One-Time Messages (OTMs) allow you to send a message to a specific audience—whether that’s a single client or multiple clients at once. Messages can be delivered via SMS/MMS (text or multimedia message), Email, Push Notifications through the SKED Patient App, or any combination of the three.

Unlike Appointment-Time or Set-Time Reminders, Reactivations, or Rapid messages, One-Time Messages are not condition-based or automated. They are sent manually by your office.

Common reasons offices use One-Time Messages include:

To find One-Time Messages, click on the “One Time messages” item in the blue navigation bar.

One-time messages can be created in three ways:

After navigating to the One-Time Messages page, follow the steps below based on how you’d like to create your message.

Click + New Message in the top-right corner of the One-Time Messages main page to start with a blank message.

Tip: The editable fields will be auto-populated with information from the template.

Click the papers icon under the Actions column for the message you want to reuse. You’ll be able to review, change, or update any settings before sending it again.

If you start from a template, the title will already be pre-filled, but you’re welcome to change it.

This title is only visible to your office and is used for internal reference. Patients will not see this title.

This step determines who will receive your message. There are four main ways to select recipients:

Using appointment types combined with a date range allows you to easily target patients who have visited for specific services.

Example use cases:

Using appointment types with a large date range is the best and easiest way to send a mass message to active patients.

Notes & Tips:

You can send a One-Time Message to one or multiple specific patients.

How to select clients:

Helpful use cases include:

Note: Clients can only be searched and selected by name or a specific date of birth. Other filtering options are not available. If your office needs to target a specific group of clients, you can query them in your EHR and provide the list to the Support Team, who can create a custom tag for messaging purposes.

Leads allow you to message individuals who are not yet patients in your EHR but may become patients in the future.

Selecting leads works the same way as selecting clients.

Tip: This is especially useful for inviting potential patients to events, workshops, or community outreach opportunities.

Note: Lead names can be updated from the Leads tab.

Tags allow you to quickly message predefined groups of clients.

Messages can be sent:

Depending on the number of recipients, immediate messages may send within a minute or be delivered in batches until complete.

We also have a more detailed article for Composing Messages in SKED if you have any questions that may not be discussed in this section. There are some slight differences between One-Time messages and SKED’s other automated messaging features, so the following sections will specifically pertain to composing messages within One-Time Messaging.

A One-Time Message can include up to three delivery methods:

Once content is added to any method, a green checkmark appears to indicate it’s ready.

If required fields are missing (such as an email subject or body), a red exclamation mark will appear.

You can personalize messages using Placeholders, found on the right side of the message editor.

Note: The HTML editor for advanced email formatting is a Pro feature.

Tip: Don’t forget to add fun emojis by clicking the 😊 icon in the bottom-right corner of the message editor!

SMS/MMS Attachments

Tip: Avoid special characters in attachment file names to help ensure delivery.

Email Attachments

If this message may be reused:

Saved templates can be found under the My Templates tab.

If the Send button is grayed out, something is missing. Common causes include:

After clicking Send, you’ll see a confirmation screen showing:

Click Yes, Send to proceed or the X icon to return and make edits.

Note: If the message exceeds 1,000 credits, an additional prompt will appear warning of high credit usage and potential charges if the office is out of credits.

One-time messages have four tabs: Outbox, Pending, Drafts, and Templates. The page will usually default to the “Outbox” but may default to another section if that was the last screen accessed.

There are a few icons in the navigation toolbar:

Note: If the browser screen is smaller than the average width, the tabs, and other top elements can be accessed by clicking the three-dot menu icon, and the + New Message button becomes just “+.”

The outbox shows messages that have already been sent. The records in the data table show:

To learn more about a specific message, click on the message’s title.

There are two tabs on this page: Message Info and Sent Messages. Message Info shows the message content, and Sent Messages shows the individual Messages sent as a result.

If multiple communication channels are used, such as SMS, email, and push notifications, you can use the message content tabs to see the included verbiage for each method.

You can also view the message data, including the title, methods, scheduled time, and chosen audience.

By clicking Sent Messages, you’ll see exactly who the message went to. The row on the table shows the client, phone number, message subject, how it was sent, the Central time, and if there was an error. In this example, it was sent to Madelin SKED via SMS/MMS & Email.

On the sent message details pop-up, a green check mark will appear at the end of the “Sent” row if the message was successfully delivered to the recipient’s phone carrier. If it is unsuccessful, it will show a red exclamation mark.

The pending tab will show any messages that have been scheduled for some time in the future. These scheduled messages will sit in the Pending section until the designated time when they will be sent automatically.

For example, an office may schedule a message to go out on New Year's Eve to say have a safe holiday and the office will be closed that day.

When creating a one-time message, there is an option to save a draft if it’s not ready to be sent. Drafts are shown here. To send a draft message, click on the title of the message, update your preferences then click Send.

Folders allow you to easily access sent messages by grouping them together. Click the + icon under the page title to add a folder category. Add a name and click Create.

To copy messages into those folders, select a row by clicking the checkbox to the left of the message titles, then click the folder icon.

After clicking + New Message and adding a title, select all appointment types (remove NP & Day 2 in case they did not start care) and then select a large date range of 3+ months or more. This will ensure the message goes to anyone who has been active in your clinic recently.

You can choose any date range, but SKED only syncs a specific date range before the office’s installation date. Please contact us for more information about your office and EHR system.

No. The message will only go to each patient once.

Since those patients had an appointment in that date range, it selects them.

Yes! Click the Clients method, then check the box for inactive, you can then click on the practice member you’d like the message to go to.

Here are the common reasons the Send button is grayed out: the message is missing a title, no audience is selected, and/or the email/push notification is partially completed or removed (you’ll know by a red “!” next to the delivery type). Sometimes, there may be a space entered into the message body, making it seem like there is nothing written, and therefore preventing it from being saved

Some common issues are that the patient does not have a phone number or a mobile number, they’ve opted out of receiving Office Notifications, the patient didn’t have a selected appointment type during the date range, the attached file had punctuation marks other than dashes and/or parentheses, or for a mass message, it hasn’t had time to deploy yet.

If it did not go via a specific delivery type, it is most likely SKED couldn’t send it via that method. For example, a patient has to have registered for the app for a push notification to send or there has to be an email address for an email to send.

We are limited to 1 credit a second. For example, if the message takes 600 credits, it will finish deploying 10 minutes later. For a message that is 1,800 credits, it will take approximately 30 minutes to finish sending.

If using appointment type and date range, you can take the number of credits below the composition box and multiply it by the number of patients when you click “Send”. The message will not actually deploy until you click “Yes” after clicking “Send” so you can be assured it you can know the amount before it deploys.

Once you’ve composed a message to your liking, you can click the the little down arrow next to the Send button and one of the options will be “Save as Template”.

Yes! On the Messages page, click the papers icon under Actions and then you can change the recipients, edit the message and send when it’s ready.

Yes! You’ll get a notification advising you that the message costs a specific amount of credits and that it will put you over your limit.

Yes! You’ll get a notification if the message costs over 1,000 credits.

They only need to have the app to receive Push Notifications.

Yes! We provide many templates that you can customize and use as your own. To find them, click Templates > SKED Templates. Depending on the browser screen, it could be behind a three dot icon.