What is an iCal?
iCal is a way of including a calendar invite in an email. When included, the recipient of the email will be able to click to download the iCal, which will place an entry on their personal calendar app.
Why use iCal?
As people live busier lives and rely more on their mobile devices, many people use electronic calendars to manage their daily routines. Providing an iCal for their appointment reduces the risk of patients failing to attend due to forgetting. iCals provides a better customer experience as there is no need for them to make a separate note of their appointment and remember where they have placed it.
How to include an iCal in your patient emails?
iCals can be included in email appointment reminders.
You will see an option to include a calendar invitation in your emails (highlighted in the figure below by the red outline). Make sure this is selected.
To enable appointment reminders go to Settings > Practice > Patient Communication and tick to enable Email Appointment Reminders.
Are you using Automation rules instead of Practice Appointment reminders?
It is possible to send automated emails from the Automation feature within Dentally. The Automation rules engine can be found in Settings > Automation, and allows you to define rules that will trigger email templates of your choice.
It's important to note that if the iCal option is on, then iCals will be included on all emails sent as a result of the Automatation rules based on Appointment triggers.
This will happen even if you have the Email Appointment Reminders unchecked (off).
iCal appointments not correct?
From time to time, patients can report that their calendar entry is not showing as the correct time. Typically, when this happens in the UK, the invite is 1 hour out due to British Summer Time.
The discrepancy in time is often a result of the settings on the patient's device. Unfortunately, Dentally is unable to control this, however, there are things the patient can do to ensure their device is set up correctly, such as:
Using automatic time-zones - Within the devices settings the user has the ability to define their Date/Time and Timezone settings. These can be manually set on the patients device:
Android
Settings > System > Date and time
Set time automatically: Yes
Set time zone automatically: Yes
Use location to set time zone: Yes
iOS
Settings app > General > Date & Time
Set Automatically: Yes
Or Some calendars also have independent settings available, which should be set to using the device settings for best results.
Google Calendar
Open Calendar > Settings > General
Use device's time zone: Yes
Outlook and Apple Calendar should use automatic settings by default.