The word "reminder" means two different things in Heltio, and it is worth separating them straight away.
A patient reminder is a message sent automatically before a visit — SMS, email or an in-app notification. An SMS about an unconfirmed visit carries a short link heltio.pl/w/…: the patient opens it on their phone without signing in and confirms or cancels the visit with one button (cancelling only within the clinic's cancellation deadline — after that the page asks them to call). Once the visit is confirmed, reminders arrive without the link.
A team reminder is a task in the bell next to your name: an unfinished note, a patient waiting, a booking request with no answer. You snooze it or dismiss it.
How to do it
Understand when the patient gets a message
Heltio schedules two messages for every booked appointment, unconfirmed ones included: the first reminder (24 hours before by default; the practice sets 3 to 96 hours) and the second 2 hours before. You do not have to order them — they come into being together with the appointment.
The channel — SMS, email, in-app notification — follows from the practice's messaging settings, not from this page. The exception: a patient who chose E-mail instead of SMS (in the patient card or in the portal) gets appointment messages by email. Quiet Hours apply only to push notifications in the patient's app: the day-before push waits until morning, the 2-hours-before push always goes out, because it concerns today. An SMS goes out exactly at the scheduled time.
Send a reminder by hand
If you do not want to wait for the automation — select the appointments on the appointment list and use Send reminder. You pick a Template and a Channel: SMS, Email or SMS & Email.
The summary tells you how many went out and how many were skipped, with the reason — Not scheduled, No contact details, Reminder sent recently.
Read the bell
The bell icon opens Reminders — a list of tasks generated from what is happening in the practice:
- Session with … in … minutes
- … has checked in and is waiting
- Incomplete notes for …'s session on …
- … booking requests awaiting response
- … hasn't completed their intake form for tomorrow's appointment
- Follow-up for … is due — recommended by …
- … hasn't arrived for their … appointment
Each allows Snooze (5 min, 10 min, 15 min, 30 min, 60 min), Dismiss or Delete. Dismiss All clears the list in one move.
Set your own reminder
The Reminders page and the New Reminder button: Title, When and Priority (Low, Normal, High, Urgent). The list splits into Active and Upcoming.
It is quicker from the patient record — Set Reminder has the ready-made values in 15 minutes, in 1 hour, Today at 17:00, Tomorrow 9:00 AM and Custom. The For reception switch leaves the matter to reception instead of you — below it you see who it will go to (if the practice has no reception, to the owner).
Tune what reaches you, and how
The Notification Preferences screen decides how team reminders get through to you: Notification sounds, Browser push, Mobile push, Email reminders and Quiet Hours with the range No notifications between ….
The Send reminders at section sets your own lead times — at most five values, each between 5 and 1440 minutes.
When something goes wrong
No contact details
What this means: The patient has neither a phone number nor an email address, so the automation had nothing to send with.
Reminder sent recently
What this means: The same patient already got a message about this appointment a short while ago.
Reminder time must be in the future
What this means: The hour you named has already passed.
Enter a value between 5 and 1440 minutes.
What this means: The lead time is outside the permitted range — less than 5 minutes or more than a day.
Failed to load reminders
What this means: The list did not load from the server.
Who has access
Clinic Admin Receptionist PractitionerEvery team member has the bell and their own reminders, and sees only their own in them — except For reception reminders: a practitioner leaves them for reception, and they land in the For reception card on the Reception dashboard (if there is no reception, with the owner). The message channels to patients and the templates are set by an administrator in the messaging settings — that is a decision for the whole practice, because it concerns the cost of SMS and patient consent.
Related
- Automatic reminders — the full configuration of messages to patients.
- Notification preferences — the channel matrix for every message type.
- Appointment list — sending by hand to many people at once.
Related features
Appointment list — filters, printing and bulk actions
The table view of the calendar: narrowing by status, payment and visit card, CSV export, reminders and no-shows marked in bulk, printing a day or a week.
Booking rules
The rules on which a patient reschedules and cancels online by themselves: required notice, a limit on changes, the no-show fee and your own message shown to the patient.
Appointment reminders
Heltio reminds the patient about an appointment twice — first at the time the practice sets (24 hours ahead by default), then 2 hours ahead. This is where you set which channel carries it and check what it says.
My notification preferences
Your own settings — what Heltio should remind you about, how loudly, on which device, and during which hours it should stay quiet.
SMS to a patient
How Heltio sends SMS to patients — content and channels, message length, a custom sender name, and the STOP and START keywords.