Simple how-to guides for FormAlert
Plain steps for the things you'll actually do — no jargon. Read the whole thing before you sign up, if you like.
Guide
Getting your schedule live, keeping it running day to day, and getting your whole clinic onto it — in one guide. Jump straight to the part you need:
The problem
Appointments are being taken in four different places and none of them agree with each other.
The fix
This step creates the single place they'll all land. It gives your clinic a booking page of its own — a web address you can put in a WhatsApp reply, on Google, or on a poster at reception — and sets the rules every booking follows, whichever door it came through. Everything else hangs off what you fill in here, so it goes first.
Your Google Business Profile. FormAlert finds your clinic on Google and pulls in your name, phone number, description, category and services, so you type almost nothing. It's also where your review link comes from. No listing yet? Create one free at business.google.com first — it takes ten minutes and you need it either way.
A WhatsApp-active phone number. Every booking alert lands here, and it's the number patients are told to call.
Your clinic logo — shown on the booking page and patient portal.optional
Go to formalert.in and click Get Started Free. Sign up with Google, or with an email address and password. Your 14-day free trial starts immediately — no card required.
Find your clinic. Search for your business the way it appears on Google and pick it from the results. FormAlert pulls in your clinic name, WhatsApp number, description, category and service list automatically.
Confirm your details. Review everything that came across and edit anything wrong, then click Complete Setup.
Go to Settings in the sidebar. The left column is your clinic.
Still in Settings → Business profile, set your Booking URL slug— the part of the link patients see, read out over the phone, and type.
Type the slug you want, e.g. dr-sharma or city-care-clinic.
Save. Your booking page is now formalert.in/book/dr-sharma.
In the right column of Settings, under Scheduling.
Under Settings → Patient intake you can ask questions during booking — reason for visit, existing conditions. Answers arrive on the appointment as Intake notes, so the doctor reads them before the patient walks in.
On the Dashboard, the Close button stops new bookings without touching your schedule — for a holiday or an unexpected closure. Appointments already booked are untouched.
The problem
Your booking page is live, but there's nothing on it. Patients open the link and find no times to pick.
The fix
Slots aren't something you type in — FormAlert builds them from three things: who the patient books (a provider), what they're booking (a service, with a duration), and when that service runs (its working hours). Set those three and your calendar fills itself in.
Go to Team and click Add provider. Fill in the name and designation, a short bio, photo and phone number.
Open the provider and add a service — the thing being booked, with its own duration, buffer and price.
Do this per service, while adding or editing it.
Turn each day on or off. Saturday and Sunday start off by default.
Add one or more time blocks per day — 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM carves out a lunch break nobody can book into.
Save. Slots appear on your booking page immediately.
Optional, but it's the only way FormAlert learns about appointments made outside the system — and it's required before you can offer Google Meet consultations.
A booking page nobody can find takes no bookings. Everything here is on one screen: Settings → Share.
In rough order of how many bookings each one actually brings in:
On the Booking form tab, copy the link, or pick a doctor and service to make a pre-filled link that opens straight onto their calendar.
Switch to QR code to download a branded PNG for reception or a prescription pad.
Switch to Embed to copy one <div> and one <script> tag for your own website — it grows with its content and works in WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow or Shopify.
Returning patients log in with their phone number and an OTP — no account, no password — to view appointments, check the live queue, see prescriptions, upload documents and rebook.
The problem
Nobody in the waiting room knows whose turn it is — including, some of the time, the front desk. Patients who arrived late get seen first because they asked loudest.
The fix
Every confirmed patient gets a token and a place in an ordered line. Your staff work one list on the Dashboard, and the same line is shown to patients on a screen in the waiting room — so the order is visible to everyone.
Booked but not confirmed yet. No token assigned until you confirm.
In the queue, waiting to be seen.
Visit finished.
Patient didn't turn up.
Cancelled by you or the patient.
Tokens are the doctor's initials plus a three-digit number — RK003 is the third patient for Dr. Rahul Kumar today. Numbering restarts each day.
Confirm, if pending. Click Confirm. The patient gets a WhatsApp confirmation and is assigned a token.
See the patient. Click View to open their full record.
Finish them. Click Done — marks the visit complete, sends a Google review request, and WhatsApps the next patient in that doctor's queue.
Or mark them absent. Click No Show. It also calls the next patient in.
Use the small arrows on a confirmed row to move someone earlier or later. Filter by date, by doctor, or by All / Waiting / Done. Click Pause when the doctor steps out — patients stop being called forward until you Resume.
A public page, no login — meant to be left running on a screen. Click Queue Display in the Dashboard header, or open your-slug.formalert.in directly on a tablet or TV.
The Dashboard is for today. Appointments is for everything else — searching past visits, handling next week's bookings, adding a patient by hand.
For walk-ins, phone bookings, and anything a doctor agreed to in person.
Go to Appointments and click New Appointment.
Enter the patient's name and phone number. If they've been before, typing their phone number fills in the rest.
Pick the provider, then the service, then Today for the first free slot or Pick a date to choose yourself.
Tick Mark as paid if they've already paid at the desk, then save.
New booking awaiting your decision. No token yet.
You accepted it. Patient has been sent a confirmation.
Visit finished. Review request sent, unless you completed it silently.
Patient didn't arrive.
Rejected by you, or cancelled by the patient from the portal.
