TermsAppointment - A recipient with a phone number and a scheduled event.Reminder - A notification message for a person with an appointment sent by call and/or SMS at a configurable duration before the appointment schedule.Where To Record AppointmentsAppointments are stored as a recipient group. It is recommended to create separate Recipient Groups with Appointment Reminder Enabled for each business. For example, if you have a doctor’s clinic and beauty salon that would like to set up SMS or Call reminders, create one recipient group for the doctor’s clinic appointments and one recipient group for the beauty salon.From within your domain, proceed to create your Recipient Group by clicking the "Recipient Group Management" button on the left side menu. Provide a helpful name and description. On the Appoint Reminder Group, choose Yes. Status should be Active if you want it to start giving out appointment reminders to the persons added to this group. After creating the group, you can Edit the group to see new custom settings: Auto-Delete, Custom Variables, and Webhook featuresAuto-Delete FeatureThe Auto-Delete feature can be set to have past appointments deleted upon reaching a designated number of days past the current date.To do this, enable the Auto-Delete Past Appointments by clicking on the Yes radio button. You can then set the number of days past in the text box to the right. On the "Older Than (days)" text box, supply the age of appointments to delete. Use a significant number of days that you can comfortably call as an aged appointment.The matching appointments will be deleted each night at midnight (GMT). The appointment consisting of name, phone number, and schedule will be deleted. As such, it is recommended that if you turn this auto-delete feature on, you will want to regularly download the list of recipients if you want to keep a copy of the names and phone numbers. To disable auto-delete, simply click the No radio button.Custom Variable Fields FeatureCustom variables allow you to add your own variables, other than the basic variables in vBroadcast. These variables can be used for additional data specific to your business that may be useful in a reminder message such as doctor’s names, store branch locations, or the school teacher’s name.You can define up to five Custom Variable Fields, which will be used in your appointment reminder’s SMS or Call message.The custom variable name goes into the fields shown above and the values for these fields are input during the creation or editing of a recipient, which is discussed in the How to Add Appointments section lower in this article.Note: Custom Variables are optional, but if any changes (adding, removing, or editing) are made to the variables, a warning message will be shown. You will have to click on the Continue button to proceed or click Cancel to go back. Webhook FeatureWebhooks are used to send API requests towards an expecting application. The webhook section shows API Token, a button to generate a new token if needed, and a link to the API Documentation Guide. More on API Integration in the sections below.How To Configure RemindersOn the left navigation bar, navigate to Reminder Management. Click on the Create Reminder button. Supply your preferred campaign name and select your target recipient groups you just created. Also, choose the campaign type from the options below. Call - Recipients will get their appointment notifications via calls to their phone numbers.SMS - Recipients will get their appointment notifications via SMS sent to their phone numbers.Both - Recipients will get their appointment notifications via call and SMS to their phone numbers.The campaign type chosen will determine what settings are displayed.Reminder Delivery via SMSIf your reminder is delivered by SMS, choose the SMS Caller ID to be used. The SMS Caller ID selected must be a toll-free number with SMS enabled. The DID must be routed to the domain to show as a selectable number.You can format the content of your SMS message and use various keywords in the message text. To learn more about the various keywords and what they do, simply click on the Message Guide link. The SMS Caller ID selection drop-down menu will show all available toll-free numbers to use and will show a green phone number that implies it is SMS-enabled and a red phone number implies it is SMS-disabled.If you have custom variables defined: Click on the Show Custom Variables link to show the custom variables which the user has added to the campaign.If there are no custom variables, the following message will be shown.Reminder Delivery via CallIf your reminder campaign will be delivered by call, configure the following: Max Concurrent Calls - Enter the total number of concurrent calls you wish to make (must be 5 or less).Call Caller ID - Choose one of your phone numbers.Times to Retry - The maximum number of call attempts if the recipient phone number is not reachable.Retry Delay - The number of minutes between call attempts.Answering Machine Detection - Choose Yes if an answering machine is to be detected.Play Intro Greeting for Human - Choose Yes to play an audio file as an intro greeting.Intro Greeting - Choose a playback file to be played as an intro greeting. The playback file