Summary

Appointment Reminders automatically send your customers a reminder before their appointment. You can also send a follow-up message after the service to check in. Set up reminders for different job types or specific customers.

Key Points

Creating a new Appointment Reminder
Creating a follow-up 'reminder'
Applying the reminder to a Work Order series
Applying the reminder to a Work Order template
Send Reminders preference in the customer's location page

Creating a new Appointment Reminder

To create a new reminder, go to Settings/Appointment Reminders.

First, from the Top of the Navigation Menu, click Settings. (gear icon)
From the Settings Menu, under the heading Company Setup, click on Appointment Reminder

3. Once you are on the Appointment Reminders page, Click the grey New Reminder button in the upper right.

Reminder Name

Give the reminder a name that describes its purpose — for example, General Reminder, Exterior Service, Seasonal Service, etc.
Send Reminders

Choose how the reminder is sent to the customer:

Inactive — the reminder will not be sent

Important note: If Inactive is chosen, you must click the green save button at the bottom of the screen to save your changes.

Send an email — the reminder goes to the email address on the customer's location page

Send a text message — the reminder goes to the mobile number on the customer's location page

Send an email and a text message — both are sent

Date & Time Display

Choose how you want the date and time to appear in the Appointment Reminder:

The week of… — explains that the service will be the week of July 30, for example

Date and Start Time or Arrival Window — includes the date and start time (11 AM on July 30), or the arrival window if that is set in the Work Order Schedule tab (Between 10 AM and 12 PM on July 30)
Day Only — includes just the day (July 30)
Do not display date and time — see ya whenever!

Allow customers to confirm appointments

When this box is checked, the email will include a link, Confirm Appointment, that takes customers to their service portal where they can click [X] Confirm Appointment. For text reminders, they reply with the word CONFIRM. Confirmed appointments show up as confirmed in Fieldwork, so your office staff knows the customer is expecting the technician.

For more information about confirming an appointment, see Appointment Reminder has no Confirm button.

Include Technician Bio on appointment reminders

The technician's biography and photo from their user profile can be included in the email.

+ Add

Click the + Add button to chose when and how the reminder is sent.

Next, Choose when to send your reminder by selecting what day and time you would like the reminder to be sent.

Send Reminders __ Day(s) before/after appointment - Pick how many days to send the reminder before or after the appointment. If this is a reminder for an upcoming appointment, select before. If this is a follow-up message, select after.

Reminder Time - This is the time of day when reminders are sent. The default is 7:00 AM. Pick a time when your customers are likely to be awake and checking their phone or email. Early morning (7:00 AM to 9:00 AM) is the most common choice.

Email Template

Subject line - This is the subject line of the email reminder. If you are not allowing customers to confirm their appointment, change that part of the subject line to appointment reminder, or something like that. Write something the customer will recognize so they don't think it is spam.
Message - The email subject line and template are editable for you to create your own style and tone.
Placeholders - Click your mouse inside the email template where you want a placeholder to be, then click the placeholder. You can also format the text using the buttons above the message box: Normal text, Bold, Italic, Underline, and Small. Bullet lists and indentation are available too.

Placeholders (click to insert)

Click your mouse inside the email template where you want a placeholder to go, then click the placeholder to insert it.

{first_name}
{last_name}
{customer_name}
{company_name}
{branch}
{date_time}
{confirmation_link}
{account_number}
{company_phone}
{company_email}
{service_address}
{service_street_1}
{service_location}
{service_list}
{online_reviews}
{button url='http://www.google.com' color='#66CD00'}BUTTON TEXT{/button} — inserts a styled button. Replace the URL and button text with your own.

Click the Preview button to review your email and see how it will look from your customers perspective.

Tip: Always click a Preview button to ensure your reminder looks correct.

Texting Appointment Reminders

Important: When creating a customer's account, be sure to select the correct phone type in the Location Page. Text appointment reminders only go to a phone number with the type set to Mobile. If Mobile is not selected, the customer won't receive text reminders. Text messages are billed at $0.03 per segment plus $5.00 per month to rent the phone number.

Text Template

This notifies the customer of the upcoming appointment. Keep the message short and sweet — otherwise, they'll ignore it.

Confirmation Text

This message is added to the end of the text reminder, but only for appointments that have not yet been confirmed. If you change the wording, you must still explain to the customer to reply only with the word CONFIRM.

Important: If you update the text message to ask clients to confirm with another word or character (Yes, OK, Y...), the recipient will receive the auto-response text and the appointment will not be confirmed in their account.

Placeholders - to insert placeholders into a text message, drag the placeholder from the right side into the message box. This is different from the email template, where you click to insert.

Auto-respond

This text is sent to the customer when the reply is anything but CONFIRM. For example, if a customer texts back "Can we reschedule?", they will receive the auto-response. A good auto-response tells the customer how to actually reach a person, like "Sorry, if you have any questions about your appointment, please call us at {company_phone}."

Important Note: The auto-response will not be sent if the Messenger feature is enabled, because Messenger handles incoming text replies instead.

Send a Test Message

Enter your mobile phone number to view the text responses. Include the prefix country code (like +1 987 555 1234) and click Send. The test uses real placeholder values so you can see exactly what the customer will see.

Remove Appointment Reminder

Click this button to delete the reminder entirely. Use this if you no longer want to send this reminder at all. If you just want to pause it temporarily, change the Send Reminders dropdown to Inactive instead — that way you don't lose all your message text.

Same day text reminders

Send a message to customers when the technician starts their day - When this box is checked, the customer gets the text message typed in this message box at the start of the technician's day letting them know the technician is on the schedule and on their way.

Important note: placeholders for this message are click to insert

Notify this customer when the prior work order is completed - When this box is checked, the customer will recive the message that you create as soon as the technician finishes the previous job.
Important note: placeholders for this message are click to insert

Save your progress - To save your changes, press the green save button in the lower left of your screen.

Creating a follow-up "reminder"

Scroll back to the top of the page and click the + Add button to create another reminder.

For Service date, select after. You can also change the time this 'reminder' goes out.

Applying the reminder to a Work Order series

Once a reminder is built, it doesn't do anything until you attach it to a Work Order. You can update an existing Work Order or add the reminder to a new one.

Click on Calendar on the dashboard at the top of your screen.

From the Calendar view, Click on the Work Order you would like to attach the Appointment Reminder to

Once you have Clicked on the Work Order, a pop-up will show up in the upper right of your screen. On this pop-up, select the grey button Edit Series

New Work Order

Create a new Work Order and click the Schedule tab. Near the bottom, select the Appointment Reminder to use for this service.

Applying the reminder to a Work Order template

Apply a reminder at the bottom of a Work Order template. The reminder will be applied to newly created series when you load the template in the Work Order.

Send reminders preference in the customer's location page

Each customer also has their own Send Reminders preference on their Location Page. Note that Do Not Send is now Inactive.

If you select As per account settings, the reminder used in the Work Order will follow whatever is set in Appointment Reminders. Otherwise, the location page setting takes priority.

In Summary

Four things need to be set for the reminder to go out:

1. The Appointment Reminder itself needs to be set for email, text, or both (not Inactive).

2. In the Customer's Location Page:

For email reminders, there needs to be a valid email address
For text messages, the phone number Type needs to be set to Mobile

3. Send Reminders… on the customer's location page needs to be set for email, text, or both.

4. In the Customer's Work Order:

For a new Work Order, click the Schedule tab and select the Appointment Reminder you want to use
For an existing Work Order, edit the Series, click the Schedule tab, and select the Appointment Reminder you want to use

All four of the above need to match. For example, if you want to send a text: