When a booking confirmation was held back

Very occasionally, a patient books online but does not get their confirmation email. The booking itself is fine and sits in your diary as normal. This article explains why it happens and how to send the confirmation yourself.

Why a confirmation is held back

To protect patients' inboxes, we send no more than 10 booking confirmations to the same email address in an hour. It is rare to reach that, but it can happen when someone books several family members under one email address, or makes lots of bookings in a row.

When that limit is reached, the booking still goes through and you are still told about the new booking. Only the patient's confirmation email is held back.

Sending it yourself

1. Open the appointment on the Calendar.
2. In the drawer you will see a note saying the booking confirmation could not be emailed when this was booked.
3. Press Resend confirmation.

When it has gone you will see Sent: the confirmation has been emailed to the patient. The note only appears on appointments whose confirmation was held back, so if you do not see it, there is nothing to resend.

If it will not send

The drawer tells you why. The usual reasons are:

• The appointment has since been cancelled.
• The patient has no email address on their record.
• Booking confirmation emails are switched off in your messaging settings.
• The patient does not receive automated emails.
• A confirmation went to this patient very recently. The message tells you how long to wait before you can resend.
• The email could not be delivered just then. Wait a few minutes and try again.