Triggers and Filters Definitions For Automated Communications

Triggers and Filters Definitions For Automated Communications

Triggers: 
  1. Reminder Due means that a client has a pet with a reminder in your PMS that is due or is overdue. The purpose is to encourage the client to call and make an appointment. This trigger will look in the future or in the past as designated by your delivery schedule settings and find all applicable pets. You can then filter these pets to narrow the focus and match your email and text message. This is the trigger that is used for postcards. Other triggers allow postcards, but it doesn’t make sense to use them because the postcard message cannot be changed. Postcards are sent to let clients know about overdue pets and encourage them to make an appointment. This is the only purpose for a postcard.
  2. Appointment Date means that a client has an appointment for their pet in your PMS. You will want automated emails and text messages to remind them of their upcoming appointment. You can send these messages as many times as you want before the appointment by setting your delivery schedule. You can also send them after the appointment, if you want to ask clients for feedback or a review. A key feature to use is the insert variable function that lets you include an email link or URL to automatically confirm in the system. The client only needs a single click on the link to send you an email confirming the appointment. Texts don’t use a link or URL, but instead prompts clients to reply Y or yes as confirmation.
  3. Patient Birthday lets you trigger emails or texts on or around a pet’s birthday. Some practice’s offer discounts or gifts in these communications. Others take the opportunity to encourage an exam or other appointment.
  4. Appointment Created - Appointment starts more than 2 days from now lets you send a short confirmation text or email whenever a new appointment is created in your PMS. Please note that this trigger is programmed to NOT send the message to any appointment created for the next two days. In other words, you wouldn’t want to send an email to someone for an appointment that is happening this afternoon when they made it this morning. They are not likely to forget that quickly and it would probably not be read until after they come to the appointment.
  5. Appointment Created - No Buffer lets you send a short confirmation text or email whenever a new appointment is created in your PMS. It will send if an appointment is made that morning for the afternoon. Intended to help get information out to appointments scheduled (new client form/announcement).
  6. New Email Address enables automatic welcome and/or thank you messages whenever your PMS is updated with a new email. This can also be a good opportunity to invite clients to sign up (or re-register) for your pet portal and download the mobile portal app.
  7. Invoice Posted helps you send a billing notice automatically. See matching filters below.
  8. Communication Sent is useful if you would like to set a follow-up email for another communication. For example, if you would like to send an email to clients 2 days after a specific Surgery communication was sent. You can also use the filters to get more specific with this as well.
  9. Invoice Item Posted sends every time an invoice item is posted. It is evaluating at the patient level. See matching filters below.
Filters:
  1. Not, Or, All of, Either, and Has A are logic filters and can be combined with other filters to make more sophisticated client sets. Please remember that the logic function applies only to the filter that immediately follows the logic filter. For example, Not a Confirmed Appointment.
  2. Reminder Type is the primary way to sort your communications. It uses all the treatments you have in your PMS to let you include or exclude specific medical reminders in your communications. 
  3. Appointment Type lets you target specific procedures. For example, surgeries may have more instructions in the communication than a standard wellness exam reminder. 
  4. Appointment Notes let you target specific phrases or words in the notes section of your appointment. You want to be as simple with these as possible, for example if you want a communication not to send to a euthanasia appointment, you would type euth, that way if someone shortens euthanasia or misspells euthanasia, we will still search for euth. If you want to use multiple notes as in ‘do not send if the appointment has euthanasia in the appointment notes or quality of life in the appointment notes’, then you would add an 'either' filter then 'appointment notes' - euth OR appointment notes QOL OR quality nested under a 'not' filter.
  5. Appointment Resource This filter lets you send automatic messages related to a specific doctor or treatment room.  If the columns in your PMS schedule are for different rooms, then this filter will allow you to choose which rooms apply to the communication. If you have different doctors assigned to each column in your schedule, then the options to include or exclude will be your doctors. 
  6. Alert Type filters clients by the Retention Calendar alerts that apply to them. If there is a missing email address or pets are past due then you can include just these clients.  Generally used in mass emails.
