Letting the assistant book
Booking straight into your calendar, what it still respects, and when to turn it off.
Direct booking is on by default, on the view that an assistant that cannot book is a phone tree with better manners. With it on, the patient finishes the conversation with a confirmed appointment.
What it still respects
Every one of your appointment rules. It cannot offer a slot inside your minimum notice, beyond your booking horizon, outside working hours, or on top of an existing appointment — the server refuses those regardless of who is asking.
This is why the feature is safe to leave on. The assistant is not trusted with your calendar; it is allowed to ask the same guarded endpoint your own front desk uses.
What it asks for
Whichever contact fields you marked required in the widget settings. Fewer fields means more completed bookings and thinner records; more fields means the opposite. An email address is worth insisting on — without it there are no reminders and no self-service links.
Turning it off
Clinics that want every booking to pass through a person can switch it off. The assistant then collects the request and hands it over instead of confirming, and the request lands in your inbox as a booking request.
If you turn it off, turn on the booking request notification in the same sitting. A request nobody is told about is worse than no request — the patient believes they have asked, and they have, and nothing happens.
When there is no slot
It offers the waitlist rather than ending the conversation. A patient who leaves their details is a patient you can still win back.
Common questions
- Can it book with a specific doctor?
- Yes, where the patient asks for one and that doctor has availability in the relevant specialty.
- Does it take deposits?
- No. Payment is recorded in Finance by your team.
- Can a patient book several appointments in one conversation?
- It handles one booking at a time. A second request starts a new booking.