You can also configure Booking Reasons and associate them with a service from the Create Campaign window - see Creating a new Campaign.
Purpose of Booking Reasons:
Patients can go to the booking site, select a Reason (which is linked to a service), select from available Providers offering that service, and then book an appointment.
Because each Reason is associated with a service and a a treatment duration, EXACT creates an appropriate booking.
Each Booking Reason can be specified as either Dentist or Hygienist:
Booking Reasons can apply to specific services.
Booking Reasons ensure that EXACT is no longer limited to a single service applying for both New and Existing patient booking, set per dentist.
Besides the improved booking functionality, this also enhances the accuracy of bookings. For example, where patients previously booked a generic EXAM for 10 minutes, they can now book a specific Implant Consultation (IMPCONS) for 45 minutes, to the benefit of both patient and practice.
Marketing Manager needs to handle multiple service/booking reason combinations in order to properly manage, track and report on campaign appointments. Booking Reasons allow the creation of Marketing Manager online booking URL links that are sent out to patients per campaign, where each URL link is unique to the single Booking Reason for a campaign.
Purpose of campaign-specific URL Links:
We don't want campaign respondents going directly to the bookings page and arbitrarily selecting reasons for their booking; we want to rather have a means of reliably identifying the campaign to which they are responding.
The campaign-specific URL is a mechanism for EXACT to identify the campaign reason for patients entering the booking portal.
This functions as follows: EXACT provides the URL during online booking setup, at the point of creating a Media Type. The practice issues the URL to patients. Patients link to the booking portal page by means of that URL, where they are flagged as responding to the specific campaign.
EXACT generates these URL links at the point of creating a Media Type, for both automated campaigns and EXACT manual campaigns.
The patient viewpoint:
When creating an online appointment both New and Existing patients may be required to select a Booking Reason.
If a patient responds to a marketing campaign they will see multiple booking reasons for selection, depending on the offerings in the campaign, and the way they have been set up when Creating a new Campaign.
Configuration:
(You can also configure Booking Reasons and associate them with a service from the Create Campaign window - see Creating a new Campaign)
Configure from an Add Booking Reason window:
This window opens in two configuration circumstances:
When you select the Web Setup button in the Online Booking configuration screen:
... it opens a Web Setup - Online Booking window, which includes Campaign Services pane.
Here you can check to specify a default service / booking reason, and you can configure each service with a booking reason.
CAUTIONS:
- The fields configured in Booking Reasons will override the equivalent fields in EXACT configuration, such as appointment durations. - If you do not customise Booking Reasons for your practice, your website will show a default list of reasons that are generic with the online booking software.
From the Add Booking Reason configuration window you can add Booking Reasons to
Both New and Existing Patients with equivalent settings,
Both New and Existing patients but with different settings,
New patients only,
Existing patients only.
Note that if your practice has configured online booking payments the Booking Reason window will include a Deposit field where you can specify a deposit amount (less than the Price) to be paid online:
