# Smileline Docs
Every written guide and API concept page, in full.
Endpoint reference lives in the OpenAPI document at https://docs.smileline.io/openapi.json.
---
# Academy
Source: https://docs.smileline.io/guides/academy
Smileline's training videos and courses for dental teams, shared by every Smileline practice worldwide — watch, pick up where you left off, buy courses for your team, earn CPD certificates, comment, reply, report, run your practice's own channel and follow your team's progress.
**Academy** (`/academy`) is Smileline's library of training videos and
courses for dental teams. It is one community for every practice that uses
Smileline, in every country: everyone sees the same videos and courses, and
comments are shared across practices.
Videos and courses come from Smileline's own channel and from the channels
practices run themselves (see
[Your practice's channel](#your-practices-channel)).
## Open Academy
Open the menu at the bottom of the sidebar (your name) and choose
**Academy**. Academy belongs to you rather than to a workspace, so it's there
whether you work in the CRM or in the clinical workspace.
Everyone at a practice can use Academy, whatever their role. It isn't
available in a partner workspace, and it isn't in the Smileline phone app.
## Find something to watch
The Academy home has up to four rows, each shown once it has something in
it:
* **Continue watching**: the videos you've started but not finished, most
recently watched first;
* **Smileline courses**: Smileline's newest courses;
* **Courses from practices**: the newest courses from practices' channels;
* **Latest videos**: the newest videos, from every channel.
**See all** beside a row opens the full list, newest first: Smileline's
courses on its channel page; every course, or every video, on one page.
Search finds videos and courses by their title and description. Every word
you type must appear, and accents and capitals don't matter, so
"implantologia" finds "Implantología". Only the first 8 words of a search are used.
Every video and course belongs to a channel. Click a channel's name to see
everything it has published.
## Watch a video
Click a video to open it, then press play: videos never start on their own.
When a video has captions, they're on by default; you can switch them off in
the player. Academy is only for people signed in
to Smileline, so a link to a video opens only for colleagues who use
Smileline.
The player remembers where you stopped. Open the video again, from the home
or anywhere else, and it carries on from that point.
### When a video counts as complete
Smileline counts the time a video actually plays. Once that reaches 90% of the
video's length, the video is complete.
* Watching faster counts, up to twice normal speed.
* Skipping ahead doesn't count, and nothing counts while the video is paused.
* Watching a part again counts again.
* Once a video is complete, it stays complete.
Your progress follows you to every practice you belong to. Other members
don't see it, with one exception: the owners, managers and agency staff of
each practice you belong to see your whole Academy record on
[Team progress](#team-progress).
## Courses
A course is a set of videos, called lessons, to watch in order. The course
page lists its lessons with a tick beside each one you've completed.
Continuing a course opens the first lesson you haven't completed, or the
first lesson once you've completed them all.
A lesson counts in the same way as any other video (see
[When a video counts as complete](#when-a-video-counts-as-complete)), so a
video you completed on its own is already ticked in every course that uses it.
A course has its own comments, one thread for the whole course, separate from
the comments on each video.
Some courses also issue a CPD certificate once you pass their quiz (see
[CPD certificates](#cpd-certificates)), and some of Smileline's own courses
are sold (see [Buying courses](#buying-courses)).
## Buying courses
Smileline sells some of its own courses. Everything else in Academy is free
for every practice, courses from practices' channels included.
A course that's for sale shows its price, and a lock in place of its picture,
until your practice buys it. Until then its lessons don't play and, on a CPD
course, its quiz stays closed. Everyone can still open the course page, see
its list of lessons, and read and join its comments. A link to one of its
lessons opens that lesson's page with the course's price, and **Buy course**
for those who can buy it, where the video would be; the lesson's comments
and **Report** work as usual.
### Who can buy
Your practice's owners and managers can buy courses. Agency staff can't, and
neither can any other role: they see **Ask your practice's owner or a manager
to buy it.** **Compare roles** on **Settings → Team members** shows this as
**Buy Smileline courses for the practice**.
### What a purchase covers
* **Your whole team.** Everyone at your practice can watch the course,
including people who join later. If you work at more than one practice, the
course plays while you're signed in to the practice that bought it.
* **Every later edition.** When Smileline publishes an updated copy of the
course (see [Editions](#editions)), your team gets it at no extra cost, and
every edition shows **Bought**.
Buying a course doesn't by itself give you a certificate: only a course whose
page shows CPD hours issues one, once you pass its quiz (see
[CPD certificates](#cpd-certificates)).
### Prices and tax
Prices are in your practice's
[billing currency](/guides/settings/billing#billing-currency) (GBP, USD or
EUR) and before tax: they read "+ VAT", or "+ tax" in the United States. The
invoice adds the VAT or sales tax that applies, worked out from your
practice's billing address. A course with no price in your practice's
currency shows **Not sold in your currency**.
If Smileline changes a course's price while your purchase waits for payment,
you still pay the price the purchase started with.
### Buy a course
Open the course and click **Buy course**.
Check the price and click **Buy course** again to confirm. Smileline
invoices your practice and charges the card your practice pays Smileline
with.
If your bank asks you to confirm the payment, the card is declined or your
practice has no card on file, click **Pay on Stripe's secure page**. It opens
in a new tab: pay there.
Once the payment goes through, the course page shows **Bought for your team**
and the lessons play for everyone at your practice.
Smileline charges the card once and never tries it again by itself: if that
payment doesn't go through, finish on Stripe's secure page. A double click,
or two managers buying at the same time, makes one purchase and one invoice.
While a purchase waits for payment, the course page shows **Waiting for
payment** and the amount due, with three buttons:
* **Finish payment** carries on with the purchase, at the price it started
with, and shows **Pay on Stripe's secure page** again while it still needs
paying.
* **Check payment** asks Stripe now, for example just after you've paid on
Stripe's page. Smileline also checks by itself while your team uses
Academy: every minute during the purchase's first hour, then every hour.
* **Cancel purchase** cancels the unpaid invoice. You can buy the course
again later.
"Smileline is still confirming this payment with Stripe" means an earlier
step is still being confirmed: wait a minute, then try again.
If your practice hasn't set up billing with Smileline yet, the course page
says so: an owner sets it up on **Settings → Billing** first. If tax needs
your practice's billing address, an owner adds it from **Settings → Billing**
with **Manage billing**; then try again.
Each purchase is an invoice of its own, separate from your subscription.
Owners find it with your practice's other Smileline invoices, through
**Manage billing** on **Settings → Billing**.
### Refunds and disputes
To ask for a refund, click **Support** at the bottom of the sidebar and tell
us which course.
* **A full refund** ends your team's access to the course: its lessons stop
playing and its quiz closes. A partial refund leaves access as it is.
* **A dispute** (a chargeback: your practice disputes the payment with its
bank or card issuer) ends access as soon as Smileline sees it, whatever the
dispute's outcome. If it was a mistake, contact Support.
Either way, what your team earned stays: their progress, the lessons they
completed, their quiz passes and their certificates. A certificate already
issued stays valid and keeps checking. Anyone who passed the quiz before
access ended can still get their certificate, or correct it, from
**Your certificates**; anyone who hadn't passed needs the course bought again
to take the quiz. A lesson someone already has open can keep playing for up to
an hour.
After a refund or a cancellation, your practice can buy the course again.
## CPD certificates
Some courses issue a certificate for your continuing professional development
(CPD). Their course page shows the CPD hours, the course's CPD provider and
its edition, and its details say what the course covers and who quality
assured it.
The provider made the course and is responsible for it: Smileline for its own
courses, or the practice whose channel publishes it. Smileline's own courses
are quality assured by a dentist on the General Dental Council's register,
named with their GDC number. A practice names who quality assured its
course; Smileline doesn't review practice courses.
### Earn a certificate
Complete every lesson of the course (see
[When a video counts as complete](#when-a-video-counts-as-complete)).
Click **Take the quiz** and answer every question. You need 70% to pass.
Once you pass, click **Get your certificate**. Check your name as it should be
printed and, if you like, add your registration number.
Click **Print or save as PDF**. The certificate fits one landscape A4 or US
Letter page.
The quiz opens once you've completed every lesson. On a course Smileline
sells, it also needs your practice to have bought the course (see
[Buying courses](#buying-courses)). It has at least 5 questions, and the pass
mark is 70% on every course. You can try as often as you like: each attempt
shows your score but never which answers were wrong, and only a pass is
recorded. Your first pass stands.
If a lesson you haven't completed is no longer available, because its channel
deleted it or Smileline took it down, the course page says so and you can't
take that edition's quiz.
### What your certificate says
Certificates are always printed in English. Their wording follows the country
of the practice you're signed in to when the certificate is issued:
| Practice's country | Certificate | It prints |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| United Kingdom | **Verifiable CPD certificate** | your name and GDC number; the course, its edition and its provider; when you passed and when it was issued; the verifiable CPD hours; the learning content, aims, objectives and anticipated outcomes; the GDC development outcomes the course meets; who quality assured it; and the provider's confirmation that the information is full and accurate and that the CPD has been quality assured |
| United States | **Certificate of completion** | your name and license number; the course, its edition and its provider; when you passed and when it was issued; the hours of instruction; the objectives; and a note that the course has not been reviewed or approved by ADA CERP or AGD PACE, and that your state dental board decides whether the hours count for continuing education |
| Every other country | **Certificate of completion** | your name and registration number; the course, its edition and its provider; when you passed and when it was issued; the hours; the learning content and objectives; who quality assured it; and a note that your regulator decides whether it counts towards your CPD |
Your registration number is printed only if you give it, and no certificate
says a course is accredited. A certificate for a practice's course also says
that the practice created the course and is responsible for its content and
its quality assurance, and that Smileline hosts the course and records your
completion.
If you work at practices in more than one country, switch to the practice
whose wording you need before you click **Get your certificate**. Dates are
printed in UTC, so a quiz passed late in the evening in the United States can
show the next day's date.
### Correct your name or number
Open the certificate and click **Correct name or number**. Smileline issues a
new certificate in place of the old one, worded for the practice you're signed
in to at the time. You only ever have one current certificate for each edition
of a course: checking the old one shows that it was replaced.
### Your certificates
**Your certificates**, on the Academy home, lists every course you've passed,
newest first, with its certificate. A pass keeps its certificate even if the
course is later unpublished, taken down or deleted, or your practice's
purchase of it is refunded: get, view or correct the certificate from here.
### Editions
A CPD course can't change once its provider declares it. To update it, the
provider publishes an updated copy: the next edition, with its own quiz and
certificate. Your pass and your certificate belong to the edition you took,
and the lessons you've completed count in every edition that uses them.
### Check a certificate
Anyone can check a certificate without a Smileline account: an employer, an
inspector or a regulator. Scanning its QR code opens Smileline's check page,
which shows what the certificate says and whether it's current or was replaced
by a correction. Without the QR code, open the address printed beside it,
such as `eu.smileline.io/c`, and type the certificate's 24-character code.
The EU and US addresses both check every certificate.
Anyone you give the code to, or a copy of your certificate, can see what's
printed on it.
### How long certificates are kept
Smileline keeps each certificate for 10 years from the day it's issued.
If your Smileline account is deleted, your quiz passes and certificates are
deleted with it, and their codes no longer check. Save your certificates as
PDFs first if you want to keep a copy.
## Comments and replies
You can comment under any video or course. Your comment appears straight away,
with your name and your practice's name, and every Smileline user in every
country can read it. Write as you would in a professional forum, and never
include anything that could identify a patient.
* Comments are listed newest first.
* Reply to a comment to answer it. Replies sit under the comment, oldest
first, and go one level deep: you reply to a comment, not to a reply.
* A comment can be up to 4,000 characters.
* If posting fails, for example because you lost your connection, your text
stays in the box, and so does anything you type while a comment is
posting. Try again: sent unchanged, the comment is posted once, never
twice; if you edit it first, it's posted as a new comment.
So that nobody can flood Academy, one person can post up to 30 comments and
reports a minute. Getting or correcting a certificate, and saving or copying a
course's CPD declaration, count towards the same 30.
### Delete your comment
You can delete your own comments, but never anyone else's. A deleted comment
that has replies stays as a short note saying it was deleted, so the replies
under it still make sense. A deleted comment with no replies disappears.
A practice's owners and managers can also hide comments under their own
channel's videos and courses (see
[Hide comments on your content](#hide-comments-on-your-content)). A hidden
comment follows the same rule, showing **Hidden by the channel.** while it has
replies.
If your Smileline account is deleted, your comments are cleared in the same
way, without your name, and your progress, quiz passes and certificates are
deleted (see [How long certificates are kept](#how-long-certificates-are-kept)).
## Report something
You can report any video, course, comment or channel that breaks the rules,
Smileline's own included: click **Report** beside it. Choose the reason that
fits best and, if you like, add a note of up to 1,000 characters saying
what's wrong.
| Reason | When to choose it |
| ------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Illegal content** | It breaks the law. |
| **A patient can be identified** | A patient could be identified from it (see [No identifiable patients](#no-identifiable-patients)). |
| **Copyright: it uses someone else's work without permission** | It uses someone else's video, music or images without permission. |
| **False claims that damage someone's reputation** | It makes a false statement that harms someone's reputation. |
| **Harassment or bullying** | It bullies, abuses or threatens someone. |
| **Harmful or unsafe clinical advice** | It shows or recommends clinical practice that is unsafe or misleading. |
| **Spam or advertising** | It's advertising, repetition or links that don't belong. |
| **Something else** | It breaks the rules in another way. |
Your report goes only to Smileline's moderators, and you see a confirmation
once it's sent. Reporting the same thing again while your first report is
still open changes nothing; once Smileline has dealt with it, you can report
it again.
## How Smileline moderates
Comments go live without being checked first. Smileline reviews everything
that's reported, starting with illegal content and patient privacy.
* Smileline approves each practice's channel before it can publish anything
(see [Apply for a channel](#apply-for-a-channel)).
* Smileline can take down any video, course or comment. It disappears for
everyone, and the comments under a video or course disappear with it.
* A take-down can be undone if it turns out to be a mistake.
* When Smileline takes down a comment, its text is kept, visible only to
Smileline's moderators, in case of an appeal or a legal dispute.
* Smileline can suspend a practice's channel. Everything on it disappears for
everyone and stops playing until Smileline reinstates it (see
[If Smileline suspends your channel](#if-smileline-suspends-your-channel)).
To question a decision, click **Support** at the bottom of the sidebar and
tell us which video, course, comment or channel it was.
## No identifiable patients
Patients must never be identifiable in Academy. A video must not show
anything that could identify a patient, on its own or together with something
else: a face, a name, a date, a record or radiograph label, a voice, a tattoo
or any other detail. Footage inside the mouth is fine when nothing else in the
video identifies the patient. Everyone who uploads a video, Smileline
included, confirms this for every upload.
The same rule applies to comments: never write a patient's name or details.
