETRIST_NAME}
on {APPOINTMENT_DATE} at {APPOINTMENT_TIME}. Confirm: {APPT_LINK}
or reply Y/N
{PRACTICE_NAME} {PRACTICE_PHONE}You can also create Manage Link templates (Scope: Manage Link). These are the separate "tap to manage" messages that staff can send manually from the Staff Dashboard, independent of the automated reminder. Each practice gets one default SMS template and one default email template seeded at setup; you can edit them or add additional templates per channel.
For example, after booking an appointment, staff can send a manage link to the patient so they can reschedule or cancel their appointment without calling the practice. The channel (SMS or email) is chosen automatically based on the patient's contact preference at send time.
Reminder rules control when appointment reminders are sent.
If there are no reminder rules yet, the Quick Setup wizard on the Reminder Rules tab creates a sensible starting rule and the templates it needs in one step. Use it as a starting point — everything is editable afterwards.
To create additional rules or edit an existing one manually:
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | Rule name (e.g. "2 day reminder") |
| Days before | How many days before the appointment to send (e.g. 2) |
| Send time | Time of day to send (e.g. "10:00 am") |
| Send to | Which appointments this rule covers — see Catch-up rules for late bookings |
| Send by | Which channel it uses — see Choosing the reminder channel |
| SMS Template | Which template to use for the SMS |
| Email Template | Which template to use when the reminder goes by email |
| Excluded appointment days | Skip reminders for appointments on certain days of the week |
| Excluded Appointment Types | Skip reminders for certain appointment types — see Skipping an appointment type |
Rules using anything other than the defaults are badged in the rule list, so you can see at a glance which is which: Catch-up, SMS first, Email first.
A rule that runs two days ahead can't see an appointment booked yesterday. To cover those, add a second rule that runs one day ahead and set its Send to to Only appointments not already reminded.
That rule reaches:
and leaves alone:
Patients who have confirmed or cancelled are never reminded again by any rule, whichever setting you use.
Leave your main rule on All appointments (the default). A second rule left on All appointments will message everyone who hasn't replied yet, on top of the late bookings — that's a deliberate second chase, and it costs another SMS per patient.
Send by decides how a rule reaches each patient:
| Setting | What happens |
|---|---|
| Patient preference | Each patient is contacted the way their record says to — the Appointments preference on the patient |
| SMS | Everyone on this rule gets an SMS |
| Everyone on this rule gets an email |
Whichever you choose is a starting point, not a restriction: if the chosen channel can't reach someone — no mobile on file, no email address on file, or no template set for that channel — Your Booking sends on the other one instead. A patient is only skipped when neither channel can reach them.
Patients whose appointment preference is a letter or a phone call are skipped by every setting here, including SMS and Email — and so is anyone who has replied STOP, because a STOP reply switches their appointment preference to a phone call. Choosing a channel for a rule never overrides a patient's own choice not to be messaged.
The setting is Preferred Contact Method → Appointment Reminder in Sunix, and the Appointments preference on the patient in Optomate. Both offer the same choices and Your Booking treats them the same way. A patient left on Not Specified counts as no preference, so they get the rule's normal handling.
Some appointments don't warrant a reminder — a glasses collection, or anything else where a message would be more nuisance than help. To leave one out:
Everything not highlighted still gets a reminder, so a new appointment type added later is reminded as normal until you say otherwise. Skipped appointments are left out of the run entirely: they don't send, and they don't appear as skips in the send summary.
This is per rule. If you run a two-day rule and a one-day catch-up rule, set the same exclusions on both — otherwise the second rule will remind the appointments the first one left alone.
Staff can still send a reminder for a skipped appointment by hand from the Staff Dashboard by choosing a template themselves.
If certain appointment types need a different message (e.g. "Please wear your contact lenses"), add a Template Override:
When an SMS contains a manage link ({APPT_LINK}), patients can tap it to view their appointment and take action:
Neither system deletes a cancelled appointment — it stays in the book — but what happens to the slot afterwards differs, and it's a meaningful difference:
Optomate: the appointment is kept in the book with a Cancel status (a cancelled icon on the appointment). The slot is freed, so Your Booking can automatically rebook that time for another patient.
