Appointment Types Overview - Including Automated Confirmation & Reminders
Appointment  types allow you to differentiate between your various types of appointments. For example, you may have an initial consultation, a follow up meeting, a signing meeting, etc. It is important to differentiate between these types of appointments so that you can trigger the appropriate automated workflow depending on which type of  appointment  is booked. 
When booking a new  appointment  for a matter or contact, you must always select an  appointment  type. You may not necessarily have an automated workflow for each  appointment  type, but selecting the type is still an important step.
Please note that appointments are different from Events, learn about  Events here . 

Creating Appointment Types

In order to create appointment types, simply navigate to the settings page, gear icon near the top right, and the select 'Appointments/Events' from the left side panel. You will see a screen that looks like this: 

By default, Initial Consultation will be an appointment type already listed for you and ready to use. Click the edit pencil to adjust the default duration of the appointment type. 

In addition to the Initial Consultation appointment type which comes built-in, you can also create your own custom appointment types. Creating a new appointment type is as easy as clicking 'Add New Appointment Type' at the top right of the screen and filling out the options shown below.

Fill out the name of the appointment type and then add a default duration for the appointment type. When creating an appointment, if you have a default duration for the appointment type the end date and time for the appointment will auto fill once you have chosen and state date and time. You can always edit the end date and time on the fly if it needs to be different for that specific appointment.

If you plan on using booking links, which allow your matters to book their own appointments based on your availability, it is very important to set a default duration. This will determine the length of the time slots available while the person is selecting their appointment.

Learn more about booking links here.

Please note that we do not suggest creating different appointment types for your different locations. For example, you will not want to create separate appointment types for "Phone Consultation" and "In Person Consultation. Rather, you will use the Location selection when booking the appointment.

To add locations that can be selected in the drop down highlighted in the image above, go to settings > firm settings. You will then start by adding any addresses, and then create a Location for each address.

Using Appointment Types - Automated Confirmation and Reminders

Appointment Confirmation - On the settings page for Appointments/Events you will set up your appointment confirmation and reminder emails/text messages. These will be sent out automatically as per your stipulations, no need to create an automation or a custom email template for sending out the confirmation or reminders. The confirmation will be sent to the attendee as soon as the appointment is booked. Simply click the setting option for Add Confirmation, and you can then build out your own email template and/or text message.

You’ll see that you can merge in fields as needed, including appointment fields to input the & time date, description, location, etc for each respective appointment.

Next you will select which of your appointment types this confirmation email applies for. Depending on the nature of your appointments, you may use a generic confirmation for all of your appointment types or perhaps you’d like to create something more specific for each.

Appointment Reminders - As with event confirmations, reminders are built into Lawmatics.  Although they are optional, we highly recommend utilizing them to ensure your matters stay on top of upcoming appointments. Feel free to create as many reminders as you desire, and once again, you have the power to apply them to any or all of your appointment types. 

Appointment Cancelations and No Shows

Just like emails for confirmations and reminders, Lawmatics also has custom built-in emails for cancelations and no shows.

Scroll to the Cancelations/No Shows section and add your emails accordingly.

 Just like described above with regards to confirmations and reminderes, you'll have the options to create emails for different appointment types, practice areas, and locations.

Automations

Appointment types will appear as appointment trigger options in automations. This means that you can trigger an automation upon the creation/cancelation/no show of a specific appointment type for a matter. 

Remember that the system has confirmations, reminders, no shows, and cancelation emails all built-in as described above, so you will not want to add these to your automation if you already have them set up in settings. Use your automations for other things such as task assigning, pipeline stag updates, etc.

You can also create automations that run on a specific amount of time before or after the specified occurrence of that appointment type. For example, you may want an automated follow up email to be sent 1 day after the appointment, or even an automated text message. This can be done with appointment automations, learn more about that here.

Merge Fields - When an appointment type is created, Lawmatics will create several corresponding merge fields that are available in emails and documents. It will create fields allowing you to merge any of the following information: date and time of the appointment type in written out format, date and time of the appointment type in number format, day of the week of the appointment, date only, time only, and location of the appointment. 

You will find these fields in the appointment fields drop down, shown below, and they will automatically be created for each of your appointment types.

If you are using an email to confirm or send reminders for a particular appointment type, as described in the Automations section above, it is important to make sure you are using the corresponding appointment type merge field. So whichever appointment type you've select as the entry condition for the automation, make sure you are using the same appointment type merge fields in your email.

When viewing the calendar in Lawmatics (found under the CRM tab), you will see the option to filter based on appointment types as well as by firm user. This makes it easy to see what appointments of a particular type have been booked for a particular member of your firm.

FAQ's
Can I delete the initial consultation  appointment  type?
No, this appointment type comes built-in and cannot be deleted. You can adjust the default duration of this appointment type as needed. If this appointment type does not apply to your firm, simply don't select it as the appointment type when booking appointments.
Should I make different  appointment  types for phone/zoom/in person meetings?
No, we do not recommend creating different appointment types to differentiate based on location. Instead, you will simply select from the Location field when booking the appointment.

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