If you spot a patient who could be identified, report it with **A patient
can be identified**. Smileline looks at those reports first.
## Your practice's channel
Your practice can run its own Academy channel and publish videos and courses
for every Smileline practice to watch. Smileline approves each practice's
channel once; after that, what you publish goes live straight away, without
being checked first.
### Who runs it
Only your practice's owners and managers run its channel: they apply for it,
upload, publish, declare courses for CPD, delete and hide comments. Agency
staff can't, although they otherwise have a manager's access, and neither can
any other role.
**Compare roles** on **Settings → Team members** shows this as
**Run the practice's Academy channel**.
Owners and managers open the channel's studio from **Your channel** on the
Academy home. The studio lists everything on your channel, drafts included.
### Apply for a channel
Open **Academy** and click **Your channel**.
Enter the channel's name (your practice's name is filled in) and, if you
like, a description of what it will offer. A name can be up to 200
characters and a description up to 5,000.
Read the channel terms and tick the box to accept them for your practice,
which confirms that you may accept them on its behalf. Then send the
application.
Your channel then waits for Smileline's approval. Meanwhile you can change
its name and description and prepare courses as drafts, but you can't upload
videos, publish anything, or save or declare a course's CPD.
If Smileline turns the application down, your studio shows the reason. Deal
with what it mentions and click **Apply again**: you accept the terms once
more, and the channel waits for approval again.
Once approved, your channel never needs approving again. You can rename it
or change its description at any time.
### Upload and publish
Uploads open once your channel is approved.
In your studio, click **Upload a video** and choose the file. A video can be
up to 10 hours long.
Give it a title, a description if you like, and its **Spoken language**:
captions are written automatically in that language. Choose
**None (no captions)** for a video without speech.
Confirm each statement of the upload declaration, including that no patient
can be identified from the video (see
[No identifiable patients](#no-identifiable-patients)). Every upload,
Smileline's included, confirms them.
Keep the page open while the file uploads. If the upload stops, **Resume**
carries on from where it stopped.
The video arrives as a draft. Once it has finished processing, click
**Publish**: every practice can watch it straight away. **Unpublish** turns
it back into a draft. When captions can't be written automatically, for
example because the video has no audio or is too long,
**Upload captions (.vtt)** adds a WebVTT file of up to 10 MB. It waits
while captions are being written automatically, for example after a change
of the video's language. Until Stream confirms a caption file, another
caption upload, a change of the video's language and **Check again** wait
for it. Both settle by themselves, so try again in a few minutes.
To build a course, click **New course**, give it a title, add its lessons
(videos from your channel) in the order to watch them, and click
**Publish**. A video that's a lesson of a published course plays inside that
course even while the video itself is a draft; it just isn't listed on its
own.
### Declare CPD for a course
Your practice can issue CPD certificates for its own courses (see
[CPD certificates](#cpd-certificates)). Declaring a course makes your practice
its CPD provider, responsible for its content and its quality assurance.
Smileline doesn't review practice courses, and every certificate names your
practice as the provider.
In your studio, click **CPD** beside the course.
Fill in the declaration in English, as every certificate prints it: the
provider's name; the learning content, aims, objectives and anticipated
outcomes (up to 600 characters each); the GDC development outcomes the course
meets (at least one of A to D); the CPD hours, printed exactly as you enter
them; and who quality assured the course, a person or a body, with their GDC
number if they have one.
Write the quiz: 5 to 100 questions, each with 2 to 6 answers and the right one
marked. Learners need 70% to pass, the same on every course, and can try as
often as they like.
Click **Save draft** whenever you like. Learners don't see a draft.
When the course is finished, tick each statement to confirm it and click
**Declare edition**.
Declaring confirms, for your practice, that you're the course's CPD provider,
that the person or body you named quality assured it, and that the
information is full and accurate.
You can declare a course only when it has lessons and every one is ready to
play, with its captions finished: written, or found impossible to write
automatically. A video still processing, captions still being written or a
caption file still uploading holds the declaration back: wait for it, then
try again.
#### What can't change
Once declared, the course is fixed: its title, description and lessons; each
lesson video's title, description, spoken language and captions; and the
declaration and quiz. You can still publish and unpublish the course and its
videos, and delete them.
A video stays fixed while it's a lesson of any declared course that hasn't
been deleted. Deleting a declared course frees its videos, and the
certificates it issued stay valid.
If you delete a lesson video of a declared course, or Smileline takes it down,
learners who hadn't completed it can no longer take that course's quiz.
#### Make an updated copy
To change a declared course, click **Make an updated copy**. You get the next
edition: a new draft course with the same title, description, lessons,
declaration and quiz. Change what you need, then declare and publish it. To
change a lesson video's text or captions, replace it in the copy with a new
upload.
Unpublish the older edition when you're ready. Its certificates keep their
edition and can still be checked, and learners who passed it can still get
their certificate. Learners keep the lessons they've completed: those count in
every edition that uses them.
### Delete videos and courses
**Delete** removes a video for everyone at once and deletes its file for
good, so it can't be undone. Deleting a course leaves its videos on your
channel.
You can delete anything on your channel at any time, except a video
Smileline has taken down: it's kept for appeals and as evidence, so only
Smileline can delete it. Your studio marks what Smileline took down and
shows its note. For courses declared for CPD, see
[What can't change](#what-cant-change).
### Hide comments on your content
Your practice's owners and managers can hide a comment under your channel's
own videos and courses: click **Hide** beside it and confirm. In its place readers see
**Hidden by the channel.** while it has replies, so the conversation still
makes sense; a hidden comment without replies disappears. Smileline keeps
its text in case the author asks Smileline to review the decision.
Hide only comments that break the Academy rules. Never hide a comment just
because it criticises your practice or your content: the channel terms you
accepted forbid it.
### If Smileline suspends your channel
Smileline can suspend a channel that breaks the rules or the channel terms,
and suspends the channel of a practice that closes its Smileline account.
While your channel is suspended:
* its videos and courses, and the comments under them, disappear from
Academy for everyone;
* none of its videos plays any more, though one someone already has open can
keep playing for up to an hour;
* your studio still lists everything, with Smileline's note but without
previews. You can't upload, publish, or save, declare or copy a course's
CPD, but you can still unpublish and delete.
If Smileline reinstates the channel, everything you'd published comes back.
To question a suspension, click **Support** at the bottom of the sidebar.
### Selling your courses
**Coming soon — not yet available.** Practices can't sell their courses
yet. Until selling opens, every course on a practice's channel is free for
every practice.
When selling opens, a practice whose channel Smileline has approved will be
able to put a price on its own courses and sell them to other practices
through Smileline:
* **Smileline is the seller.** It sells your courses in its own name:
it invoices the buying practice, adds the tax and takes the payment, the
same way as for its own courses (see [Buying courses](#buying-courses)).
* **Your share goes to your Stripe account.** When a buyer's payment goes
through, Smileline transfers 80% of the price before tax to the Stripe
account your practice connected on **Settings → Payments & deposits**. It
keeps 20% and pays Stripe's fees from it.
* **Your practice's owner accepts the seller agreement** for that Stripe
account before the first sale. If your practice changes or disconnects
the account, selling stops until the owner accepts again.
* **Your team watches free.** Your practice's own priced courses play for
everyone at your practice without buying them.
Selling will open to practices in the United Kingdom and in the European
Union countries Smileline serves, paid into a Stripe account in one of those
countries. Practices in the United States won't be able to sell at first.
To be ready, connect your practice's Stripe account (see
[Set up booking deposits](/guides/deposits/setup#connect-stripe)) and apply
for your channel (see [Apply for a channel](#apply-for-a-channel)).
## Team progress
Owners, managers and agency staff can follow their team's learning: click
**Team progress** on the Academy home. Other roles don't see it.
It lists every member of your practice, including those who haven't watched
anything yet, with:
* the courses they've completed and those they're part-way through;
* how many videos they've completed;
* when they last watched anything.
Open a member to see each course they've started: whether it's in progress
or completed, how many of its lessons they've completed, and when they last
watched it.
Team progress shows each member's **whole** Academy record, not only what
they watched while signed in to your practice. Progress belongs to the
person, not to a practice, so someone who also works at another Smileline
practice shows the same record in both.
A course counts as completed once every lesson it has now is completed, so
a completed course shows as in progress again if it gains a lesson. A course
that's no longer available (unpublished, taken down or on a suspended
channel) isn't listed, but the videos completed in it still count towards
the member's videos completed.
---
# Automations
Source: https://docs.smileline.io/guides/automations
One timeline of the moments in a lead's journey, with every message each moment sends.
Automations send the messages your team would otherwise have to remember: a welcome for a new enquiry, a nudge after an unanswered call, the booking confirmation, the reminder the day before, a follow-up after a missed visit. **Settings → Automations** shows them as one timeline of fixed steps, from top to bottom in the order a lead meets them. Each step lists every message it sends, in send order — when, on which channel and which message — and opens its own page when you click it.
New practices start with a ready-made library: follow-ups for the main treatment groups and a standard set of booking messages, all editable.
## The steps
The steps are grouped in five phases: **Enquiry**, **Contact**, **Booking**, **Visit** and **Outcome**. **The visit** sits between **Before the visit** and **After the visit** as a marker. A practice that keeps its recalls in Smileline's clinical workspace also has a sixth, **Recall**, at the end — see [Recall reminders](/guides/automations/recalls).
| Phase | Step | Starts when | Booking messages | Follow-ups |
| ------- | ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------- | ---------- |
| Enquiry | **New enquiry** | A lead lands in New — a new enquiry, or one moved back there. The **Also for ad enquiries** tab runs as well for an enquiry from a paid ad. | — | Yes |
| Contact | **Couldn't reach them** | **First try**: the lead moves to Contact Attempted, usually on its first **No answer** or message sent on Today. **Try 2** to **Try 10**: **I called but didn't speak to them** on that attempt. **Later tries**: any later attempt without a tab of its own. | — | Yes |
| Contact | **Spoke to them** | **First conversation**: the lead moves to Contacted. **Thinking about it** and **Call back later**: that answer is recorded on Today. | — | Yes |
| Booking | **Booked** | Any booking — on Today, from the board or a patient's record, in the diary, online, by AI phone or in your practice system. **If plans change**: the booking is moved or cancelled. | Yes | Yes |
| Booking | **Before the visit** | Every upcoming booking, counted back from its start. | Yes | — |
| Visit | **After the visit** | The visit ends (booking messages) or the lead is marked attended (follow-ups). | Yes | Yes |
| Visit | **Didn't turn up** | The visit is marked as a no-show. | Yes | Yes |
| Outcome | **Going ahead** | The lead is recorded as going ahead, or moved to the going-ahead stage. | — | Yes |
| Outcome | **Not proceeding** | The lead is closed as not proceeding. | — | Yes |
| — | **Your stages** | A lead is moved to a stage your practice added to its board. Shown only when your board has one. | — | Yes |
| Recall | **Recall due** | A patient's recall falls due, counted from its due date — from four weeks before to 18 months after with the recommended schedule. See [Recall reminders](/guides/automations/recalls). | Recall messages | — |
Each step on the timeline says where it stands — **On**, **Off**, **Not set up** or **Needs attention** — and flags what needs fixing: **SMS not connected** (or another channel), **WhatsApp not approved**, or **Online link empty** (see [Bookings typed on Today](/guides/automations/reminders#bookings-typed-on-today)). When a connected practice management system reads your appointments and booking messages are on, a warning above the timeline reminds you to switch off the matching reminders in that system, or patients get both.
The ⚡ on a column of the [journeys board](/guides/journeys/boards-and-stages) opens the step for that stage. With more than one board, **Board** at the top picks the board whose stages you're looking at: follow-ups on a stage belong to that board.
## Booking messages and follow-ups
A step holds up to two kinds of message, fired by the same moment:
* **Booking messages** go out for every booking — a lead or a regular patient. They're counted from the booking itself, follow the visit when it moves, and stop if it is cancelled or missed. See [Booking messages](/guides/automations/reminders).
* **Follow-ups** go to leads. They run as a schedule of steps — messages, tasks, notes and stage moves — and stop when the patient replies or the lead moves on. See [Follow-ups](/guides/automations/sequences).
Both are service messages: they reach every patient whatever marketing consent they've given, even when your outbound-marketing policy is explicit consent only, and carry no STOP line or unsubscribe link. An opt-out still counts, one channel at a time — a patient who replied STOP to your texts gets no texts, but still gets your emails. A WhatsApp template Meta files as marketing keeps the marketing rules.
## Messages for one treatment
**For** at the top of the page switches between **Standard** and each of your treatments. Standard messages run for everyone whose treatment has none of its own. A treatment's own messages replace the standard ones on that step — booking messages and follow-ups separately — and only while they're switched on. A dot in the list marks the treatments that have messages of their own. You only set up the steps you want to be different: with a treatment picked, each step shows **Own messages** where the treatment has messages of its own, and **Uses standard** everywhere else — even where the standard step sends nothing.
On a step's page, with a treatment picked, each section is in one of three states:
* Its own messages — edit them as usual.
* Uses the standard ones — the section says so (**Uses the standard follow-ups · 2 emails · 1 SMS**). Click **Customise for** the treatment to copy what runs now into the treatment's own messages, then change them.
* Nothing set up — add the first one: **Add step** under Follow-ups, or the dashed row under Booking messages.
A set of follow-ups that covers several treatments says **Also used for** and names them: a change applies to all of them.
Removing the last follow-up from a treatment's own set leaves it empty, so that treatment gets no follow-ups on that step. Switch **Own follow-ups for** the treatment off to give it the standard ones again. Deleting a treatment's last booking message of a kind returns that treatment to the standard ones for that kind; the confirmation says so.
## Edit a step
Go to **Settings → Automations** and click the step. Its page opens with
the timeline along the top, each step's dot coloured by how it stands,
so you can move to the next step without going back.
Pick the moment when the step has several: a tab such as **Thinking
about it** or **If plans change**, or a try on the row of tries under
**Couldn't reach them**. A line above the sections says what starts
the step (**Runs when**), and each section says where its times are
counted from.
Add, change or remove messages under **Booking messages** and
**Follow-ups**. A step with no follow-ups yet saves them the moment you
add the first complete message — there is nothing to create first.
## How automations behave
* **One moment, one step.** However a lead was booked — on Today, from the board, in the diary, online, by AI phone or in your practice system — it fires **Booked**. The same goes for attending, missing a visit, starting treatment and not proceeding.
* **Booking messages follow bookings, follow-ups follow the lead.** A second booking for a lead who is already booked sends its own booking messages, but doesn't start the **Booked** follow-ups again.
* **Calls.** **First try** runs on the first unanswered try, and **Later tries** never does. When **They're thinking about it** or **They want to be contacted again later** also moves the lead to Contacted for the first time, the call result's follow-ups run instead of **First conversation**.
