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
Setup gets FormAlert working. This gets your clinic working on FormAlert — which is a different job, and the one people skip.
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, one doctor still writes appointments on a pad, and half the bookings never reach the system — so the day view is never trustworthy, and nobody trusts it.
The fix
A scheduling system only works when everything is in it. The plan below gets you there in about a week without a day where bookings go missing: logins first, then this week's existing appointments, then the booking link out in public, then one rule the front desk keeps.
You need setup finished, or at least the first two steps of it. If your booking page has no free slots on it, stop here and do Team Schedule first — a rollout with nothing bookable behind it just teaches your team the system doesn't work.
The fastest way to kill this is to run the whole clinic through the owner's account. Nobody else can see the day, so everybody keeps asking, and the notebook survives because it's the only thing two people can both read.
In Settings → Team, invite your front desk as Staff and each doctor as Doctor. They set their own password from the email.
Sit with the front desk for ten minutes on the Dashboard. That screen and the New Appointment button are 90% of their job.
Show each doctor their own view — their queue and their schedule, nothing else to wade through.
Roles, and exactly what each one can see, are in Team & roles.
You don't need to migrate years of history. You need the appointments that haven't happened yet, so the day view is complete from the moment you start using it.
Take the notebook, the diary and every doctor's pad and pull out everything booked for the next two to four weeks.
Add each one under Appointments → New Appointment with the patient's name, phone number, doctor, service, date and time.
Once the last one is in, put the notebook away somewhere it can be checked but not written in.
Patients won't go looking for a booking page. It has to be in the places they already touch. In rough order of how many bookings each one brings in:
The links, QR code and embed code all live on one screen — Settings → Share.
Open your-slug.formalert.in on any TV or tablet in the waiting room. It shows the token being served and updates itself as the desk works through the list, so patients can see the queue moving instead of asking. There's a Queue Display shortcut in the Dashboard header, and the full walkthrough is in Queue & display.
Everything above is setup work. This is the habit, and it's the whole thing:
An appointment recorded later is an appointment that can be double-booked in the meantime, and one recorded "when there's time" is one that gets forgotten. A phone booking takes about thirty seconds to enter while the patient is still on the call — see Add an appointment.
Once it's running, the whole job is four moments:
The two that earn the most are the last two: review requests bring new patients in, and follow-ups bring existing ones back.
Nothing formal. Three sentences your desk can use, so nobody is confused by a message from a clinic that never used to send any:
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
Booking link is 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
Booking form is embedded on your websiteoptional
Every walk-in for a full day went in on the same day
At least one follow-up was booked before the patient left
Staff still write bookings down and enter them later, or not at all.
Almost always a speed problem, not a willingness problem. Watch them add one. If they're hunting through screens, they haven't been shown that a walk-in only needs a name, a phone number and a doctor — leave the time blank and the next free slot is assigned automatically.
One doctor keeps their own pad and won't use the app.
Don't fight it head on. Have the front desk enter that doctor's bookings for them for a fortnight. Once patients start turning up because they were reminded, and the doctor's own screen shows a queue that's actually right, the pad tends to go on its own.
Patients keep phoning instead of booking online.
Expected, and not a failure. The point isn't to stop the calls — it's that the call gets recorded in the same list as everything else. Online bookings grow slowly as the link accumulates in the places you put it.
The day view doesn't match reality, so nobody trusts it.
Something is coming in through a door that isn't being recorded — usually walk-ins during a rush, or one doctor's follow-ups. Find the door before adding anything else. One unrecorded route is enough to make the whole list unreliable.
Messages stopped going out mid-week.
Check your credits under Credits and plans. A rollout week sends far more messages than a normal one, because you entered a fortnight of bookings in a single day.
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