should be in .wav format and with a maximum length of 12 seconds.Call Message - Options for playback of an audio file or a text to speech message.Playback Message - This option will show a file chooser dialog for you to upload the audio file to be played.Text to Speech - This option will convert to audio the text inside the message box. There are two sub-options:Similar To SMS Message - This copies the message written in the SMS section (see above portion) and grays it out. To edit the message, you will have to do this in the SMS section message box.New Text - You can type your message in the message box.Message - This is the text to be converted to speech. Use "$name" as a placeholder of the recipient’s name and "$datetime" as a placeholder for the appointment schedule.Set the Scheduling InformationIn this section, you will learn how to set the schedule as to when the notifications will be sent from the Reminder Management "Create a Reminder" screen. Notify On - The number of days before the appointment schedule that the reminder is sent. Options are 1 - 15 days or ‘Same Day.’Notify Time - The time of the day the notification should be sent. Effective Start Date - Date when the reminder program startsEffective End Date - This drop-down menu will let you either ‘Choose Date’ when the reminder program ends or the ‘Never’ option, which will keep the reminder program running continuously. Selecting Choose Date will show a date picker below for selecting the end date.SMS Status for Reminder CampaignOn the Reminder Management page, you can see an indicator below the SMS Caller ID under the Sender Number column. A check icon means SMS is enabled and an x icon means SMS is disabled. If appears, expect the SMS not to be sent.If the currently selected phone number has its SMS disabled, a maroon text “Unable to send SMS because the phone number is not enabled for SMS” will show up.TIP: Make sure SMS is enabled in the Manage DIDs portal. If still enabled but SMS sending fails, contact Skyswitch Control Tower.How To Add AppointmentsThere are two ways to add appointments, either by entering appointment information through the vBroadcast portal or by posting appointment information via an endpoint webhook (see Posting Appointments via HTTP Webhook section of the vBroadcast - API Integration Guide article).It is possible to have multiple appointment reminders for the same number.To add an appointment via vBroadcast Portal, please complete the following steps:Go to the Recipient Group Management page via the menu on the left.Click on the Manage Recipients button of the recipient group where you will add a person’s appointment.Click on the Create Recipient button.Supply details of a recipient to which an appointment schedule will be created.Details to supply are:Person’s namePhone numberAppointment dateAppointment time (The timezone is based on the time of the user who logged in.)Phone type (SMS or Call or Auto-Detect)Custom Variable/s (required if present)Note: An error will be shown if this field is not filledClick the Create button to save the appointment. The screenshot below shows a sample SMS reminder sent with the custom variables filled in with the entered values. Adding Recipients in BulkAdding recipients can be done by either:A CSV formatted file imported via the vBroadcast portalCalling a REST API (see vBroadcast - API Integration Guide article for more information).To add recipients via a CSV File import, please complete the following steps:In Recipient Group Management, find the reminder recipient group to manage.Click on the Manage Recipients button to the right of the recipient group.Click on the Import button.Click on the Download Sample File button to get the CSV file template for import.The CSV sample file, which is shown below, contains columns for the custom variables. Add the appointments starting at row #2.The sample image below shows the appointments added to the CSV file for import.Click the Browse button and select the CSV file to be imported.Click the Import button to begin the import process for the CSV file appointments to be added to the recipient group.List of AppointmentsAll the appointments are listed in a table. For easier management, it is indicated if the appointment is a Past appointment or a Future one. Only future appointments will receive notifications. Note also that how well in advance the notification is given depends on the Notify On (can be configured for the number of days before the schedule) discussed above. From here, you can:Delete Recipients - Done by either clicking on the red x icon beside the recipient entry under the Actions column. Or selecting multiple recipients via the checkboxes beside each recipient entry and clicking the Delete Recipients button.Delete All Recipients - Click on the Delete All button to do this.Return to the Recipient Group Management page - To return, click on the Back button.Create Recipient - as discussed in the previous sectionImport Recipients - Select a prepared file with appointment information and import it into the appointment list via the Import button. A template can be downloaded through the import page.Export Recipients - Clicking on the Export button will download a CSV format file containing these appointment schedules.