* **Automations only move leads forward.** A **Move to stage** step never takes a lead back to an earlier stage. The one backward move is a new booking for a lead in Failed to Attend, which takes it back to Consultation Booked.
* **Messages thread into the inbox.** Every automated send lands in the patient's conversation like a human-sent message; replies arrive in the shared inbox as usual.
* **Humans win.** When a patient replies, or a team member messages the patient manually, the running follow-ups stop — automation never talks over a live conversation. If a shared family contact replies and Smileline cannot safely identify one patient, reply-sensitive follow-ups stop for every patient that contact represents.
* **Quiet hours.** Automated SMS and WhatsApp messages only send inside the practice's send window (default Monday–Saturday, 08:00–20:00, changeable under **SEO → Reputation → Setup**). Email is exempt.
* **Opt-outs are checked at send time.** A message the patient can't receive is skipped and logged on the timeline, never held indefinitely.
* **Follow-up edits apply immediately.** Changing live follow-ups affects leads currently in them: removed steps are skipped, new steps apply to anyone who hasn't passed them, and switching the follow-ups off freezes everyone in place without ejecting them. A message already prepared when the switch wins is marked as cancelled in the Inbox and cannot be manually retried. After you switch them back on, the next scheduled check resumes that exact step and message instead of creating a duplicate. Booking-message edits apply to bookings made from then on.
Automated activity is always visible: follow-up starts, stops and sends
appear on the patient timeline, and each lead's journey shows a chip with
the running follow-ups and a **Stop** button.
### Older setups
Follow-ups made under a starting point the timeline no longer uses — every new enquiry, the first unanswered call, entering the going-ahead stage — are copied to the matching step when your practice moves to the timeline, keeping their switches, treatments and timings. Where your own follow-ups and the library's covered the same moment and treatment, yours win. Any still on an old starting point show as an **Older setup** tab on their step, with their own **Runs when** line.
An original that was copied over but still has leads part-way through says **Finishing 3 leads**: it starts nobody new, finishes the leads already in it, and disappears once nobody is left. Links to older automation pages still open the right step.
---
# Recall reminders
Source: https://docs.smileline.io/guides/automations/recalls
Remind patients when their check-up or hygiene visit falls due — from four weeks before to 18 months after — with a one-tap link to book it.
Recall reminders bring patients back for the visits their recalls schedule: an examination, a hygiene visit, a periodontal review. They sit on the **Recall due** step, in the **Recall** phase at the end of the [automations timeline](/guides/automations), and go out at set times before and after each patient's due date until the patient books.
Recall reminders work for practices that keep their recalls in Smileline's clinical workspace (see [Patient forms and recalls](/guides/patients/forms-and-recalls#recalls)). If your recalls live in another practice management system, that system's own recall messages carry on and the **Recall due** step doesn't show.
## How a patient's recall cycle works
A patient's reminders follow their **earliest due recall** — of their active recalls, the one due soonest (a paused recall doesn't count). Every message is timed from that due date and goes out at **9:00**, in the time zone of the recall's site.
One message covers every recall the patient has due within a week of it: a patient whose examination and hygiene visit fall due together gets one message about both, not two.
When the recall is completed, its next due date starts a new cycle, and the messages follow it on their own.
## Set up the schedule
Go to **Settings → Automations** and open **Recall due**.
Click **Use the recommended schedule**. It adds ten messages, from 4
weeks before the due date to 18 months after it, **switched off** so
you can check the wording first.
Click a message to change its timing — a number of days, weeks or
months **before** or **after the due date**, or **on the due date** —
its channel or its text, then **Save**.
Click **Turn on all**, or switch messages on one at a time.
The recommended schedule:
| When | Channel |
| --------------- | ------------------------------------------------- |
| 4 weeks before | Text and email |
| 3 weeks before | Text |
| On the due date | Email |
| 1 month after | Text |
| 3 months after | Text and email |
| 6 months after | Email |
| 12 months after | Text |
| 18 months after | Email — the last one ("we'll stop reminding you") |
A message can go from a year before the due date to two years after it. There is one schedule for every recall type; `{{recall.types}}` names the recalls each message is about. The **Recall types** button beside **Recall messages** opens [Recall types](/guides/settings/clinical-catalogue#recall-types), where you set what patients are recalled for and how often.
## When a message is skipped
Every message is checked again just before it goes. It is skipped, recorded, and never sent later when:
* the patient has a visit booked — any visit still to come, booked online, by phone, by the AI receptionist or in the diary (an online booking still waiting for its deposit isn't a visit yet);
* the recall was completed, rescheduled or paused since the message was planned;
* the patient is archived, deceased or merged into another record;
* the patient opted out of that channel;
* the message has been switched off.
If a booked visit is cancelled, the next message in the schedule goes out as normal. A reply from the patient, or a message from your team, doesn't stop recall reminders — booking, pausing or completing the recall does.
## Switching on
Patients who are already overdue when you switch the schedule on get their **next** message on its normal date — nobody is sent a burst of messages on the first day. Patients more than 18 months overdue get no automatic messages; they stay on [Recalls due](/guides/patients/worklists) for your team to call.
If sending is held up for a while, the messages that came due in the meantime go out late — but only the most recent one on each channel for each patient. The earlier ones are recorded as skipped, so nobody gets two recall texts on the same morning.
## The one-tap booking link
`{{recall.bookingLink}}` (**Recall booking link** in the merge-tag list) puts a short personal link in the message. It opens **Time for your check-up**:
* The patient is recognised by the link: there are no details to type, and their name is never shown.
* The visit to book is chosen for them — the appointment type the recall **Books online as** (see [Recall types](/guides/settings/clinical-catalogue#recall-types)), at the recall's site, with its clinician. They pick a time and click **Confirm booking**.
* The booking marks the recall booked, sends your usual booking messages and shows **You're booked** with a link to manage that booking. It doesn't create a lead or move anything on your boards.
Instead of the booking page, the link can show:
* **You have a visit on …** — the patient already has a visit coming up.
* **Nothing to book right now** — the recall has been completed or moved on.
* **Please call us to book** — the visit can't be booked online: the recall type has no **Books online as** type, the type isn't bookable online, needs a deposit or your confirmation, the site books by chair, or your recalls are no longer kept in Smileline's clinical workspace.
* **This link has expired** — a link works until 90 days after the last message of its cycle.
While your [online booking page](/guides/online-booking/setup) is off, the tag is empty and the step marks the messages that use it **Online link empty**: turn the page on, or reword those messages.
## Merge tags
| Tag | Shows |
| ------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `{{recall.types}}` | The recalls the message is about, e.g. "examination and hygiene" |
| `{{recall.dueOn}}` | The due date of the patient's earliest recall |
| `{{recall.bookingLink}}` | The one-tap booking link |
## What your team sees
* Every recall message appears in the patient's conversation, like any other message.
* Each active recall on the record shows **Automatic reminders** — how many were sent, the last one and the next.
* [Recalls due](/guides/patients/worklists) shows each patient's **Last reminder** — the last recall message or posted recall letter — so you can call the right people first.
## Consent
Recall reminders are service messages, like booking messages: they reach every patient whatever marketing consent they've given, and an opt-out still counts one channel at a time. Keep them free of offers.
In the US, the recommended texts end with "Reply STOP to opt out", and each fits in a single text with its link. Keep your own recall texts short and about the visit only: that's what US rules expect of healthcare texts sent without written consent.
---
# Booking messages
Source: https://docs.smileline.io/guides/automations/reminders
Confirmations, move notices, reminders before and after the visit, and no-show recovery — anchored to the booking.
Booking messages go out for every booking — a lead or a regular patient — and are anchored to the booking itself, so a move recalculates any delivery that is still pending and a cancellation stops it. They sit under **Booking messages** on the booking and visit steps of the [automations timeline](/guides/automations):
| Message | Step | When it sends |
| -------------------------------- | ----------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Booking confirmation** | **Booked** | As soon as a consultation or appointment is booked — on Today, from the board or a patient's record, in the diary, online, by AI phone or in your practice system. |
| **Appointment moved** | **Booked**, tab **If plans change** | When a booking is moved to a new time. |
| **Cancellation message** | **Booked**, tab **If plans change** | When a booking is cancelled. |
| **Pre-visit reminder** | **Before the visit** | A set time before the visit starts — the defaults are 48 hours (email) and 24 hours (SMS), and you can run several. |
| **Post-visit follow-up** | **After the visit** | A set time after the visit ends. |
| **Missed appointment follow-up** | **Didn't turn up** | When the visit is marked as a no-show. |
Each message shows when it sends — **1 day before**, **When moved** — then the message it sends, its channel and the first line of the text. A message whose channel has nothing connected, or whose WhatsApp template is not approved yet, says so. Use its switch to turn it on or off; click anywhere else on it to change its timing, channel or message underneath, then **Save**. Automated SMS and WhatsApp reminders respect the practice send window; a reminder that comes due overnight goes out when the window opens. A WhatsApp reminder outside the 24-hour window is sent as the template's approved Meta template, with each placeholder filled from the body's merge tags in order; if a tag has no value for that patient, the reminder is skipped (Meta rejects an empty placeholder) and the skip is recorded rather than sent as a failing message. A WhatsApp reminder can be saved with a template WhatsApp hasn't approved yet — the picker warns you — but until it is approved it reaches only patients inside the 24-hour window and skips the rest; it starts sending to everyone once approved, with nothing to re-save.
Messages that talk about an appointment still to come — the pre-visit
reminder, the booking confirmation and the appointment-moved message — are not
sent once that appointment has started. A confirmation arriving after the
visit tells the patient something untrue, so a reminder delayed past the
appointment is marked as not sent rather than delivered late. The
post-visit follow-up is unaffected by the clock: it describes something that
has already happened. The missed-appointment follow-up and the cancellation
message now also require the appointment to still be in the state they
describe — if a no-show is corrected to attended, or a cancellation is undone,
before the message goes out, it is not sent. An appointment-moved message also
requires the appointment to remain both upcoming and non-terminal.
{/* Wave 7d slice 0 */}
## The manage link
The `{{appointment.manageUrl}}` merge tag puts the booking's manage link in a message, so the patient can reschedule or cancel online ([how it works](/guides/online-booking/bookings#manage-links-reschedule-and-cancel)). Each message gets the link when it is sent, not when it is written, so the message history never holds it, and every message about the same appointment carries the same link. A patient who mistypes their date of birth five times locks the link; the next booking message brings a new one. Appointments owned by a connected practice management system have no manage link.
{/* Wave 7d slice 4 */}
## The patient portal link
The `{{patient.portalLink}}` merge tag (**Patient portal link** in the merge-tag list) puts the patient's own [patient portal](/guides/patients/patient-portal) link in a booking or recall message. Like the manage link, it is added when the message is sent, so the message history never holds it. It is the same link **Send portal link** on the patient's record gives: a message to the same mobile number or email carries the patient's current link and keeps it working for another 30 days, while a message to a different number or email, or a link more than 90 days old, brings a new link and the old one stops working. A WhatsApp message and a text to the same mobile share one link. If a message is retried, it carries the link it was first given; if that link was replaced or locked in the meantime, the message fails and is shown as not sent.
The tag is empty when the portal can't open for the patient: the portal is off, there is no date of birth on file, the patient is too young to hold their own portal, or their link was locked after five wrong dates of birth (once you have checked who is asking, send a new one with **Send portal link**). An email or text still goes out without the link, so word it so the message makes sense either way. A WhatsApp message sent as a Meta template is skipped and the skip is recorded, because Meta rejects an empty placeholder. Other automations, campaigns and letters don't offer the tag.
## Bookings typed on Today
When your diary lives in a system Smileline can't book into, the booked step on Today takes the date and time you booked there (see [Outcomes and undo](/guides/today/outcomes-and-undo#book-the-slot-without-leaving-today)). Booking messages follow those bookings too, counted from the date you typed:
* **Booking confirmation** and **Pre-visit reminder** go out as for any appointment.
* **Appointment moved** goes out when the consultation's date changes on Smileline.
* **Post-visit follow-up** waits for **They attended** on the attendance question, then goes out at its usual time after the visit — or straight away if that time has already passed. A patient who didn't turn up never gets it.
* **Missed appointment follow-up** goes out when you answer **They didn't turn up**.
* Undoing the booking, booking again, or closing the lead as not proceeding stops what hasn't gone out yet, without a cancellation message.
These bookings have no online page, so `{{appointment.manageUrl}}` is empty for them: if your booking messages say "reschedule or cancel online", change that line to something like "call us on `{{location.phone}}` to change it". While any of your locations books this way, the timeline and the step's page mark a booking message that uses the link **Online link empty**. A WhatsApp reminder that uses the link is skipped for these bookings, and the skip is recorded. When the practice later books the same visit into its diary, or a connected system brings it in, the diary appointment takes over and each message is sent once.
Bookings typed on Today before this change get their pre-visit reminders but no late confirmation.
## Messages for one treatment
Set **For** to a treatment on the step's page and the booking messages you add there go only to that treatment's bookings — the appointment's treatment, else the lead's — replacing the standard messages of the same kind for them. A kind the treatment has none of switched on uses the standard ones: a treatment with its own **Pre-visit reminder** but no confirmation of its own gets its own reminders and the standard confirmation. While it uses the standard ones, the section says so, and **Customise for** the treatment copies them to start from. Deleting a treatment's last message of a kind returns it to the standard ones for that kind.
A booking keeps the booking messages chosen when it was made; changing its treatment later doesn't change them — new bookings use the treatment's own messages. Adding or changing a treatment's messages applies to bookings made from then on.
## Add and remove booking messages
The dashed row under a kind adds a message of that kind (**Add reminder** once it has one). Pre-visit reminders and post-visit follow-ups can run several at once — two pre-visit reminders (48 hours by email, 24 hours by SMS) is the usual setup. The event-driven kinds — confirmation, moved, cancelled, missed — hold one each, so their dashed row shows only while there is none: a second would mean two messages for the same event. To delete a message, open it and choose **Delete**.
One practice can keep at most 100 booking messages switched on at once,
treatment versions included. At the limit, switch off an existing message or
save the new one switched off; deleted and switched-off messages do not consume
the active allowance.
The channel picker shows the connection the message will send from — *SMS · +44 7700 900123*, *Email · Dental By Design* — read from **Settings → Channels**. Email always uses the practice's built-in sender; SMS and WhatsApp use the number assigned to the appointment's location when there is one, otherwise the **All locations** number, otherwise the oldest active one. A channel with nothing connected reads **Not connected** with a link to Settings → Channels, and the message is skipped until a connection exists. See [Follow-ups](/guides/automations/sequences#which-sender-a-message-step-uses) for the full rule.
Timing takes **minutes**, **hours** or **days**, and shows whichever unit represents the stored value exactly — a message set to 90 minutes reads as 90 minutes, not as an hour and a half rounded off. Changes apply when you click **Save**, which stays unavailable until something has changed. Switching to a channel the current message can't be sent on clears the message, so you pick one for the new channel before saving.
