Articles on: Patient Communication

Problems with Appointment Communications

We're delighted that you are using SMS or Email messaging to improve communication with your clients. We send out thousands of messages every day, all over the world, and in the vast majority of cases, there are no issues. However, if you're reading this, it's likely that one or more of the following situations has arisen for you:


  1. You have been contacted by a client who says they have not received a reminder/confirmation
  2. You have been contacted by a client who has received a confirmation/reminder for a date/time that they weren't expecting
  3. You have been contacted by a client who says the message that they have received contains errors or incorrect information


Before we go any further, we want to be clear that some issues are down to us and if that's the case, we will work as quickly as possible to fix the bug. However, the majority of issues that we see are:


  • Client-related
  • User-related


With this in mind, here are a few scenario-based checks that you should do before you get in touch with us...


Client hasn't received a confirmation/reminder:


  1. Check that their mobile number or email address is correct on the Client Summary
  2. Check that they are opted into SMS/Email communications
  3. Check the Messages tab of the Client Summary to see what messages have been sent to them
  4. Check the Appointment History information on the Appointments tab of the Client Summary
  5. If it relates specifically to SMS, check that you have enough text credits
  6. Check your notifications for any information on failed email or sms messages


Client has received a confirmation/reminder for a date/time that they weren't expecting:


This most commonly occurs when a member of the team mistakenly books an appointment for the wrong client, which triggers a confirmation. As the confirmation is sent immediately, it will already have been sent before the appointment can be deleted from the diary.


If an appointment is completely removed from the diary, the history of the appointment on the Appointments tab of the Client Summary will also be deleted, so it's sometimes quite difficult to track down exactly what's happened. We do, however, retain information on the messages that were sent for an appointment before it was deleted. On the Messages tab of the Client Summary, if a confirmation (for example) was sent for an appointment that has since been deleted, you should still be able to see it here:



If you have a situation like this and you can't identify what has happened, the team are happy to help investigate it for you. If you can provide the clients WUID number and the mobile number or email address that received the confirmation, we can check for messages.


Client says that the message they have received contains errors or incorrect information:


  1. Get some evidence, if possible. A screenshot of an SMS, or ask them to forward the email received.
  2. Corroborate the evidence by going to the Messages tab of the Client Summary and seeing what they were sent
  3. If it looks like something is wrong, go to Settings -> Scheduling -> Appointment Communication and check the message template.
  4. Click on the three dots menu, then 'Edit -> Manage templates' for the appropriate message and make sure that the template is correct
  5. If you are unsure and you'd like to revert the template to the default text, you can find the SMS default content here and the email default content here. Just copy and paste the text into your template in WriteUpp, making sure you paste and match the style/formatting, depending on your operating system.


You don't think confirmations or reminders are being sent:


  1. Select a client who you think should have received a message
  2. Check that they have a valid mobile number and/or email address
  3. Check that they have opted in to communications
  4. Check that you have communication triggers set up OR that one of your colleagues hasn't accidentally deleted the relevant one
  5. Check that you have enough text credits
  6. Having checked the above, go to the Messages tab of the Client Summary and see if there are messages listed. If there are, click on the row and you will see the detail of the message


Having worked through the suggested checks, if you feel that there is still something amiss, please don't hesitate to contact us via the chat icon at the bottom right of your screen,


When you submit your request, please drop us the WUID of the client (experiencing problems) so that we can check our logs and investigate further.


Thanks for reading!

Updated on: 15/11/2024

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