Automated Messages enable you to send personalized SMS/MMS, email, and push notifications. The messages serve various purposes, such as Appointment reminders, Birthday Messages, Reactivation messages, Rapid Messages, and Smart Reply. In addition, SKED has an Auto-Responder function that allows you to send automated SMS messages to patients who text the office.

This article will walk you through every setting and feature ​​to get the most out of the Automated Messages function.

Access an Automated Messages Page by clicking the “Automated Messages tab on the blue sidebar. Then select from any of the message types to access the Messages Page.

Note: Messages will continue to send from SKED even if the office is disconnected from the EHR, as SKED uses a separate messaging provider. If you are receiving message errors, please contact SKED support so they can investigate further.

When setting up a new automated Message, you have two paths: building from scratch or using templates for ease and speed. We recommend SKED templates as a convenient starting point for offices, but many offices create their own Messages from scratch.

Creating an automated Message from scratch allows you to tailor the functionality to your needs without pre-filled settings. On the “Messages” page, Click the + New Message button at the top right. View the “Customize Automated Messages” section to learn how to set them up.

Sometimes, offices will want to duplicate an existing Message. This is usually because the office wants to duplicate an appointment Message for a different appointment type or provider at the practice.

The Automated Messages page has three tabs at the top. The 'My Templates' tab allows you to view and manage custom Messages saved by your office, while 'SKED Templates' provides pre-designed templates for convenience and ease of use.

To create new Messages from templates:

That's it! You'll be off to the races customizing the template to start sending Messages!

The Messages page is where you should look if you are trying to find a particular automated Message and view its details or if you want to view the messages that have been sent by that message. To begin, navigate to the Messages page with the Messages Tab selected to view all the automated Messages you've created.

From there, you can find a specific Message, its details, and the sent message history, or you can change it by clicking on the message's name.

The Messages page displays your saved Messages. To find specific Messages quickly, use pagination, sorting, or search. Pagination lets you navigate pages, Sorting organizes Messages, and Search locates them by name. The table contains the following information:

Clicking on a Message’s name on the Automated Messages page will bring you to the Message page, showing the details for a particular message. The page has two main tabs: Message Info and Sent Messages.

Under the Message Info tab, this page has 3 separate tabs to view a Message’s message content, including its message body and data from an email, SMS, or push notification perspective. Each delivery method can have unique text in the message body. For Messages sent via email, you can view the subject line (In Bold) along with the message body. However, there's no subject line for SMS/MMS and push notifications, so you’ll immediately see the message body.

Scrolling down the message page, we see a section titled “Message Data”. Here, you can find further details about the automated Message:

Click the Sent Messages tab to see exactly who the Message went to. The table shows the client, phone number, message subject, how it was sent, and the time it was sent (CST).

Click on a specific message to see how the Message appeared to the patient via that delivery method. The tab allows you to toggle between views of the applicable delivery methods.

Edit the Messages of a setting by navigating to Automated Messages → Single Message → Click the Edit button.

Edit the Message title if you want to rename your Message.

Each Automated message type has unique conditions you must set in order to save it. These conditions usually involve appointment types, provider schedules, and timeframes for delivering the automated message to the patient.

To learn more about each automated message type and the conditions to send them, click from the list below:

Utilize SKED’s message composer to write messages through SMS, Email, and Push/App notifications. You can insert custom data (using Placeholders) to personalize your messages. Learn more here: Composing Messages (SMS/MMS, Email, Push) Zendesk Article

Placeholders are a SKED feature that allows offices to insert important information quickly into any message body. Simply place your cursor in the message body next to whichever placeholder you want to include, click an “Insert” button to add a placeholder, and it will appear wherever your text cursor is located.

After composing your Message, check the empty box if you want your automated Message to be immediately enabled when creating it. Some offices choose to create Message automations for future use, so they may leave the checkbox blank until necessary.

After you’ve created your automated Message masterpiece, you can save it outright as a unique automation or save it to the “My Templates” tab for future use by selecting the blue dropdown tab on the save button. SKED does not autosave drafts.

From the “Messages” page, there are two ways you can delete a Message.

Once you make a few Messages, consider Creating and Managing Folders to keep them organized. Folders are used throughout the admin and function similarly for different kinds of data. Move multiple Messages to different folders by multi-selecting records on the table with the checkboxes to the left of each row.