The event-driven messages — appointment moved, missed appointment, cancellation — send as soon as the event happens (a timing of 0). Enter a delay if you would rather wait first, for example to give a no-show an hour before you chase them. Setting the delay back to 0 returns them to sending immediately.
Edits apply to bookings made from then on. A message already scheduled keeps
the timing, channel and template content captured when it was scheduled.
Switching a message off cancels deliveries that have not started.
Deleting a booking message archives it and cancels only deliveries that have not
started. Existing send-history and idempotency records are retained, so an old
delivery remains auditable and cannot be recreated by deleting its rule.
There is no undo for a deleted booking message — you would need to add it
again, and the new one starts with its own delivery history.
## When a reminder keeps failing
Smileline does not retry a technically broken reminder forever. After ten
failed or interrupted attempts in a row, or once its automatic retries run out,
that reminder is paused for review. The patient's activity shows **Reminder
paused for review** with the reason in one sentence, for example *Smileline
paused this reminder because it failed with an error several times in a row.*,
and an **Automation step** item appears under **Couldn't be processed** in the
[review queue](/guides/lead-capture/review-queue). Other reminders keep their
own independent delivery state.
Changes to the booking never count against a reminder: however often your
team or a connected practice management system moves an appointment, its
reminders follow every change. The one limit is on texting-hours holds — a
text or WhatsApp reminder that falls due outside your texting hours waits for
them to open, and after 50 such holds it is paused for review: *Smileline
paused this reminder because texting-hours holds moved it too many times.*
**Try again** on the review item sends the reminder now, or at its usual time
if that is later — a post-visit follow-up still waits for the visit to end.
**Reminder resumed** on the timeline names who pressed it, and a reminder that
hit the texting-hours limit starts with a fresh allowance. It is sent only if:
* its booking message is switched on — switch it back on first, then press
**Try again**. A deleted message's reminder can't be tried again, so mark the
item as handled;
* the appointment still qualifies — still upcoming for a confirmation or
pre-visit reminder, not cancelled or missed for a follow-up, still a no-show
or still cancelled for those messages.
Otherwise nothing is sent and the item stays until you mark it as handled.
Rescheduling the appointment also re-arms a reminder paused after its retries
ran out, but not one that hit the texting-hours limit.
## Reschedules and cancellations
Booking messages follow the appointment record:
* **Rescheduled** — reminders recompute against the new time. This includes a reminder whose send time had already passed: booking an appointment for tomorrow does not permanently lose its 48-hour reminder, and moving that appointment further out arms it again. A reminder that genuinely reached the patient stays in the history and is not sent again; one that never made it out to a provider is re-armed for the new time, including one [paused for review](#when-a-reminder-keeps-failing) after its retries ran out. The **Appointment moved** message, if it is on, tells the patient the new time — every time the appointment moves, not just the first.
* **Moved into the past** — a reminder recomputed against a time that has already passed is not sent. Recompute follows the live appointment, so the check is made against the new time rather than the one the reminder was written for.
* **Cancelled** — pending reminders are cancelled and the cancellation message (if enabled) goes out.
* **No-show** — remaining reminders are cancelled and the missed-appointment follow-up goes out.
* **PMS correction waiting** — if the PMS contradicts a backwards or terminal appointment fact, a reminder that comes due stops at the final provider boundary and is marked as not sent until an appointment editor resolves the correction. Keeping Smileline's fact re-arms every interrupted reminder that is still relevant. Accepting the PMS fact recomputes time-anchored reminders, but does not create a retrospective booking, move, cancellation or no-show announcement.
A live PMS update that resolves the contradiction follows the same relevance
rules. A historical backfill is different: importing history never sends a
patient message. It records the interrupted occurrence as **Not sent —
historical PMS reconciliation**, while leaving the reminder eligible for a
later live reschedule. That old message cannot be retried from the Inbox; a
future live change creates a fresh occurrence with current appointment content.
## Practice management systems
If your PMS (for example Dentally) is connected, it probably already sends
appointment reminders. To avoid double-messaging patients, Smileline
switches every booking message **off** when a PMS connection activates, and
the timeline warns above **Booking** while any is on. Turn a message back on
only after switching the equivalent reminder off in the PMS — disconnecting
the PMS does not switch them back on automatically.
Appointments that arrive from the PMS get the same booking messages as ones booked in Smileline — they make no distinction once they're on. An appointment that first arrives already attended or missed gets its post-visit follow-up or missed-appointment message, never a late booking confirmation. When someone on your team answers the attendance question on Today for a PMS appointment, that answer decides which of those two messages goes out, even if the PMS later reports otherwise; Smileline never changes the appointment in the PMS.
See [PMS integrations](/guides/settings/integrations#review-appointment-corrections)
for the correction review workflow. A reminder stopped by that review remains
recoverable. If it is still relevant, resolving the correction re-arms it with
a new delivery generation. If it has become irrelevant while staff review the
correction, the failed ledger remains eligible for a later appointment
reschedule instead of being made permanently terminal.
---
# Follow-ups
Source: https://docs.smileline.io/guides/automations/sequences
The messages, tasks and stage moves a lead gets on a step of the timeline — stopping the moment a human takes over.
Follow-ups are a schedule of steps a lead works through when a moment on the [automations timeline](/guides/automations) happens: messages, tasks, notes and stage moves. Open a step under **Settings → Automations** and they sit under **Follow-ups**, beside any booking messages the step has. You'll usually keep standard follow-ups on each step and give a few treatments their own — implant leads on **New enquiry**, for example.
## When follow-ups start
The step and tab you put them on decide when they start — see [the steps](/guides/automations#the-steps). Each step's page says it in full in its **Runs when** line, above the sections. A few need more explanation.
**New enquiry → Every enquiry** runs when a lead lands in New: every new enquiry, whichever way it arrived, and a lead someone moves back to New.
**New enquiry → Also for ad enquiries** runs once for a new enquiry whose first source is a paid ad — a lead form on Meta, Google or TikTok, an enquiry from someone who came from one of your ads, or a lead added by hand for a patient whose lead source is on a paid channel, such as **Facebook / Instagram Ads**. Changing a lead's source later doesn't start it. It runs as well as **Every enquiry**, not instead of it, so it suits a reply only ad leads should get: paid leads go cold in minutes.
### The fast reply for ad leads (UK)
New practices get an **Ad lead fast response** set of follow-ups on **New enquiry → Also for ad enquiries**, switched off: a text and an email straight away, then one more text three hours later, during opening hours. When a UK practice builds an ad campaign with **Text new enquiries within a minute** on, Smileline switches it on, in one save. If you deleted it, or your practice joined before it existed, it is created again from the library. If other follow-ups already answer every ad lead, nothing changes. Building the campaign needs permission to edit automations.
Practices in the US don't get the fast reply yet: their marketing starts on soft opt-in, which US law on automated texts doesn't recognise.
### After a call on Today
**Couldn't reach them** and **Spoke to them** follow the answers your team records on Today, on the web or in the mobile app:
* **First try** runs when the lead moves to Contact Attempted — the first **I called but didn't speak to them** (under **No answer**, or its **Call back** row) or **I didn't call — I sent a message** on that enquiry.
* **Try 2** to **Try 10** run when **I called but didn't speak to them** is recorded on that attempt. The tries sit on one row in call order — **First try**, **Try 2**, … **Later tries** — each saying what it sends. The **+** on the row adds the next missing try (**Add try 3**), which is saved with its first message; to remove a try, archive its follow-ups from the **…** menu. The attempt is the same count Today shows on the lead (**3 attempts**): every try to reach them on that enquiry, including AI calls that rang and **I didn't call — I sent a message**, and counting the one being recorded.
* **Later tries** runs on every later attempt without a tab of its own, including any after the tenth — never on the first try.
* **Thinking about it** and **Call back later** run when **They're thinking about it** or **They want to be contacted again later** is recorded under **We spoke**.
* **First conversation** runs when the lead moves to Contacted, the first time someone speaks to them. When that same answer has call-result follow-ups of its own, those run instead.
Booking, going ahead, not proceeding, attending and not turning up aren't call results here, because they also happen away from Today — online booking, the board, the diary, your practice system. Their follow-ups are on **Booked**, **Going ahead**, **Not proceeding**, **After the visit** and **Didn't turn up**, which start however the lead got there.
## How follow-ups are chosen
When a step's moment happens, Smileline picks one set of follow-ups that is switched on:
1. The lead's **treatment's own** follow-ups on that step and tab win.
2. Otherwise the **Standard** ones run.
3. Neither — nothing sends.
For **I called but didn't speak to them**, the attempt is checked first: a **Try** for that exact attempt wins over **Later tries**, and only then does the lead's treatment decide. An implant lead's second unanswered call runs the standard **Try 2** follow-ups rather than implant **Later tries** ones.
A treatment's own follow-ups count only while they're switched on — switch **Own follow-ups for** the treatment off and it gets the standard ones again. Switched on with every step removed, they still win, so that treatment gets nothing on that step.
## Add follow-ups to a step
Go to **Settings → Automations**, set **For** to **Standard** or a
treatment, and click the step — or click the ⚡ on a stage column of the
journeys board.
Pick the tab. In a treatment view that uses the standard follow-ups,
click **Customise for** the treatment to start from a copy of them.
Under **Follow-ups**, add a message, a task, a note or a stage move. Each
has its own time. A step with no follow-ups yet saves them when you
finish the first message — there is nothing to create first.
The row above the steps holds the on/off switch (**Own follow-ups for** the treatment, in a treatment view), whether they stop when the patient replies or the lead moves on, and how many leads are in them now. Follow-ups that cover several treatments say **Also used for** and name them: a change applies to all of them.
## Reading the steps
The steps are a schedule. Every step has one time, **counted from the moment the follow-ups start** — *Immediately*, *Day 2*, *4 hours*, *Day 1 · 4 hours* — and the list keeps itself sorted by that time. Two steps at the same time go out together: an email and an SMS both *Immediately* is exactly how you send on two channels at once.
Open a step to change when it runs. Under **When**, choose **Immediately**, or **After a wait** and set a number and a unit (minutes, hours or days) after the follow-ups start — for example 2 days. Beside it is **Only during opening hours**. Change the time and the step moves to its place in the list.
For a new enquiry, set **Create a task** to **Immediately** so your team has a task in Today as soon as the follow-ups start. The acknowledgement can also be **Immediately**, while a later message waits three days.
A step marked **opening hours** can only ever land later than its time,
never earlier — a *Day 2* step whose second day is a Sunday goes out on
Monday morning. On an *Immediately* step it means as soon as the practice
is open, so the first message goes out during opening hours only. If your
practice has no opening hours set, the step goes out at its plain time.
An SMS or WhatsApp step that comes due outside the practice's quiet hours waits and goes out when they next open, however far away that is — a step due on Saturday night goes out on Monday morning. If staff keep moving the quiet hours and the same step is held back eight times, it is skipped and logged on the timeline.
A step you haven't finished — a message with no template, a stage move with no stage — isn't saved, and nothing else on the list saves either until you finish or remove it. The step is marked **Not saved yet** and a banner at the top of the list says what's holding it up: **Show me** scrolls to the step and puts you in the field it's missing, and **Remove it** deletes it.
## Step kinds
| Step | What it does |
| ------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Send a message** | Sends a template by email, SMS or WhatsApp. See [WhatsApp templates awaiting approval](#whatsapp-templates-awaiting-approval) for WhatsApp steps. |
| **Create a task** | Creates a task (assigned to a chosen team member, else the journey owner — or left unassigned for the desk when that person is a dentist, hygienist or nurse, who sees only clinic tasks), with an optional note for whoever picks it up. |
| **Move to stage** | Moves the journey on to a later stage — if that stage has its own follow-ups, the lead continues there. This is how follow-ups chain. It never moves a lead into the stage the follow-ups belong to, or back to an earlier one. |
| **Add a note** | Appends an internal note to the patient timeline. |
Each step has its own pause switch — a paused step is marked **Skipped** and passed over without stopping the follow-ups.
### Which sender a message step uses
The **Channel** picker shows each channel with the connection it will actually send from — *Email · Dental By Design*, *SMS · +44 7700 900123* — read from **Settings → Channels**. A step stores the channel, not the connection, so follow-ups built before a number is connected start sending the moment one is.
* **Email** always sends from the practice's built-in sender, on your verified sending domain when you have one. A connected Gmail or Outlook mailbox is for the inbox only and is never used by an automation.
* **SMS and WhatsApp** use the connection assigned to the patient's location when there is one, otherwise the connection set to **All locations**, otherwise the oldest active number. A practice with one number never has to think about this.
A channel with nothing connected reads **SMS · Not connected** in the picker, the step shows a **SMS not connected** badge on its row and on the timeline, and the step is skipped for every lead until a connection exists. The follow-ups keep running their other steps. The picker links straight to **Settings → Channels** to fix it.
### WhatsApp templates awaiting approval
Outside the 24-hour window after a patient's last message, WhatsApp only delivers templates Meta has approved (see [Templates](/guides/inbox/templates)). You can still save a WhatsApp step whose template isn't approved yet: the picker warns you and the row shows a **Not approved by WhatsApp** badge. Until Meta approves it, the step reaches only patients who messaged you in the last 24 hours; everyone else skips that step — the skip is recorded — and the follow-ups carry on. Once the template is approved, the step sends to everyone without you saving anything again.
Follow-ups are service messages, like booking messages. They go to every lead whatever marketing consent the lead has given — even when your outbound-marketing policy is explicit consent only — and carry no STOP line or unsubscribe link. An opt-out still counts, one channel at a time: before every send, Smileline checks whether the patient opted out of that channel — replied STOP, unsubscribed, answered **No** to a lead form's consent question, or was marked opted out by your team or your practice system. If they did, or they have no address for the channel, the step is skipped, the skip and its reason appear on the timeline, and the follow-ups move on to the next step — a patient who opted out of texts still gets your emails. An opt-out that arrives after a step has already queued its message still stops that message before it leaves; the conversation shows it as not sent. A WhatsApp template Meta files as marketing keeps the marketing rules: it reaches only patients your outbound-marketing policy allows.
### Booking date and time in a sequence
**Booking date** (`{{appointment.date}}`) and **Booking time** (`{{appointment.time}}`) from the **Fields** menu fill with the lead's next booked consultation — from your diary or practice system, or the date typed on Today when the consultation was booked without a diary. They're written the way your practice's country writes dates (see [Merge tags](/guides/inbox/templates#merge-tags)).
If nothing is booked, an email or SMS shows a blank where the field was, and a WhatsApp step outside the 24-hour window is skipped — Meta rejects an empty placeholder — with the skip recorded on the timeline. A consultation imported by your practice system's first sync, from before Smileline was connected, and never linked to the lead also shows blank.
