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.
How to
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, and the ones who've waited an hour keep coming up to the counter to check they haven't been forgotten.
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 and stops being something to argue about.
They're the same queue. Anything your staff do on the Dashboard shows on the display within moments.
Each row carries a status and a token number.
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. If there's no provider name it falls back to T003. Numbering restarts each day.
For each patient, in order:
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 — intake answers, notes, documents, payment status.
Finish them. Click Done. This does three things at once: marks the visit complete, sends the patient a Google review request over WhatsApp, and WhatsApps the next patient in that doctor's queue that it's their turn.
Or mark them absent. Click No Show if they didn't turn up. It also calls the next patient in.
Logged in as a Doctor, you get a "Now Serving" panel above the list with the current token in large type and who's up next. Two buttons:
Patients don't always arrive in booking order. Use the small up and down arrows on any confirmed row to move someone earlier or later. The waiting-room display updates to match.
Click Pause in the queue header when the doctor steps out. A Queue paused banner appears and patients stop being called forward. Click Resume to start again.
This is the half patients see. It's a public page — no login, nothing confidential on it — meant to be left running on a screen.
Click Queue Display in the Dashboard header.
It opens your-slug.formalert.in.
Open that same URL on a tablet or TV in your waiting room, and leave it on.
Per doctor, the display shows:
A patient is in the list but has no token.
Tokens are issued on confirmation, not on booking. Confirm them and the token appears — they'll also get the confirmation message at that point.
The waiting-room display won't open, or redirects to the booking page.
The display is Business-plan only; on Starter the subdomain sends visitors to your booking page instead. Check your plan, and check you're using your exact booking slug — your-slug.formalert.in, not the /book/ address.
The display is showing yesterday's queue, or nothing at all.
Token numbering restarts each day, so an empty board early in the morning is normal. If it's stale mid-clinic, reload the page on that screen — a tablet left on for days can hold an old session.
Patients aren't getting the message that it's their turn.
That message fires when you press Done or No Show on the patient before them. Check your credit balance first — at zero, every WhatsApp message stops. Then check the queue isn't paused.
I can't reorder someone.
The up and down arrows only appear on confirmed rows. Confirm the patient first, then move them.
Completing a visit sent a review request I didn't want to send.
Done on the Dashboard always asks for a review. To finish a visit quietly, open it with View and use Complete → Complete silently instead.
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