Why are appointment details like {{appointment.start_time}} blank in my messages?

Appointment custom values, such as {{appointment.start_time}}, fill in details from a specific booking. If they show up blank, or your reminder messages go out at the wrong time, the workflow usually does not know which appointment to use.

Use an appointment trigger

Appointment custom values only work when the workflow starts from an appointment. Use the Appointment Status or Customer Booked Appointment trigger.

Other triggers, such as a pipeline stage change, do not carry an appointment with them. The workflow has no booking to pull a start time from, so the custom value stays blank. The same applies to Add to Google Calendar and Add to iCal/Outlook links.

Test with a real booking

Test emails and texts sent from the editor have no appointment attached, so appointment details will look empty. To test properly, book a real appointment on the calendar using a test contact and check the message that goes out.

Adding a contact to a reminder sequence by hand

If you add a contact to an appointment reminder workflow manually, set the event start date to the appointment's start time. Otherwise reminders will not line up with the appointment.

Rescheduling

• Your team reschedules: open the contact, go to the appointment and change its status from Confirmed to Reschedule. The contact is moved out of the old reminder timing and back in with the new time.
• Let families reschedule themselves: add the reschedule link custom value from the Appointment group to your reminder messages.

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