Patients Cannot Book Online

Work these in order. The first one accounts for most reports and looks identical to a broken feature.

1. No visit type is offered online

Online Scheduling Enabled turns the feature on for the practice. It does not make any appointment bookable - each type needs its own Offer Online toggle. With the practice switch on and no type switched on, the booking page loads and offers nothing.

This is genuinely common: of the practices with online scheduling switched on and appointment types set up, a substantial minority have no type offered online at all - including one with more than thirty active types and none of them bookable.

Open the visit type list and confirm at least one shows Offer Online switched on.

2. No appointments are available

The types are offered but nothing is bookable. Patients see an empty calendar, which reads as broken.

• Check the provider has hours that are open to booking.
• Check the schedule is not simply full for the period the patient looked at.
• Check the appointment's duration fits the gaps you actually have - a 90-minute type will find nothing in a day of 30-minute slots.

3. The link is wrong or out of date

Use Test the Button and Test your Portal URL. A link published before a website rebuild, or pointing at a visit type you no longer offer online, fails in a way patients never report - they just stop.

4. It works for you and not for them

Test as a patient would: a phone, on mobile data rather than your clinic wifi, in a private window. Most "it does not work" reports are an embed that has not been checked on a small screen.

The wrong appointments are being booked

Usually the offered types rather than the booking system:

• A type offered online that should be booked by a person - new patients, anything needing triage.
• A missing or unclear online description, so patients guess. Three types across all practices are currently offered with no description at all.
• A duration or Estimated Price: that does not match reality, so patients book expecting something else.

Narrow what you offer rather than accepting bookings you have to move.

A patient booked with the wrong provider

A General Link lets them choose. If you want them with a particular practitioner, send a Provider Link instead - and check which link is on the page they actually used.

Portal messages are going unanswered

Ask the Doctor creates messages somebody has to answer. If nobody owns that, switch the feature off rather than leaving patients writing into silence - an unanswered message damages more than a missing feature.

The portal looks wrong on our site

Check the Dimensions under Portal Style, and check it on a phone. Colours and fonts are there too, so it can be made to match your site rather than sitting awkwardly inside it.

What to have ready for support

The exact link the patient used, what they saw, the device and browser, and whether any visit type shows Offer Online switched on. That last one resolves it more often than anything else.