### Follow-up date, time and who calls back
When a call ends with **They want to be contacted again later** on Today, the follow-up you set there can go straight into a follow-up message. Pick these from the **Fields** menu:
* **Follow-up date** (`{{followUp.date}}`) and **Follow-up time** (`{{followUp.time}}`) — when the call back is due, written the way your practice's country writes dates, like the booking fields.
* **Follow-up assigned to** (`{{followUp.assignee}}`) — the first name of the team member the follow-up is assigned to, or of whoever recorded the call when it's assigned to no one. It's the first word of their name in **Settings → Team**, so a name saved as *Dr Sarah Patel* reads *Dr*.
For example, `Hi {{patient.firstName}}, {{followUp.assignee}} from {{practice.name}}. I'll give you a ring on {{followUp.date}} at {{followUp.time}} as agreed.` sends as *Hi Sarah, Devon from Bright Smiles Dental. I'll give you a ring on Friday 17 July at 14:30 as agreed.*
The fields use the lead's newest follow-up. If it has already been done or cancelled, or is due before the message sends, they are blank — and a WhatsApp step outside the 24-hour window is skipped, as with the booking fields.
### The lead owner's name
**Lead owner first name** (`{{owner.firstName}}`) from the **Fields** menu fills with the first name of the lead's owner when the step sends — the first word of their name in **Settings → Team**, like **Follow-up assigned to**. Share new leads out under [Settings → Assignment](/guides/settings/assignment) and every new lead has an owner before its first message goes, so a welcome email can say *I'm Feria, one of the treatment coordinators*.
If the lead has no owner, an email or SMS shows a blank where the field was, and a WhatsApp step outside the 24-hour window is skipped, as with the booking fields.
### Messages about the visit
A follow-up's times count from when it starts, not from the appointment, so it can't send the day before a visit. Put messages about the visit itself under **Booking messages** — on **Booked**, **Before the visit**, **After the visit** and **Didn't turn up** — which count from the booking and follow it when it moves. See [Booking messages](/guides/automations/reminders).
## When follow-ups stop
A lead drops out of its follow-ups when:
* the **patient replies** on any channel (if they're set to stop when the patient replies — the default);
* a **team member messages** the patient manually — the human owns the conversation now;
* the **journey leaves the stage** the follow-ups belong to (and on any stage change, if they're set to stop when the lead moves on);
* the journey is **going ahead or not proceeding**, or someone presses **Stop** on the lead's enrollment chip;
* for follow-ups a call result started, someone **records a newer call result** or **undoes** that result on Today (below).
Opting out of a channel doesn't stop follow-ups: only that channel's steps are skipped.
A lead never runs the same follow-ups twice at once, but can start them again after a past run ended — a lead that regresses and comes back through the stage gets nurtured again.
### The latest call wins
Follow-ups started by a call result run only until the next one. When anyone records a new result on Today for the same enquiry — another **No answer**, **We spoke**, a booking or an attendance answer — the follow-ups the earlier result started stop, and the new result's follow-ups, if you have some, start. Two unanswered calls after the first try run your **Try 2** follow-ups, then stop them and start **Try 3**.
**Undo** on Today, within its window, stops the follow-ups that result started. Follow-ups the undone result had already stopped stay stopped.
A result can also move the lead to a stage — the first **I called but didn't speak to them** moves a new lead to Contact Attempted, the first **They're thinking about it** moves them to Contacted. When the result has follow-ups of its own, those run instead of the stage's (**First try** or **First conversation**), so one answer never starts both. Follow-ups that started from a stage move aren't stopped by a later call result; they end by the usual rules above.
Follow-ups send from your connected channels (**Settings → Channels**). A
step whose channel has no active connection — or whose patient has no email
or mobile number — is skipped and logged on the timeline, and the
follow-ups continue.
### When a step keeps failing
If Smileline repeatedly cannot process a follow-up step because of a technical
error, it does not retry forever. After ten failed or interrupted attempts in a
row, or once its automatic retries run out, it pauses the follow-ups instead of
stopping them. The lead stays enrolled with no next step scheduled, the
patient's activity shows **Sequence paused for review** with the reason in one
sentence, for example *Smileline paused this sequence because a step failed
with an error several times in a row.*, and an **Automation step** item appears
under **Couldn't be processed** in the
[review queue](/guides/lead-capture/review-queue).
* **Try again** on that item resumes the same enrollment straight away, from
the step it paused on (quiet hours still hold an SMS or WhatsApp step).
**Sequence resumed** on the timeline names who pressed it. A message is never
sent twice.
* If the step is still being worked on, **Try again** says so: press it again in
a few minutes.
* Paused follow-ups still count as running. The lead can't start the same
follow-ups again on that enquiry until this run ends or is stopped, and any of
the reasons above still stops it. If that happens first, **Try again** has
nothing to resume, so mark the item as handled.
* **Mark as handled** leaves the follow-ups paused. To end them, press **Stop**
on the lead's enrollment chip.
## Editing templates
Message steps use templates from **Settings → Templates**, edited through the
same dialog as the library — click **Edit template** on the step.
Email templates open in a visual editor: plain paragraphs read like a personal
email, and typing `/` inserts layout blocks (headings, lists, buttons, dividers,
sections, columns) when you want a designed one. **Image** below the editor adds
a picture from your practice's image library. Press `Escape` once to close
the `/` menu, and again to close the dialog. The canvas is 600px wide — the
email standard — and shrinks to fit a narrow screen.
Prefer to write the markup yourself? Switch **Visual** to **HTML** above the
editor and paste your own HTML, with a preview tab beside it. See
[Message templates](/guides/inbox/templates) for how the two modes differ.
Merge tags like `{{patient.firstName}}` and `{{location.phone}}` are literal
text in the template; they resolve when each message sends. Insert them from the
chip row under the editor, in either mode.
---
# Browser extension
Source: https://docs.smileline.io/guides/browser-extension
The Smileline Chrome extension puts a free on-page SEO report, link analysis and Google result positions one click away — and, signed in, your practice dialer.
The Smileline extension for Chrome is a free SEO toolbar. Open it on any
page — your own site, a competitor's, a directory listing — and it reads
what search engines see. None of the toolbar features needs a Smileline
account, and while you are signed out the extension sends nothing about your
browsing to Smileline.
Signed in with the SEO & Ads add-on, one feature does talk to Smileline: the
domain-metrics overlay on Google results sends the visible result hostnames
to your account to look up their authority scores (see
[Domain metrics](#domain-metrics-seo--ads-add-on)). Nothing else about your
browsing is sent.
Practices on Smileline Voice can also sign the extension into their
account and take calls straight from the toolbar — see
[the dialer](#the-dialer) below.
## Install
Open the Smileline listing on the Chrome Web Store and click
**Add to Chrome**.
Click the puzzle-piece icon in the Chrome toolbar and pin **Smileline** so
it stays visible.
## The on-page report
Open any page and click the Smileline icon. The popup analyses the page in
place:
* **Findings** — the same checks Smileline's site audit runs: missing or
badly sized titles and meta descriptions, missing or duplicate H1s,
missing canonical, pages blocked from indexing, missing local business
schema.
* **On-page facts** — title and meta description lengths, word count,
heading structure, canonical URL, meta robots, robots.txt verdict for
this page, structured-data types, and hreflang entries. The report
appears straight away; the robots.txt verdict may show **checking…** for
a moment while the site's robots.txt loads.
* **Heading outline** — every H1–H6 in order, indented by level.
The report reads the page as rendered in your tab. It cannot see the
server's HTTP status or response headers, so those checks are left out
rather than guessed.
## Link analysis
The **Links** section counts internal, external, nofollow, sponsored and
UGC links, and can highlight each kind directly on the page — click a
category to outline every matching link, click again to turn it off.
**Check internal links** probes the page's same-origin links (up to 100)
and lists any that return an error, feeding the broken-link finding in the
report. External links can't be checked from inside the browser.
## Google result positions
On google.com and google.co.uk searches, the extension numbers each organic
result so you can read positions at a glance — useful when you're checking
where your practice ranks for "dentist in ⟨your town⟩" without counting
rows by hand.
### Domain metrics (SEO & Ads add-on)
Signed in to a practice with the **SEO & Ads** add-on, each numbered result
also shows the domain's authority metrics — domain rank (0–1000),
backlinks, and referring domains — under its title. Lookups come out of
your practice's monthly SEO allowance; results are cached for two weeks, so
repeat searches are free. Without the add-on (or signed out) the numbering
still works and nothing else is shown.
## The dialer
With **Smileline Voice** enabled for your practice, the extension is also a
softphone that stays registered while Chrome is open.
Right-click the Smileline icon and choose **Options** (or click **Sign in**
in the popup). Pick your practice region and click **Sign in to
Smileline** — a Smileline window asks you to approve the connection for
your practice. Anyone whose role can use the dialer may connect.
Click **Enable calling (microphone)** and allow the microphone when Chrome
asks. This is needed once per browser.
Once connected, the popup shows the dialer above the SEO report:
* **Incoming calls** ring with a Chrome notification — with the patient's
name when Smileline recognises the number — and can be answered or
declined from the notification or the popup.
* **Outbound calls** start from the popup's dial pad, or by selecting a
phone number on any web page, right-clicking it and choosing **Call with
Smileline**.
* **In a call** you can mute, hold, hang up and send key tones. Closing the
popup does not end the call.
* **DND** pauses ringing on this browser without signing out; calls
continue to ring your other Smileline devices.
Signing out disconnects this browser's calling endpoint entirely — calls
stop ringing here until you sign in again.
While you are on a call the popup offers **Transfer**: it lists every colleague
who has calling set up, with their do-not-disturb state, and hands the caller
to that colleague's most recently used device straight away.
A ringing or live call in the popup also shows **Open in Smileline**, which
opens the matched patient's record — or the desk with the live call — in a
new tab. When a call that was ringing you is answered by a colleague, the
popup says **Taken by** and their name for a moment instead.
---
# Diary
Source: https://docs.smileline.io/guides/calendar/diary
The clinical workspace's day — a column per practitioner or room on an hour rail shaded by the rota, flags on each card for what needs doing, a date picker that shows how busy each day is, booking by click or drag or from any Book button with Find a time — one clinician or several together — a visit panel for arrivals, check-out and edits, answering online booking requests, a 3-day view, the List as the day's huddle, and Fill gaps, where the waiting list lives.
Open **Diary** (**Schedule** in the US) in the clinical workspace. The whole page is the diary: one line of controls above the grid, no heading. The page's address carries the date and the view, so a day can be bookmarked or shared.
## The controls
From left to right: one group of **previous**, **Today** (shown only when you're on another day), the date and **next** (a day, or three weekdays in the 3-day view) — the date's picker also holds the jumps **+1 week**, **+3 months** and **+6 months** (the usual recalls); then **Day / 3 days / List**, the site (only with more than one), **View**, **Print**, **Fill gaps** and **Requests** (when online booking requests are waiting). There is no Book button on the **Day** and **3 days** views — book by clicking or dragging on the grid; the **List** view, which has no grid, keeps **Book**. Each column header shows its booking count. On the keyboard, **←** and **→** move a day (three weekdays in the 3-day view) and **t** returns to today.
**View** holds what you see: **Columns** (practitioners or rooms, when the site has rooms), **Columns shown** (tick who to show; the button says how many are hidden) and **Colour by**.
## Finding a free day
Click the date. Three months open at once; the arrows page a month at a time and **Today** returns to today.
* Every day is tinted by how much of its bookable time is taken — green under 40 %, yellow under 70 %, orange under 90 %, red when it is full — and a small bar under the number shows the same thing without colour.
* Bookable time is each practitioner's rota inside the site's opening hours, less approved time off; someone with no rota counts the site's hours. Cancelled and no-show appointments do not count as booked.
* A grey day is a closed day or one where nobody is working.
* Hover a day for the figures: **6h 40m free of 8h · 3 booked**.
* The tint counts the practitioners you are showing. Hide the others under **View → Columns shown** to see one person's free days.
Click a day to open it. The arrow keys move between days.
## Reading the grid
* Each column is a practitioner (or a room; in the 3-day view, a practitioner under each day), headed by their avatar — their initials on their diary colour, the same one **View** lists them by. A former practitioner who still holds a booking keeps a column; a booking with no practitioner sits under **Unassigned**.
* Grey time is outside the practitioner's rota or the site's opening hours; hatched time is a closed day or an approved absence. A day a practitioner's rota does not cover — a Saturday for someone who works Monday to Friday — is grey from top to bottom. A practitioner without a rota at all is not shaded.
* A card shows the start time and the patient, then the status as a coloured word — **Requested** for an online booking waiting for an answer, **Done** for a finished visit — with up to two [flags](#card-flags) beside it; more read **+n**. Longer cards add the appointment type, and from 45 minutes the note. A card shorter than half an hour keeps one line, the patient's name in the status colour. Hover a card for the full summary, every flag included.
* Cards are filled with the appointment type's colour from Settings; **View → Colour by** switches to the status, the practitioner or the room. A type, practitioner or room without a colour keeps the status colour (pending yellow, booked salmon, confirmed green, arrived blue, in the chair indigo, done grey, no-show red).
* One red line marks the current time across today's columns.
* A practice's own [appointment label](/guides/settings/vocabularies) shows as a chip beside the status, in its colour and always with its words, while it applies: "Left message" set to show while booked disappears once the visit is confirmed. A label never changes the status, reminders, deposits or anything clinical.
* Up to two of the patient's flags — their [tags](/guides/settings/vocabularies) marked **Show on the diary** — show under the appointment type, then **+n**. You see them when you may see patients.
* A **zone** is time a clinician's rota keeps for chosen appointment types, such as "Emergencies, weekdays 14:00–15:00". It is shaded with stripes and its name. See [Booking into a zone](#booking-into-a-zone).
Label and tag names are seen by everyone who opens the diary. Keep clinical detail out of them.
### Card flags
A card's flags say what still needs doing for that visit, most important first:
| Flag | What it means | It reads |
| ---------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Warning triangle | The patient's most serious alert in force — its kind, never its words. Red when the alert is critical | **Alert: Allergy**, **Critical alert: Medical** |
| Test tube | Lab work for this visit that is past its due date, or not back yet | **Lab work late**, **Lab work out** |
| Checklist | A medical history that is due or waiting for a clinician's review, and forms waiting for review | **Medical history due**, **Medical history awaiting review**, **Forms to review: 2** |
| Coins | Money the patient owes, and this visit's deposit still unpaid | **Owes £45.00**, **Deposit £50.00 unpaid** |
| Note | A completed clinical note for this visit waiting to be signed | **Note to sign** |
| Star | The patient's first visit | **First visit** |
| Phone | A mobile number on file | **Mobile** |
| Link | An appointment managed by an external practice management system | **Managed by the practice system** |
| Globe | An online booking | **Booked online** |
You see a flag only when you may see what it is about: money for team members who can see patients' accounts, alerts and medical histories for those who can see the medical record, and so on. In the US, while insurance's share of a bill is still being estimated, the coins read **Balance: couldn't check** instead of an amount. If the flags cannot be loaded, the cards show without them and the **List** says so.