Templates enable you to reuse various settings to create common messages faster. This is optional and primarily useful when you are working with 20+ Messages. View templates in the automated messages age by clicking the “My Templates” or “SKED Templates” tabs.

To create a new Message template, navigate to Automated Messages → Single Message → Click the Edit button. This will allow you to dial in some custom settings for our Message. After customizing the Message, select the down arrow next to the save button and choose “Save as template” to save as a new template.

On the Messages page, set the page toggle “My Templates” and select a Message template. This will take you to the “New Recurring Message” page with all previous Message settings intact.

Make your changes to the template based on your needs, and when you are ready to update it, click the “Update” button at the top right to save your changes. This button only shows when editing a Message template.

Messages are always sent based on Appointment type, Provider, and Time Frame, so if a patient is not receiving a Message, start by checking these parameters for accuracy.

Appointment Type:

Provider:

When offices add a new doctor/provider, they need to remember to update the automated Message to include the correct appointment type and specific doctor in the settings; otherwise, the Message May not be sent to patients who intend to receive it.

Time Frame:

Appointment Messages will not be generated if the appointment was created or updated before the Message could be triggered.

Offices may need to intuitively understand that the message was sent based on previous appt times. Learn more about it in the Automated messages: Generating vs. Sending section.

Whenever a single patient is not receiving a message, it usually has to do with the timing of the Message, an incorrect phone number or settings enabled, or the wrong appointment type selected.

SMS Message not received

Email message not received

Review Requests not received

Cellular carriers can impact the delivery of appointment reminders in several ways. Here are some detailed insights:

URL Shorteners

Sometimes, appointment Messages work differently than anticipated because there is a faulty overlap of when the appointment was updated and when the message was supposed to be sent. This can result in the message not being sent at all or being sent at the wrong time. In this section, we'll describe why this is the case and how you can identify if this is the problem you're facing.

There are three data points to consider when troubleshooting an issue like this:

If the wrong Message is being sent to a patient, it is most likely an issue of having the wrong provider or appointment type assigned to the client.

Click on One-Time Message, then click + New Message and add a title. Select all appointment types (remove NP and Day 2 types since they may not have started 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.

Billing/renewal dates differ depending on when an office was installed or went live, it’s the same day the office gets billed each month. If you’re unsure of this date, please contact the SKED Support team, they can assist you!

Each plan includes a different number of credits. To find out how many your plan includes, please go to Settings > Billing. If you hover over the grey part on the “Current Message Credit Usage” graph, it will show your total credits for the billing cycle.

Yes! Hover over the blue part of the graph in the “Current Message Credit Usage” section, which will be on the left side.

Once the office runs out of credits, each additional credit gets billed to the office at the rate of .02 per credit. For example, if the office goes over 1,000 credits, it will only add $20 to the next bill.

Yes! You can accomplish this by sending a One-Time message, and you have a few different options for selecting your recipients.

Click on the name of the reminder you want to edit, then click Edit in the top right corner, scroll down to the composition box, and click on the delivery type you wish to remove and delete the message of the body and the subject line if applicable. You’ll know it’s unselected because the green check mark will disappear.

The most common reason a patient doesn’t get a reminder is because the appointment was not there with enough time for the reminder to deploy. If an appointment is added at 4 p.m. for an 11:30 a.m. appointment and the office only has a 24-hour reminder, there is not enough time for the message to deploy. The second most common reason is that the appointment type under the provider the patient is scheduled with is not selected for the appointment reminder. You can click on the name of the message to easily see which appointment types are selected.

This usually means there is a disconnection between SKED and your EHR. When this happens, SKED cannot see that the patient was marked as arrived, so the missed appointment reminder may still send. Messages will continue to send as scheduled even while the office is disconnected.

We recommend temporarily disabling the missed appointment reminder and contacting our support team so we can resolve the connection issue. Once it’s fixed, the reminder can be safely re-enabled.

As long as that provider is hidden in the Appointment Types section of SKED, they will be automatically removed from all appointment reminders.To hide them, go to Settings > Appointment Types, and then select the provider you need to hide. Click the pencil icon and check the box appropriate box.

Yes, you can do this with a Rapid message!

No. Sending an email through SKED never costs any credits.

Search for the name in the universal search or in the Clients tab and click on their name. Scroll down to the Profile Data and uncheck all Notifications options.

The two most common reasons are the patient being scheduled with multiple appointments or the appointment type being in multiple reminders. If neither of these scenarios is the case, please reach out to our support team and we can troubleshoot further for you.