  7. Appointment Status copies the different status codes in your PMS and allows you to send messages based on a certain code(s). For example: If you have a missed appointment code, you might create a communication that invites clients to call to reschedule the missed appointment.
  8. Appointment Day of Week allows you to choose only certain days of the week for a communication or not those days of the week when combined with a logic filter.
  9. Appointment Starts Within lets you set up communications for your appointment within a certain time frame before or after the appointment. Maybe you want to send a notice to everyone that has an appointment more than 10 days away or within the next two hours. Most commonly used in Lapsing Client emails.
  10. Species and Breed lets you focus your communication to just dogs or cats or birds or reptiles or rabbits or any other species that you have in your PMS. Breed gives you the same option, to filter the communication only to send or not send to a specific breed.
  11. Client Class lets you choose any (or all) of your client classes that exist in your PMS. Some examples: Rescue shelter, boarding only, grooming only, pet owner, etc. If you leave this filter off, then all client classes are included.
  12. Client Pet Record Status pertains to whether or not clients have registered for the online patient portal or mobile app.  You can target those individuals who have started registration but not yet confirmed, registered but not yet logged in, or just those who are active web/app users.  You can also exclude these clients with a NOT filter, so that those who have already registered will NOT receive the email.  Most commonly used in mass emails.
  13. Confirmed Appointment does not have edit options. This is usually used to turn off communications after a client has made and confirmed their appointment. Generally, these filters would be right after the logic filter 'Not'. The combination filter of Not Confirmed Appointment has the effect of stopping messages to clients that have a confirmed appointment from previous communications.
  14. Employee allows you to send communications for appointments assigned to a specific employee.  An example would be grooming or boarding messages from those respective staff members. You can use it to make automatic emails with staff member photos or specific information about that employee’s treatment specialties. 
  15. Client’s First Appointment enables special messages that can include welcome, pet registration information or links and post-appointment requests for feedback. This filter looks for the client’s first appointment in the practice’s database.
  16. Clients with a Gmail Account is available to invite these folks to do a Google review. Although anyone can write Google reviews, folks with a Gmail account don’t need to register.
  17. Clients without an Email Address gives you the option to only send postcards to clients without an email in your system.
  18. Not Recently Sent lets you control how often a client will see the same message, i.e. you can make sure to only send a survey once every six months.
  19. Invoice Item Type, Invoice Item Quantity, Invoice Posted Within lets you send messages to clients that have purchased specific kinds or amounts of a product and gives you the option to filter further based on the time period when that occurred. To use these filters, you must nest them within a 'Has A' filter.  As in, a Client HAS An Invoice with the Invoice Item Type. Invoice Item Quantity has greater than/less than operators.
  20. Last Survey Score Allows you to send a communication to clients based on what their last survey score was.  Most commonly used with mass emails, could be used to send an email to everyone who took the survey and rated the practice at a 10 level, for example.
  21. Reminder Due Within gives you the option to send Reminder due notices or any other message to clients that have either upcoming or past due alerts in your PMS. You could use this to send notices to clients that have very old reminders as well, such as clients that have a two-year-old alert.
  22. Patient Age and Patient Sex allows you to sort based on the pet's age and/or sex. This is the filter to use when sending out a senior dog reminder for proper care and treatment.
  23. Client Balance allows you to filter on the current balance due on the pet owner's account. Has a greater than/less than operators. Most commonly used in mass emails, e.g. to send communications to all clients with a balance due >= $100 for example.
  24. Communication Name, Communication Interaction, and Communication Sent Within are used in a 'Has A' filter. You can use these filters to send a communication only if the client has received one of your other Automatic communications (name), clicked, or opened it (interaction) within a particular time frame (sent within). For example, only send your survey communication (the communication that you are adding these filters into) if they have not clicked the survey communication within the past 2 months.
  25. Invoice Amount.  This has operators that allow you to specify Invoice Amount equal to, greater than, less than, etc. Used most often in conjunction with Loyalty program.
  26. Standardized Invoice Item Quantity and Standardized Invoice Item Type.  These are specialized comms for particular enterprises, practices will not use these filters - we recommend using the regular Invoice Item Quantity and Item Type filters.