Pomelo Health

After you create a booking availability template (see Creating booking availability templates), you can set the portal to automatically publish (apply) the template to provider schedules for an ongoing basis.

The advantage of auto publishing availabilities (as opposed to manually applying booking availability templates) is that you do not have to remember to re-apply the booking availability template every few months.  Instead, the portal identifies when the schedule's availability template is due to be published for additional weeks (based on the appointment booking rules used in the availability template), and auto-publishes the booking availability template for you.

To better describe how this works, let's take the example of an availability template that uses two different booking rules to define what types of appointments can be booked: Same Day and Advanced booking (which allows patients to book appointments 30 days in

advance). In this case, when auto publishing is selected, the portal always ensures that availabilities are published for at least 30 days from today. The system checks on a daily basis whether more availabilities need to be created. If new availabilities are needed, a week's worth of availabilities are created. 

Each time the portal auto-publishes the booking availability template, it also checks the schedule's working hours and blocked-off appointment slots set in your EMR to make sure that none of the availabilities are set outside of clinic hours. This way, if your clinic hours

change, the patient portal adjusts accordingly.

Steps
1. Create an availability template to publish. See Creating booking availability templates.

2. At the top of the provider portal home page, click the drop-down beside your name, and

then choose Settings.

3. Click Schedules. The Manage Schedules page opens. 

4. Under Select a Schedule, choose the schedule you want to auto publish availabilities for.

5. Expand the Auto Publish Availabilities which will display previously published availabilities. Click on Add Template.

6. In the Select a template drop-down, choose an availability template you want to autopublish.

7. Below the availability template, click Next and then Enable auto-publish. 

A calendar opens. 

8. On the calendar, select the date you want the availability template to first be published, and then click Publish/Enable. 

The provider portal processes the availability. During this time, it:

■ Opens up appointment slots for online booking based on the availability template

selected.

■ Makes sure availabilities are not created outside of bookable hours set for the

schedule in the EMR.