## Booking from the grid
Click an empty slot to book it, or drag down (or up) over empty time to set the length as well. The slot stays outlined on the grid and the booking card opens beside it with the date, the time (to five minutes), the length you dragged, and the practitioner or room of that column already chosen. The outline shows the times and the length — and the patient's name once you have chosen one — and is still the booking: drag it to another time or column, or drag its bottom edge for more or fewer minutes, and the card follows — and changing the date, time, minutes, practitioner or room in the card moves the outline. Click anywhere else, or **Cancel**, to drop it. On a touch screen, tap; a drag scrolls the diary. The same card opens in a dialog from **Book** in the **List** view and from **Fill gaps**.
The card reads from top to bottom:
1. **Patient** — search by name, phone or email. Each match shows the date of birth and the last three digits of the mobile number, so two people with the same name are told apart, and the patient you choose shows as a pill with their date of birth. Beside the search, **New patient** (for team members who can add patients) adds someone who is not on file yet and puts them straight into the booking; whatever you had typed in the search — a name, an email or a number — is already filled in. Its form also takes the date of birth and lists anyone already on file with a similar name or the same date of birth, so the same person is not added twice.
2. **To book** — once a patient is chosen, their unbooked treatment-plan visits and the recall that is due. Choose one to book it: a plan visit brings its length, and the plan visit or recall is booked together with the appointment — if one of them was booked in the meantime, nothing is booked and the card says so. A check that could not load says so with **Retry**.
3. **Location**, with more than one site — it starts as the site the diary is on; change it and the rooms on offer follow.
4. **Appointment type** — your first four types as buttons, in the order you set in Settings; **Other type…** holds the rest. A type sets the length, unless a plan visit already has. Someone just added with **New patient** starts on your first type (the new-patient examination in the standard setup).
5. **When** — the date, the time and the minutes, and [**Find a time**](#find-a-time).
6. **Practitioner** (always required) and **Room** (required where the site asks for one). A pick list with eight or more entries has a search box at the top. For a visit with more than one clinician — a dentist and a hygienist together, say — press **Add clinician** under the practitioner and choose the next one, up to ten; the **×** beside an added clinician takes them off again. Every clinician on the visit is booked, and each must work at the site and be free then. When the patient asked to be seen by a female or a male clinician, the card says so under the practitioner — for example **Prefers a female clinician** — as a reminder only: nobody is filtered out or chosen for you. The preference is recorded on the patient's [Details](/guides/patients/patient-detail#care-contacts).
7. **More** — **Lab work**: **None required**, one of the patient's lab cases still on its way (this visit becomes its fit appointment), or **New lab case…**, which opens the lab case form once the appointment is booked; **Short notice list**: **Yes** also puts the patient on the [waiting list](/guides/patients/letters-and-waitlist) as a short-notice request for anything sooner than this visit; and a **Note**.
A new booking is **Booked**; confirm it later from its [visit panel](#the-visit-panel). **Lab work** and **Short notice list** appear only for members who can read lab cases and the waiting list.
The outline turns red when it runs into something: another booking of that practitioner (or of that room), or grey or hatched time — outside the rota or the site's hours, a closed day, an absence. **Book** then asks first. Over a booking, owners, managers and the front desk give a reason the record keeps, as when a card is dragged onto a taken slot; nobody else can book there. Over grey or hatched time, **Book** becomes **Outside working hours — use anyway** and a second press books; moving the outline asks again.
**Book** also checks every clinician on the visit, and its room, the way [Find a time](#find-a-time) does: each one's rota, the site's hours, closed days, approved time off, their bookings at every site, and the appointment type's time to prepare and clear up. When one of them is not free it says who — **Dr Patel isn't free then — outside their hours, on time off, on a closed day or too close to another visit** — and **Book** becomes **Outside working hours — use anyway**: a second press books it all the same.
Taking an earlier gap from **Fill gaps** books a new appointment; it does not move this one. Cancel the later visit once the earlier one is booked.
Consultations booked from the Today queue land here too: the booked step of the [outcome wizard](/guides/today/outcomes-and-undo#book-the-slot-without-leaving-today) opens this grid in a dialog, and the slot the caller picks becomes an appointment with the journey's treatment on the card.
A booking made here for a patient with an open enquiry moves that enquiry to your board's consultation-booked stage — the patient's newest open one, as a connected practice-management system's bookings do — so its new-enquiry follow-ups stop and the practice's [booking messages](/guides/automations/reminders) go out.
### Booking into a zone
Zones keep time; they don't confine types. A zone's appointment types can be booked anywhere free. Online booking, **Find a time**, **Fill gaps** and the AI receptionist never offer a zone's time to another type.
From the diary you can still book another type there: **Book** first says **Reserved for Emergencies 14:00–15:00**, and pressing **Book** again books it. An overbook reason books it straight away. The same goes for changing a visit: dragging it into a zone, or giving it a type the zone doesn't keep its time for, first asks **Move into Emergencies?**; **Move anyway** moves it. Zones are set in the [rota](/guides/rotas#zones).
### Find a time
**Find a time** in the card lists the free times for its appointment type and length at the site, day by day, a button per start time, each naming who is free then. When the card has more than one clinician, it searches them **Together**: only the times every one of them is free, with one room for the visit where the site books by room. A clinician who can't be booked at the site — no longer active, or working elsewhere — stops the search and is named, rather than being left out quietly. Choose **Any** or one person to search otherwise. It starts on the date in the card, or today if that date has passed. A treatment plan visit can't start before the plan allows, so the search starts on that day instead and tells you so. Moving an appointment searches from today unless you change its date. Narrow it to one practitioner, and to **Mornings** or **Afternoons**; **Load more** shows more times. Each search covers 90 days. When it reaches the end it says how far it looked — **Searched to Tue 26 Jan** — and **Search further** looks at the next 90 days, as many times as you need. It counts each practitioner's rota and time off, the site's hours and closures, every booking and hold, the type's buffers and minimum notice, and — where the site books by room, or the card has a room — a room free for the whole visit. Choose a time and the card takes its date, time, practitioners and room; on the grid the card moves onto that slot, which the outline marks, and keeps every clinician as you move it.
Choose an appointment type first: the search needs one. When nobody is free it says so — **No free 40-minute time for Dr Patel** — with **Try any clinician**, or **No free 40-minute time for everyone together**. A site whose diary your practice management system keeps has nothing to search here.
## Booking from a Book button
Every **Book** in the clinical workspace — on the patient record and its Appointments tab, a treatment plan visit, a recall, the inbox's patient summary, a visit panel's next visits — opens the diary on that patient instead of a form of its own. A banner across the top names who you are booking, with their date of birth: **Booking Jane Doe · 12 Mar 1984**. For a treatment-plan visit it adds which visit, how long and from when — **Visit 2 of 3 · Crown fit · 40 min · from Tue 28 Oct** — where the first day is the visit before's day plus the gap the plan asks for. Days before it are hatched, and a click there books nothing.
* **Click a free slot** and the booking card opens there already filled in: the patient (a pill with their date of birth; it cannot be changed here), the visit, its length, and the practitioner or room of that column. Its title reads **Book Jane Doe**.
* **Find a time** on the banner opens the card with the free times listed; choosing one puts the card on that slot.
* **Skip** (when the plan has more visits) moves on to the next visit without booking this one. **Stop** ends booking for the patient and closes the card.
Once a plan visit is booked, the banner moves straight on to the plan's next unbooked visit — **Visit 3 of 3** — with its first day counted from the one you just booked, until none is left. A recall is booked together with its appointment, in one step. When you are done, the banner goes and **Booked** offers the way back to where you started: **Back to the record**, **Back to To do**, **Back to Inbox**. Each visit is its own booking, and refreshing the page or going back never books one twice.
**Move** on a visit panel works the same way: the banner reads **Moving Jane Doe**, and the card moves that appointment, keeping its length, to the slot you choose.
While you are booking someone, clicking another patient's appointment first asks **Stop booking Jane Doe?** — the diary never switches patient without you saying so.
In the Desk app, which shows the diary as a list, a Book button opens the booking card with **Find a time** straight away.
## Moving and resizing
* Drag a card to another time or column. A dashed outline shows where it will land, snapped to five minutes, and carries the patient's name, the new times and the length. If that slot is already taken the card returns and the diary says so; owners and managers are offered an overbook with a reason the record keeps. A change made elsewhere in the meantime refreshes the diary instead.
* Drag the bottom edge of a card to change its length.
* Everything else you do to an appointment — its status, edits, cancelling, check-out — is in its [visit panel](#the-visit-panel).
* A booking an external practice management system manages cannot be moved or edited here: its visit panel shows the details and offers only **Mark confirmed**; the provider owns its time and outcome. Done, cancelled and no-show bookings stay in place.
* A visit shared by several practitioners appears in each of their columns and moves in time only. To change who is on it, open it and use **Edit**: the card lists every clinician, and **Add clinician** and **×** change the set.
## The visit panel
Click a card, or a row in the **List** view, to open its visit panel. It slides in from the right over the edge of the diary, which keeps its full width, and the card wears a ring. The diary stays usable underneath: click another card to switch the panel to that visit, or click or drag on empty time to book while it stays open. Close it with **×** or **Esc**. Double-click a card or a row, or press **Enter** on it, to open the patient's record instead.
Dentists, hygienists and nurses go straight to the patient's record on the **Chart** tab for that visit when they click a card. The [Desk app](/guides/desktop-app) does the same, and opens the record inside the Desk.
The panel reads from top to bottom:
1. **The patient** — name, date of birth and age, patient number, an alert pill for each alert in force and the patient's price list; under it, the mobile number with a call button and the email address. Reception's pills say what kind of alert it is; dentists, hygienists and nurses also see its words there.
2. **The visit** — the time, appointment type, practitioners, room and lab work, its status, the practice's own **Label** (choose one, or **No label**, from the list under the status; an archived label can't be chosen again, but stays until you change it), the patient's flags, and one solid button for the next step. On the day of the visit that is **Mark arrived**, then **Mark in chair**, then **Mark done**; before the day it is **Mark confirmed**. **Edit** opens the booking card in the panel; **Move** places the visit again on the diary (see [Booking from a Book button](#booking-from-a-book-button)); **Cancel…** asks for a reason (see [Cancelling a visit](#cancelling-a-visit)).
3. **Before the chair** — only what still needs doing before the patient sits down: a medical history that is due — the same rule as the **Medical** tab: the latest was rejected or has expired, or there is none on file and your practice sets a review period — or **No medical history yet** (**Fill in with patient** opens the form at the desk; **Send form link** and **Show QR** let the patient [fill it in themselves](/guides/patients/form-links), and the line then says when the link was sent or opened), a form awaiting a clinician's review (the latest medical history always waits for one), a missing mobile number or email address, an unpaid deposit (**Re-send link**), money owed (**Take payment**) and lab work that is not back. When every check has answered and nothing is due, it says **All set**. A check that could not load says **Couldn't check** with **Retry** — never **All set**.
4. **Check-out**, once the visit is **Done** — see below.
5. **Medical** — every alert in force in its own words, and the patient's active allergies, conditions and medications, for anyone who may see the medical record. **None recorded.** when there is nothing.
6. **Details** — the patient's pinned note, other phone, preferred contact method and time, the channels they opted out of, and their dentist and hygienist.
7. **Upcoming** — the patient's next visits, with their status, and when the recall is due and how many treatment-plan visits are still to book.
8. **Open plans** — each open treatment plan with its status, total and treatments.
9. **Open record** and **Message**, always at the bottom. After you send a message you stay on the diary.
### Cancelling a visit
**Cancel…** asks for the cancellation reason, then **Cancel appointment** cancels the visit. If the visit was booked by mistake — the wrong patient, a double booking — tick **Booked by mistake** instead: no reason is needed, and the visit does not count as a cancellation, or as an appointment at all, in [reports](/guides/reports/overview) and To do's **Missed, not rebooked**. The patient gets the same cancellation message as for any cancel, and a practice management system you are connected to is told the same way. **Cancel…** on the patient record's **Appointments** tab offers the same tick. Declining an online request never offers it.
A cancelled or missed visit hands back what it booked: the patient's recall returns to **Recalls due**, the treatment-plan visit to **Treatment to book**, and a waiting-list request to the waiting list, however the visit ended — here, through the patient's own link, the AI receptionist or your practice management system. Booking the patient again takes them back.
A visit the patient moved to another time with their booking link, or with the AI receptionist, reads **Moved** rather than **Cancelled**, and what it booked moves with it to the new time.
### Done and No-show ask twice
**Mark done** and **No-show** cannot be undone, so the first click only turns the button into a question naming the patient — **Confirm: Jane Doe done** — and the second click records it. Clicking anywhere else, or the visit changing in the meantime, puts the button back. The same goes for the **List** view's buttons, and **Status** in the booking card, which appears only when you edit a visit, never offers **Done** or **No-show**.
### Undo arrival
A visit marked **Arrived** by mistake — at the [kiosk](/guides/calendar/kiosk-check-in) or with **Mark arrived** — can be taken back until the patient is in the chair. Click **Undo arrival**, say why, and click **Undo arrival** again. The visit goes back to **Confirmed** if it had been confirmed, otherwise **Booked**, and its history keeps the reason. Anyone who can update appointments can do this; a visit managed in a practice management system can't be changed here.
### Check-out
After **Done**, the panel lists the treatment completed for the patient on the day of the visit — whether or not it is part of a treatment plan — and sends each item to the right way of charging it:
* **Private and membership treatment** shows its fee. **Charge** opens the charge form with the item already chosen; once posted it reads **Charged**. A reversed charge counts as uncharged again. An item with no fee reads **Nothing to charge**.
* **NHS treatment** is never charged at its procedure fee. Its course of treatment carries the patient charge, so the panel shows the course — **NHS course · band 2a · £73.50** — with **Charge course**, which asks you to confirm the amount before it posts. A course is charged once; an exempt patient's course reads **No patient charge**.
* **In the US**, the panel shows today's charged fees split into **Insurance estimate** and **Patient pays**, and anything the patient owed before on its own line. The insurer's part never counts as money the patient owes.
**Take** names what the patient owes now and opens the payment form with it filled in. In the US it is today's own share: anything the patient owed before has its own line with its own **Take**, so today's visit is never charged with older debt by default, and today's share reads **Paid** once it is covered. After each payment the panel reads the account again and offers **Take** for whatever is left, so a split payment is simply taken twice.
Under **Next** are the patient's unbooked treatment-plan visits and their recall due, each with **Book**, and **Add to waitlist**, which puts the patient on the [waiting list](/guides/patients/letters-and-waitlist) for anything sooner at this site.
Money buttons appear only for team members who may post charges or take payments.
