Custom Appointments & Reminders

How to create custom appointments and reminders

Updated over a week ago

Arya EHR provides a few different options for customizing your schedule and appointments. The first is the ability to set custom appointment reminders, length and colour for existing appointment types within Arya. You are also able to create clinician-specific appointment types with the same functionality.

πŸ“– NOTE: Only certain types of Arya users will be able to access the Admin panel.


Start Customizing Appointments

Navigate to the Admin panel

Navigate to the clinic dropdown menu in the top righthand side of your app. Select Admin, which is located between the Help and Logout menu items. This will launch the Admin Panel in a new window, where the appointment and schedule settings are stored.

Once in the Admin Panel, select Schedule, then select Appointment Settings.

Clinic Wide Appointments

Arya provides a default set of appointment types which can be edited and rearranged. At this time, new clinic-wide appointments cannot be added, and existing appointment types cannot be deleted.

  1. If you would like to de-activate a clinic wide appointment type, you can click the circle on the far left to make it inactive, just like with Tasks.

  2. Type is the name of the appointment, please note that system default appointment type names cannot currently be edited.

  3. Time Interval is, by default, how long the appointment should be booked for. This can be changed on a patient by patient basis, where relevant.

  4. Reminder Message is what the patient will receive to remind them of their appointment. This message can now be edited on an appointment type basis.

  5. Reminder Alert is when the reminder(s) will be sent. You can select more than one reminder alert for a single appointment.

  6. If you would like to edit the appointment, you can click the i icon to access the appointment edit window, like many other places within Arya.

  7. If you would like to re-order the list of appointments so your most frequently booked appointments always appear on top, you can drag and drop the appointments to your desired order. To do this, click and drag using the three horizontal lines (also known as a hamburger).


Editing Clinic Wide Appointments

As mentioned above, clinic wide appointment types can be edited by clicking the i icon next to the appointment type you would like to modify. This will open the Appointment Edit Window, as seen below:

πŸ“– NOTE: You are not able to change the name of default Clinic Wide Appointments.

  1. You can select from a list of 17 different colours, allowing you to further visually define the different types of appointments you book.

  2. Each appointment type can be set for its own interval, instead of having to use the Providers interval. This is especially useful for clinics that book different lengths of time for consults versus follow ups.

  3. Reminder Message allows you to customize the reminder that the patient receives. Like the Note Template editor, you are able to pick and choose where to add appointment placeholders (like Appointment Date) by clicking the Add Placeholders button and selecting the corresponding placeholder you require.

  4. Reminder Alerts allow for the selection of when a reminder would be sent to the patient. You are able to choose multiple reminder times, where relevant.

  5. Delivery method allows you to determine how the patient will receive the reminder. Your options are:

    • Email - all patients will receive the reminder via the Email address in their chart.

    • SMS - all patients will receive a text message reminding them of their appointment.

    • Both - patients will receive a reminder to both their email address and their cell phone, provided the patient has both entered into their chart.

    • None - If you would like to disable a reminder for a specific appointment type, you can set the Delivery Method to None.


Clinician Specific Appointments

Clinician specific appointments have a few additional features, but work similar to clinic-wide appointments.

Let's start with the familiar. Clinician specific appointments are assigned a colour, time interval, reminder message, alert, and delivery method. No changes there! For more details on these, please take a look at Editing Clinic Wide Appointments.

What's different?

  1. Clinician specific appointments are sorted by clinician name. Clicking on the provider's name, you can minimize or expand a provider's list of appointments.

  2. These appointment types can't be deactivated, but can be deleted. Like other areas of Arya, clicking the Edit button will show you the option of deleting a clinician specific appointment.

πŸ“– NOTE: You are not able to rearrange Clinician Specific Appointments yet. You'll see the addition of the hamburger icon once that feature is added.

Adding Clinician Specific Appointments

If this is your first clinician specific appointment, you'll see there are no default appointments here, Arya EHR gives you a blank slate to start.

To add a new clinician specific appointment, click Add to open the appointment creation window.

  1. Physician - Click on this dropdown to pick which clinician will use this appointment type. This appointment type will only appear for that clinician's scheduler.

    • When booking this appointment type, you'll find it at the bottom of the list, under the default clinic wide appointment types.

  2. Type - The name of these appointments are customizable.

    • Because these appointments only appear for the clinician that uses it, there is no need for odd appointment names like "Dr. X - Initial Consult (30min)."

That's it! The rest works the same as clinic wide appointments. Once you pick a colour and time interval, write up the reminder message, click Save and the appointment type will be immediately available to use.


Editing Clinician Specific Appointments

To edit an existing clinician specific appointment, click the i icon to access the appointment edit window, like many other places within Arya.

If any changes are made to the reminder details, you'll see this pop-up after you save your changes.

  1. All future appointments - Only applies the reminder changes to newly booked patient appointments, starting when you click confirm.

    • All existing appointments will be sent a reminder with the previous reminder settings

  2. All pending and future appointments - Applies reminder changes to all appointments that have not yet happened, and appointments not yet booked.

Deleting Clinician Specific Appointments

To delete, click edit to show you the option of deleting a clinician specific appointment.


Since deleted appointment types cannot be brought back, you'll be asked to confirm if you wish to delete the appointment type.

πŸ“– NOTE: Deleting a clinician specific appointment type, will not delete pending appointments. Instead, in the day view scheduler you'll see an asterisk * appear next to appointment types that have been deleted.


Now that you have the details on how to edit and add appointment types, let's start using them! For more on creating patient appointments in the scheduler, check out this article below!

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