Confirm sends a WhatsApp confirmation and assigns a token. Reject cancels it and frees the slot. Booking alerts sent to your phone carry both buttons, so you can handle it from WhatsApp without opening the app.
To move a booking, open it and click Reschedule — available slots for that provider load automatically, and the patient is notified with the new details.
Click View on any row. You get:
Export to CSV on the Appointments page gives you patient name, phone, email, service, provider, date, time, price, status and payment status — ready for Excel.
The problem
You tell a patient to come back in three months. Three months later nobody remembers. The follow-up quietly never happens, and you only find out if they turn up worse.
The fix
Book the next visit before the patient leaves the room. FormAlert asks you the moment you mark the current visit complete. From then on it chases itself: reminders 24 hours and 2 hours before, carrying the reason you gave. No confirmation goes out — you booked it with the patient in front of you, so there is nothing to tell them they don't already know.
Right after marking a visit complete, FormAlert asks "Schedule a follow-up?" — the fastest path. You can also use the Follow-up button on a row in Appointments, or Actions → Schedule Follow-up on the appointment itself.
Choose how far out under Come back in — 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month or 3 months. It finds the first slot that doctor genuinely has free, or click Change / Pick a date to choose yourself.
Add the reason — "review test results" — optional, but it's what the patient sees in their reminder.
Click Confirm Follow-up. It's booked with its own token. No message goes to the patient now.
Marking someone as a no-show sends them a WhatsApp with a rebook button in it, and they pick their own slot from your live availability. This rides on the Appointment updates switch under Settings → WhatsApp Setup.
The problem
Everything runs through one person's phone. The moment they're on leave the clinic is flying blind.
The fix
Give everyone their own login. They all work off the same appointment list and the same day's queue, but each person sees only what their job needs. Patient messages get divided up by assigning conversations, so nothing sits unanswered.
Admin is your own role — the account that created the clinic, exactly one per clinic, not something you can invite anyone into. The two you hand out are Doctor and Staff.
Go to Settings → Team and click Invite.
Enter their email address and pick the role, then send. They get an email to create their own password.
From Team in Settings you can switch a member between Doctor and Staff — Doctor → Staff deactivates their provider record; Staff → Doctor releases any assigned conversations back to the unassigned pool, since doctors have no inbox.
Open WhatsApp and tap the Assign chip on a conversation.
Pick the staff member it belongs to. Filter by that person, or by Unassigned, to see what nobody has picked up.
Remove someone from the same Team panel — access is revoked immediately, and their past work stays on the record. Do this the same day someone leaves.
The problem
The account is set up, the booking page is live, and the clinic carries on exactly as before. The notebook is still on the desk, and half the bookings never reach the system.
The fix
A scheduling system only works when everything is in it. The plan below gets you there in about a week: logins first, then this week's existing appointments, then the booking link out in public, then one rule the front desk keeps.
Invite your front desk as Staff and each doctor as Doctor(see Team, roles & the shared inbox above). Sit with the front desk for ten minutes on the Dashboard — that screen and New Appointment are 90% of their job. Train whoever sits at the desk; everyone else learns from them.
You don't need to migrate years of history — just the next two to four weeks. Add each one under Appointments → New Appointment, then put the notebook away somewhere it can be checked but not written in.
The links, QR code and embed code all live on Settings → Share above. Put the queue on a screen as covered under Run today's queue — it's the step that makes the system visible to patients, and staff stop treating the app as optional once the room is watching it.
Front desk and every doctor have their own login
The next two to four weeks of existing bookings are in the system
The paper diary is closed, not just ignored
Booking link is in your WhatsApp auto-reply and on your Google Business Profile
QR code is printed and on the reception desk
Queue display is up on a screen in the waiting roomoptional
Every walk-in for a full day went in on the same day
At least one follow-up was booked before the patient left
My booking page loads but shows no slots at all.
Work down in order: does the provider have a service? Does that service have days turned on? Is your Booking window long enough to reach those days? Is the clinic showing Closed on the Dashboard? If you just signed up, this is expected until you finish Team & working hours.
Slots are missing for one doctor only.
Almost always their Google Calendar — existing events hide those slots by design. Check Team for a reconnect prompt; an expired token stops sync silently. Also check the buffer against the service duration.
The wizard couldn't find my clinic on Google, or the slug I want is taken.
Search the exact name shown on Google Maps, or create a listing at business.google.com if there genuinely isn't one. For a taken slug, add your area or specialty — city-care-guwahati rather than city-care.
A patient is in the list but has no token.
Tokens are issued on confirmation, not on booking. Confirm them and the token appears.
The waiting-room display won't open, or redirects to the booking page.
It's Business-plan only; on Starter the subdomain sends visitors to your booking page instead. Check you're using your exact slug — your-slug.formalert.in, not the /book/ address.
The Follow-up button isn't on this appointment, or the time dropdown is empty.
It only appears on confirmed and completed visits. An empty time dropdown means that doctor has no free slots on the day you picked — try another date.
I can't invite anyone, or the invite says that email already owns an account.
Invitations are a Business plan feature. If the email is already an account owner, invite them on a different address — one login can't belong to two clinics.
A staff member can't see a conversation you're looking at, or conversations vanished after a role change.
Staff only see what's assigned to them. Promoting a staff member to doctor releases their threads back to the unassigned pool — filter by Unassigned and hand them to someone else.
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