## Online booking requests
When an appointment type is set to **Practice confirms**, a patient's [online booking](/guides/online-booking/bookings) lands in the diary as a request for you to answer. Open its visit panel, or find its row in the **List** view:
* **Accept** books it. It becomes **Booked**, the patient's booking confirmation and reminders go out, and its **Confirm online booking** card leaves [Today](/guides/today/overview).
* **Decline…** asks for a cancellation reason; press **Decline** to cancel the request. The patient gets your cancellation message, if you send one.
If someone else answered the request, or it changed, while you had it open, the diary tells you and refreshes.
### Waiting for deposit
A booking marked **Waiting for deposit** is one a patient is still paying the deposit for on your online booking page. The slot is held for them and there is nothing to accept: paying books it (or, for a **Practice confirms** type, turns it into a request), and an unpaid hold lapses after an hour and frees the slot.
## 3-day view
The chosen day and the next two diary days, each split into a narrow column per practitioner (initials in the header, the full name on hover). Hide practitioners under **View** to widen the rest. A Saturday or Sunday appears only when it holds a booking or a rota window, so a Thursday shows Thursday, Friday and Monday. The rail runs 07:30–20:30 and stretches to anything earlier or later. Whenever today is on screen, the diary opens scrolled to the current time.
## The List: the day's huddle
**List** shows the day as a table the whole team can work from; the Desk app opens the diary this way. The segments along the top count their visits: **All**, **Requested**, **Expected**, **Arrived**, **In chair**, **To check out** and **Done**. Click a row to open its visit panel (a dentist, hygienist or nurse goes to the chart); double-click it, or press **Enter** on the patient's name, to open the record.
Each row shows **Time**, **Patient** (name and age), **With**, **Room** (when the site has rooms), **Type** and **Status**, with the label and the next step beside the status. When the day has labelled visits, **All labels** filters the list to one label. Then come what the team needs to know about the visit:
| Column | What it shows |
| --------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Planned** | The codes and teeth of the treatment-plan visit this appointment books, with teeth in the notation you chose on the chart |
| **Alert** | The kind of the patient's most serious alert in force, coloured by how serious it is |
| **Forms** | **Medical history due**, **Medical history awaiting review** or **No medical history yet**, and forms waiting for review |
| **Owes** | What the patient owes — red when they owe, green for credit — and a deposit for this visit still unpaid. In the US, **Couldn't check** while insurance's share is still being estimated |
| **Lab** | **Lab work out**, **Lab work late** or **Lab work received** (back from the lab, not yet fitted) |
| **Next visit** | Their next appointment, treatment-plan visits still to book and the recall due |
| **Eligibility** | US practices: the latest insurance check of the patient's main cover — **Verified**, **Inactive**, **Check failed** or **Not checked** |
| **Exemption** | UK practices: the NHS exemption on the patient's open course of treatment — **Exempt**, **Paying** or **Evidence not seen** |
A column appears only when you may see what it shows, and **—** means there is nothing to report. If these details cannot be loaded, one column reads **Couldn't check** with **Retry**; the rest of the list works as usual.
### To check out
**To check out** lists today's visits marked **Done** with treatment completed today that is not charged yet, and counts them. NHS treatment is charged through its course and an item with no fee has nothing to charge, so neither keeps a visit here. Once everything is charged from the visit's [check-out](#check-out), the visit leaves the segment. The segment appears for team members who can see patients' accounts and treatment.
## Fill gaps
**Fill gaps** opens a panel that holds the site's [waiting list](/guides/patients/letters-and-waitlist) and the free time it could fill.
At the top, for the day on screen, each open request whose earliest and latest dates take that day lists its free start times, short-notice requests first, then the most urgent. They come from the same search as [Find a time](#find-a-time): the request's site, its appointment type (or 30 minutes when it has none), its practitioner (or anyone), and every site's bookings and holds, rotas, time off, rooms and buffers. Each request shows its first times, and **Load more** shows the rest. A search that could not run says so with **Retry**, keeping any times it already found.
Press a time to open the booking dialog on it, with the patient, the request's appointment type and length, the practitioner and the room already chosen. The waiting-list request is booked together with the appointment, so the two are never out of step. If the request was changed after the panel showed it, the booking is refused and nothing is booked; open **Fill gaps** again to see it as it is now. If someone else took the time meanwhile, the diary says so and the request stays on the list. Times are buttons only for team members who can book.
Below it, **Everyone waiting (3)** lists every open or offered request at the site, highest priority first: the patient (their name opens the record), the status, what they are waiting for, the priority, and any practitioner, appointment type and window.
* **Add** puts a patient on the list: search for them, then choose what they are waiting for — **As soon as possible**, **Short notice** or **Referral to treatment** — and, if you like, the site, appointment type, practitioner, treatment plan, the earliest and latest days, the priority and a note. Press **Add**.
* **Withdraw** takes a request off the list for good, so it asks first: the button turns into **Confirm: withdraw Jane Doe**, and a second click withdraws it.
The panel reads the list each time you open it. If the list cannot be loaded it says so, with **Retry**, rather than showing nobody waiting.
After you cancel an appointment, decline an online request or mark a no-show, the confirmation offers **Fill this gap · 2 waiting** when someone on the waiting list could take that time: waiting at that site, for that practitioner or anyone, with that day inside their window. It opens **Fill gaps**. When the waiting list cannot be checked it offers plain **Fill this gap**; when nobody waiting could take the time, or the time has already passed, it offers nothing.
## Printing
Print the page for the day sheet: the sidebar and the controls are left out and the grid prints landscape.
---
# Kiosk check-in
Source: https://docs.smileline.io/guides/calendar/kiosk-check-in
Pair a tablet at reception so patients check themselves in for today's appointment with their date of birth.
A kiosk is a tablet at reception where patients check themselves in. It asks
for the patient's date of birth and the first two letters of their surname,
shows the time and the clinician of their appointment today, and marks them
**Arrived** when they confirm it's them. The diary updates at once.
A kiosk only records arrival. It never shows a patient's name, never lists
who is booked, and never opens a form.
Kiosks work only where Smileline runs your practice's own diary.
## Pair a tablet
1. Go to **Settings › Calendar › Kiosks** and click **Add kiosk**.
2. Give the tablet a name (for example *Reception iPad*), choose the site whose
appointments it checks in, and click **Add kiosk**.
3. On the tablet, open the kiosk page the settings page names, and enter the
pairing code — or scan the QR code with the tablet.
The code works once, for 10 minutes. If it runs out, add the kiosk again. The
tablet keeps nothing but its own pairing.
Anyone who can change settings adds and revokes kiosks. **Revoke** (two
clicks) stops a tablet at once; pair a new one to replace it. The list shows
when each tablet was last seen.
Lock the tablet to the kiosk page: use **Guided Access** on an iPad, or
**screen pinning** on Android.
## What patients see
1. **Welcome to** your practice, with boxes for the date of birth and the
first two letters of the surname.
2. If exactly one patient with that date of birth and those letters has an
appointment at this site today: *Your appointment: 10:30 with Dr Patel. Is
this you?* — **Yes, check me in** or **No**.
3. **Thank you, you're checked in. Please take a seat.**
Accents don't matter (*Östberg* matches *os*). When nobody matches, or two
people do — twins, say — the kiosk says **Please see reception**; it never
offers a choice of names. Appointments at your other sites, on other days,
or managed in a practice management system are never found.
After each patient, and after a minute without a touch, the kiosk starts
again and forgets everything it was shown.
## Arrivals in the diary
A kiosk check-in is an ordinary arrival: the card moves to **Arrived** with
its time, and the visit's history says *Checked in at the kiosk: Reception
iPad*. If it was the wrong patient, use [Undo arrival](/guides/calendar/diary#undo-arrival).
## Too many misses
To stop someone guessing their way through the day's patients, a kiosk
allows about ten lookups that find nobody, then one more every two minutes.
Past that it says **Please see reception** until it recovers. Patients who are
found don't count.
---
# Calendar
Source: https://docs.smileline.io/guides/calendar/overview
A month at a glance — results on past days, workload on future days, and a drill-down behind every date.
The Calendar shows your practice month as a grid you can read in seconds: what each past day produced, and what each future day holds. Use it to spot busy days ahead and to review how a day, a week or the whole month went.
Open **Calendar** from the sidebar.
## Reading the grid
Each cell is one practice day (weeks start on Monday, times in your practice's timezone). What a cell shows depends on where it sits relative to today:
* **Past days show results:** treatment revenue that day, journeys going ahead and not proceeding, new leads, and how many leads were contacted.
* **Future days show workload:** appointments taking place and tasks due.
* **Today** (outlined) shows both.
Days with nothing recorded stay blank apart from the date, so the busy days stand out. Metric meanings:
| Metric | Counts |
| ---------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Treatment revenue | Deal value of journeys going ahead that day |
| going ahead / not proceeding | Journeys closed as going ahead or not proceeding that day |
| leads | New enquiries that came in that day — the same count as **New leads** on the Dashboard. A returning patient who enquires again counts; a patient record created without an enquiry (an import, say) doesn't |
| contacted | Distinct patients reached by an outbound touch that day |
| appts | Appointments taking place that day (cancelled ones excluded) |
| tasks | Open tasks due that day |
The header sums the visible month — the same numbers with the same icons, so it doubles as a legend.
## Moving around
Use the arrow buttons next to the month name to step between months. When you're viewing a different month, a **Today** button appears to jump back to the current one.
The grid stays live: as leads arrive, tasks complete and journeys close, the numbers refresh on their own.
## Open a day's detail
Click any day to see everything behind its numbers. The detail opens almost full screen, on a row of tabs — **Overview**, **Schedule**, **Bookings**, **Leads**, **Journeys** and **Team**. The list tabs show their row count, and a list tab only appears when it has something in it, so the strip doubles as a summary of what the day contains.
### Overview
If you can open the **Dashboard**, the **Overview** is the Dashboard for that day. It shows the same cards with the same meanings:
* **New leads**, **Bookings made**, **Lead → booked**, **Ad spend**, **Ad return** and **Response time**. Each is compared with the day before, or, for a range of days, with the same number of days just before it.
* The **Lead funnel**, beside a card with the day's own facts: appointments, booked time, treatment revenue, and journeys going ahead and not proceeding.
* A **New leads** chart by hour, showing when the day's enquiries arrived, stacked by channel. For a range, the chart shows one bar per day, as the Dashboard does.
* The **Team leaderboard**, and the channel breakdown.
If your role can't open the Dashboard, the **Overview** shows the day's four cards and its breakdowns instead:
* **Appointments** — how many took place.
* **Booked time** — the chair time the day held, with the average appointment length beside it. Cancelled appointments released their slot and are left out; a no-show held its slot and is counted.
* **New leads** — how many arrived, with how many patients were contacted that day beside it.
* **Treatment revenue** — the value of journeys going ahead.
Each card carries a small badge comparing the day with the month you're looking at. New leads and revenue are compared with the month's days **so far**; appointments with **every** day of the month, since they're booked ahead. Below the cards, the breakdowns show:
* **Appointment status**
* **Contacts by channel**
* **New leads by source**
* **Going ahead by treatment**
Every breakdown counts the whole day, however many rows are behind it.
### Leads
**Leads** lists every enquiry that came in that day, oldest first. The count matches the Dashboard's **New leads**. Each row shows the lead's source, name and arrival time, its treatment and one coloured status:
* **Going ahead** (with its value)
* **Not proceeding**
* **Archived**
* The lead's **stage**, such as **Contacted** or **Consultation Booked**, once someone has reached them (they answered, replied or booked). How long that first contact took is shown when you open the lead.
* **Contact attempted** (someone tried — a call with no answer or a message sent — but hasn't reached them yet)
* **Not contacted** (nobody has tried yet)
Once a lead has moved past **Not contacted**, its row also shows the first name of the team member who handled it — the lead's owner. Hover over it to see their full name. A lead nobody owns shows no name.
Click a lead to see its whole story on the right:
* **Who they are.** Their phone number, email, source and owner. **Open record** takes you to the patient.
* **The journey.** The treatment and value, how far along the pipeline the lead has moved, and when it came in, was first reached (or, if nobody has reached them yet, when someone first tried) and was closed as going ahead or not proceeding.
* **Activity.** The lead's full timeline, where you can add a note if your role lets you write them.
* **The enquiry.** What they submitted on the form or lead ad, and the source details of this enquiry: channel, campaign and ad identifiers.
On a phone, tap a lead to open it and **Back** to return to the list.
### Team
**Team** shows what each person did that day. It appears if you can open the Dashboard's reports.
The list starts with **Everyone**, then each person who did something, busiest first, then teammates who can work leads but did nothing that day, marked **No activity**. Each row shows the person's total, a bar of their activity through the day hour by hour, and their calls, messages, emails and outcomes.
Click a row to see:
* Their counts of calls, messages, emails, outcomes, stage moves, notes and anything else.
* Their activity by hour.
* Everything they did, newest first. Each entry names the patient it was for and links to their record.
**Everyone** also shows who did each entry. **Leads worked** counts each lead once, the way the Dashboard leaderboard's **Leads worked** does. Automated sends and the AI agent aren't people, so they don't appear here.
### Schedule
The **Schedule** tab draws the day as an hour-by-hour rail with each appointment as a block sized by its real length, coloured by status. A cancelled appointment gave its slot back, so it's drawn hollow with a dashed outline; a no-show held its slot and stays solid. Two blocks side by side means two appointments at the same time. Click a block to open that patient's record.
The rail spans from the first booking to the last. The tab is absent on a day with no bookings, and on a multi-day range — a merged range has no single day's clock to draw.
### Bookings and Journeys
* **Bookings** lists every appointment with a status badge (**Booked**, **Confirmed**, **Fulfilled**, **Cancelled**, **No-show**, and so on) and its time.
* **Journeys** lists the journeys closed as going ahead or not proceeding, with their value.
Every row with a patient links straight to their record. Opening the calendar from a booking notification lands you on **Bookings** with that appointment highlighted.
## Look at a range of days
To review more than one day at once, drag across the grid with the mouse, or click a day and then `Shift`-click another. The same dialog opens with the stats summed over the range and the lists merged in date order, each row labelled with its day. The **Schedule** tab is absent — a merged range has no single day's clock to draw.
Long lists show their first rows and a **Load more** button that keeps going until everything is listed. **Leads** loads 500 at a time, so a single day almost always fits without it. The cards and breakdowns always count the whole range.
A range can span up to 45 days. On a phone, the month renders as a tappable day list instead of a grid; tap a day to open its detail.
---
# Call AI
Source: https://docs.smileline.io/guides/calls/call-ai
After each answered call, Smileline writes a summary, the outcome, the next step and a plan for the next call — plus coaching for whoever took it.
Call AI transcribes your calls as they happen and, within a minute of each one ending, reads the conversation back for you: what was agreed, why a patient didn't book, what to do next and what to say on the next call. Whoever took the call, and the practice's managers, also get coaching on how it went.