Sunix: the appointment is also kept in the book, with a ???? status — but unlike Optomate, Your Booking will not automatically re-offer that slot. It stays held until staff action it in Sunix (clear it or reuse it as normal). The ???? status is simply how a Your Booking or patient-initiated cancellation shows up — expected behaviour, not an error.
Manage links are disabled a configurable number of hours before the appointment (default: 24 hours). After that, patients see a message to call the practice instead. This setting is in Setup > Booking > Booking Rules > Block reschedule/cancel within (hours).
When staff send a manage link manually from the Staff Dashboard, the channel is auto-picked from the patient's contact preference (SMS or Email), and the pre-filled template comes from the Default Manage-Link Templates card under Setup > Booking > Manage Links. The card has two selectors side by side — one for SMS, one for Email — each listing active templates with scope Manage Link and the matching channel that contain {APPT_LINK}. Set both once so staff don't have to pick a template every time. New practices have both defaults pre-set to the seeded templates from day one.
Some appointment types aren't suitable for patients to move or cancel on their own (e.g. a diabetes appointment where dilation is required and rescheduling isn't straightforward).
Patients still get their link and can still view the appointment. Only the reschedule and cancel buttons are replaced, with a prompt to phone you instead.
If you used Quick Setup with Enable now ticked, this is already done.
Reminders are now active. The system will send SMS messages at the configured time each day for appointments matching your rules.
When a patient replies to a reminder SMS, the body is stored in your practice system (see Patient Replies) and the reply also triggers an appointment update:
| Reply | Appointment Status | Appointment Comments (Optomate) | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Y or Yes | Changed to Confirmed | Reply body appended | Appointment confirmed |
| N or No | Set to Cancelled (stays in the book) | Reply body appended | Cancelled — what happens to the slot afterwards differs by system, see Step 3 |
| STOP | No status change | [OPTOUT] marker + reply body appended | Patient opted out of marketing. Future recall messages are suppressed. |
| Any other text | No status change | [MSG] marker + reply body appended | Recorded for staff review |
Optomate: sending and replies also set the appointment status, which shows as an icon on the appointment in the book — a blue mobile-phone icon when the reminder SMS is sent, a green mobile-phone icon once the patient confirms, and a cancelled icon if they cancel. The appointment comments record the same events in text:
[Sent SMS <timestamp>]when the reminder goes out, with the reply text and timestamp appended on reply, e.g.[Reply 27/03/26 10:30 AM]: Yes.Sunix: when a reminder SMS is sent, an
[SMS]marker is added to the start of the appointment's Notes so staff can see at a glance in the appointment book that a reminder went out (the message also appears under the patient's Previous Patient Letters). A Yes reply sets the appointment status to Confirmed (shown as Conf in the appointment book); a No reply sets the status to ???? and leaves the appointment in the book rather than deleting it (see the cancel note in Step 3). The reply text itself is saved to the patient's Patient Notes, not the appointment.
After each reminder batch finishes sending, the system schedules a summary email to the practice. The delay is configurable per rule via the Summary email delay (hours) field on the rule editor — most practices use 24 hours so the summary captures next-day Yes / No replies before landing in the inbox. Three sections:
The summary includes direct links back to the staff dashboard tabs that need attention, and goes to the practice email configured in the practice settings.
Some of these show in the summary email, which lists every skipped patient under Action required with the reason:
Others are left out of the run entirely and so don't appear in the summary at all. This is by design in each case:
One more case isn't a skip at all: where several people share a mobile number, a single SMS covers all of their appointments, so only one of them shows as messaged. Those are reported separately in the summary rather than as skips.
Check the second rule's Send to. On All appointments it messages everyone who hasn't confirmed yet, including patients your first rule already reached. Set it to Only appointments not already reminded if you only want it covering late bookings.
For SMS-delivery, duplicate-message, and "no template found" issues, see Messaging Setup → Troubleshooting.