Call AI is available to practices in the **United Kingdom** and the **United
States**, and is included in **Smileline Voice** at no extra cost.
## Which calls are analysed
Call AI needs [call recording](/guides/calls/recording) switched on. A practice with recording off gets no Call AI, and neither does a practice that only uses tracking numbers without Smileline Voice.
It analyses answered calls that lasted at least 30 seconds and are linked to a patient or lead: calls in and out on your Smileline numbers, calls to your [tracking numbers](/guides/lead-capture/call-tracking), and calls the AI receptionist handed over to someone at the practice. It leaves out voicemails, calls nobody answered, calls between colleagues, calls the AI receptionist handled on its own and emergency calls.
One exception to the 30 seconds: when you call someone and Smileline can't tell straight away whether a person or their voicemail picked up, Call AI reads the call however short it was. A short call gets the full analysis below — a follow-up task or a suggested email too, unless it was a voicemail.
### Voicemail or answered
When you call someone, Smileline listens to the first few seconds to tell a person from a voicemail, and the call log shows **Answered** or **Voicemail**. That first guess can be unsure or wrong. Once Call AI has read the whole conversation, its outcome decides: a call it reads as a voicemail shows **Voicemail**, and any other outcome shows **Answered** — in the [call log](/guides/desktop-app/call-log), the patient's timeline and Last call. The label changes within a minute of the call ending.
To correct a completed outbound call yourself, open **Correct call result** in Today's **Last call** card, choose **We spoke on this call** or **Reached voicemail**, then **Save**. Your correction applies to that specific call, is recorded with your name in the audit log, and takes priority over later AI results. Today's normal outcome buttons still record the lead's outcome separately.
## The live transcript
While the call is up, both sides are transcribed live, line by line, and that becomes the call's saved transcript. It also listens for card details: when it hears a card being read out, it pauses the call recording by itself and keeps transcribing, and the card digits are blanked (shown as •) in the saved transcript. See [Pause the recording while you take a payment](/guides/calls/recording#pause-the-recording-while-you-take-a-payment).
## Live suggestions
In the Smileline Desk app, the call window helps while the call is still going. As the caller talks, it shows a suggestion that fits what they just said — how to answer a price worry, a fact about parking or finance, a nudge to offer a time — with prices, opening hours and the next free appointment times filled in from your own information. A checklist for the kind of call ticks itself as the conversation covers each point, and the live transcript is a click away. Click **Used** or **Dismiss** on each suggestion as you go. See [Live suggestions](/guides/desktop-app/calls#live-suggestions).
The suggestions, the checklists and the scorecard the analysis marks each call on come from the practice's playbook: Smileline writes it from your own information, and managers review and edit it in [Settings → Live call suggestions](/guides/settings/call-ai) — a new card is never suggested until a manager turns it on. Live suggestions are in the desktop app only — not in the browser or on the iPhone.
## What the analysis tells you
Anyone who can open the patient sees:
* **Summary** — the call in a few sentences.
* **Outcome** — **Booked**, **Call back agreed**, **Not booked**, **No booking needed** or **Voicemail**.
* **Why not booked** and **Who can fix it** — for a call that didn't book, the reason (such as **Price** or **Wants time to think**) and whether it is down to the team on the call, the practice's offer (price, diary or services), the patient's own situation, or the quality of the lead.
* **Next step** — the follow-up the call needs. Call AI adds it to [Today](/guides/today/overview) as a task only when nobody is already working the lead: not while the Today card the call was made from is still open, not once someone has recorded how a call went since this one began, not when the lead already has a task due sooner, and not when someone has set a follow-up since the call began. Then the person working the lead sets the next step, and Call AI's suggestion stays here to read. When it does add a task, **Open in Today** takes you to it.
* **Suggested email** — only when an email would help the patient decide, and only about a price list, finance, consultation details or a booking link; never clinical advice. It is never sent for you: **Use** opens the patient's email with it filled in, ready to check and send, and **Dismiss** hides it.
* **Say this next time** — how to open the next call and what to cover.
* **Lead profile** — how the patient felt; what they need, what is holding them back and what will win the booking, a few words each, with a dash until a call has shown it; and a short recap of the lead so far.
## Coaching
The person who took the call and the practice's managers also see **Coaching**:
* a **score** out of 100;
* the **scorecard** — each point a good call covers (a warm greeting, finding the need, asking for the booking, agreeing a next step…) marked **Met**, **Not met** or **N/A**, with a note;
* what **went well** and what to **work on**;
* each **objection** the patient raised, how well it was handled and **a better reply**;
* **Manager review suggested** on a call worth listening to, such as a lost hot lead or a complaint.
Nobody else sees the coaching.
## Where to find it
* **Call log** — open an answered call: the analysis sits on the opened card beside the lead, and **Open coaching** shows the full coaching. The recording and its transcript sit under the summary; click any line to play the recording from that moment, and as it plays the line being spoken is highlighted and its words fill in, like captions. See [The call log](/guides/desktop-app/call-log#call-ai-on-the-card).
* **Patient timeline** — each analysed call shows its outcome and summary, and **Transcript** opens the call in a drawer with the same analysis, the recording and the transcript. See [Activity](/guides/patients/patient-detail#activity).
* **Today** — the **Last call** card in the work panel adds the summary, **Say this next time** and any email still waiting to be sent. See [Today](/guides/today/overview#last-call).
* **iPhone** — the call's page in the mobile app shows the analysis. See [Calls on your phone](/guides/mobile-app/calls#open-a-call).
* **Call brief** — under the lead's number, in Today's work panel and the patient record's **Log outcome**: what they need, what is in the way and what wins the booking, at a glance; click it for the recap, with the teammates who handled the lead shown by their avatars, the call's recording, and what to say next. See [Call brief](/guides/today/overview#call-brief).
* **Reports** — **Call insights** adds it all up across your calls, with a Monday email and, for owners and managers, a written summary of each week. See [Call insights](/guides/reports/call-insights).
## While it is being made, and when it can't be
* **Analysing the call…** — the analysis is on its way; it appears by itself.
* **Waiting for the lead record** — the caller's lead is still being created; the analysis starts once it exists.
* **Not analysed** — the call was out of scope, with the reason, such as **the call was too short**.
* **Couldn't analyse this call** — something went wrong. The person who took the call or a manager can click **Try again**, here or in the review queue.
* **New lines arrived after this analysis** — the transcript grew after the analysis was written. The person who took the call or a manager can click **Analyse again**. Until the new analysis lands, the previous one stays on screen and keeps setting the lead profile.
When the practice's retention window for recordings passes before an analysis is finished, nothing is made from the conversation and the call shows **Not analysed**. Analyses, **Try again** and **Analyse again** need the practice to have Smileline Voice; without it the **Last call** card on Today still shows the call, its result and its notes.
## Privacy
The live transcript is produced by AssemblyAI through Telnyx, the carrier behind Smileline Voice. Every time someone opens an analysis it is written to the practice's activity log. The coaching notes are removed together with the transcript when the practice's retention window for recordings passes. A patient's [data export](/guides/patients/patient-detail#header) includes what Call AI wrote about their calls — the summary, outcome, next step, suggested email, plan for the next call, lead profile and what they said about each concern — with the live transcript and the suggestions shown during their calls. The coaching is about the staff member, not the patient, so the score, scorecard, went well and work on, and how each objection was handled are not in it.
---
# Call recording
Source: https://docs.smileline.io/guides/calls/recording
Record calls for training and dispute resolution with consent, central retention controls and a full audit trail.
Call recording captures answered calls so you can review how enquiries are handled, coach the team, and settle "who said what" disputes. It starts on for a practice that is new to Smileline Voice, and you can switch it off in Settings; this page covers recording compliantly, how long recordings are kept, and where to play them back.
## Turn recording on or off
Recording is configured at **Settings → Voice & calling** (owner or manager role):
In the **Call recording** card, switch **Record calls** on or off. A practice that is new to Smileline Voice starts with it on.
Click **Manage retention**, or open **Settings → Practice details → Data retention**. Enter 7–3,650 days under **Call recordings**, or leave it blank for **Forever**, then click **Save**. The default is 90 days.
While it is on, every answered call is recorded. Calls that are never answered produce no recording.
Smileline imports recordings up to 32 MiB. If a provider produces a larger
recording, the call remains in the timeline but no playback control is added.
## Consent to record
Recording a call comes with obligations: **callers must know the call is being recorded**, and in some places they must actively agree to it.
Smileline does not play a spoken recording announcement — not on outgoing calls, inbound calls, or calls the AI voice agent takes. Recording relies on the consent your practice collects from patients, for example in its registration and enquiry forms, patient agreements or privacy notice. Make sure those cover call recording, or switch recording off until they do.
Recordings are stereo with one party per channel, which is what lets a transcript tell the caller's words from the practice's.
* **In some US states every party must consent, not just be told.** California, Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Florida and several others work this way, and California's rule carries a private right of action. Call someone only when the consent you hold covers recording; if they object on the call, stop the recording or end the call rather than continuing.
This is practical guidance, not legal advice. Recorded calls with patients
can contain health information, so review your obligations under UK GDPR
and your practice's privacy policy — and if in doubt, speak to your data
protection advisor before enabling recording.
## Pause the recording while you take a payment
There is nothing to press: the recording pauses by itself when card details come up on the call. The [live transcript](/guides/calls/call-ai#the-live-transcript) listens for card talk from either side, and pauses the recording when it hears:
* a card phrase, such as "card number", "long number", "card details", "expiry date", "security code", "CVV", "cardholder", "take a card payment", "pay by card", "credit card" or "debit card";
* numbers said around such a phrase — the expiry after "expiry date", the three digits after "CVV";
* a card-length run of digits read out in groups by the same person, even with no card phrase.
A phone number and its readback don't pause the recording, and neither do "visa", "expires", "payment link" or "deposit" on their own.
While the recording is paused, the browser call bar, Smileline Desk's call window and the Chrome extension show **Card payment · recording paused · resumes in 0:27**. The recording resumes by itself, in the same file, 30 seconds after the last card talk it heard. The live transcript keeps running through the pause — that is how it hears the reading carry on — so every new group of digits restarts the 30 seconds, and a long reading stays paused all the way through. If the pause couldn't be confirmed, they show **Recording couldn't be paused — card details may be recorded** in red instead.
The pause takes a couple of seconds to land, so the first words or digits
can still reach the recording. Say what you're about to take — "can I take
the long card number?" — and wait for **Card payment · recording paused**
before the patient reads it out.
Card digits are blanked (shown as •) in every saved transcript: the live transcript, the AI receptionist's transcript, and a transcript made from the recording. Phone numbers, prices, years and times said outside card talk stay readable.
Every pause window is kept with the call — the times the recorder was off — so you can show which part of the call wasn't recorded. A pause still running when the call ends simply runs to the end of the call.
### Calls the pause doesn't cover
The automatic pause works on recorded calls that have Call AI's live transcript: practices with Smileline Voice in the United Kingdom and the United States. Nothing listens for card talk on calls to [tracking numbers](/guides/lead-capture/call-tracking) while the transcription switch is off.
Don't take card details by voice on those calls — the recording keeps running. [Send the patient a deposit payment link](/guides/deposits/requests#send-a-deposit-request) instead, so they type the card in themselves.
## Retention: recordings delete themselves
Recordings are kept only for the retention window you set, then deleted automatically. There's no manual purge to remember — a shorter window is the simplest way to minimise the data you hold.
New calls follow a saved window immediately. A shorter window is applied progressively to existing recordings in bounded daily batches. Extending the window or changing it to **Forever** does not restore deleted audio or postpone a recording already scheduled to expire sooner.
When a recording expires, its **Play recording** control is removed. The call-history entry remains, including who called, when, how long and the line outcome.
### The phone provider's copy
Once a recording is saved in Smileline and its transcript is done, Smileline asks the phone provider to delete its own copy. That copy counts as deleted only when the provider confirms the deletion, or reports that the copy is already gone. If the provider refuses, the practice's phone system is not set up, or a legal hold covers the call, Smileline tries again later. After five attempts the call appears in the [review queue](/guides/lead-capture/review-queue#phone-system-items) as a **Phone system update** that says why the last attempt failed; clear that reason, then click **Try again**.
## Play a recording back
Answered, recorded calls show a **Play recording** control wherever the call appears:
* On the **patient timeline** — every call is logged there with who called, when, how long and the outcome of the line.
* In **Today's recent activity** for the lead you're working.
Click **Play recording** and the audio starts straight away; you can jump to any point without waiting for the whole file to download. If you leave a recording paused for a long time, pressing play or jumping ahead picks it up where you were. Playback is limited to owners and managers: front desk and telesales place calls but cannot replay them, and analysts have no calling access at all. Voicemail messages are the exception — every calling role can play those in the [voicemail inbox](/guides/settings/voicemail), and read the transcript beside them.
Under the player, anyone who can place calls can expand the call's **transcript**. Smileline transcribes recorded calls and voicemails automatically once the audio is stored, so a long call can be read instead of listened to. While that is still running the panel says so; if transcription fails after its automatic retries, it says **Transcription failed** with a **Retry** button (the failure also appears in the review queue, where it can be retried too). Transcripts are deleted with the recording when its retention window passes.
## When a recording fails
Occasionally the carrier reports that it could not record a call. The call keeps its history entry — who called, when, how long and the outcome — but no **Play recording** control ever appears for it, and nothing is retried in the background: the audio does not exist. When the failed recording was a voicemail, the practice still gets the missed-call alert, which says the message could not be recorded, so the caller is never silently lost.
## Every listen leaves a trail
Recordings are sensitive, so access is audited: **every playback is written to the practice activity log**, along with who listened and which call it was. Picking a recording back up after a long pause is logged as another listen. Turning recording on or off and changing the central retention settings are logged too. Owners and managers can review the trail at **Settings → Activity log**.
---
# AI assistant
Source: https://docs.smileline.io/guides/chat-widget/ai-assistant
Let the widget answer dental and practice questions, qualify leads, and connect booking-ready visitors to your online funnel.
By the end of this page your widget will answer visitors' questions — prices, opening hours, what an implant consultation involves — grounded in your own website and documents, and hand the conversation to your team whenever a human should take over.
## What you need
AI answers are part of the **AI assistant** add-on: **£99/month** for GBP
practices or **$129/month** for USD practices. The EUR catalogue has not been
approved yet, so EUR practices cannot enable the add-on until Smileline support
confirms pricing. The add-on also unlocks reply suggestions and thread summaries
in the Inbox. Enable it under **Settings → Billing**, then flip **AI answers** on
in **Settings → Chat widget**.
## How it answers
When a visitor types a free-text question, the assistant:
* retrieves the most relevant passages from your **knowledge base** and answers from them — it never invents prices or availability. If your knowledge doesn't cover the question, it says the team will confirm and asks for contact details instead;
* answers general dentistry questions at patient-education level and recommends a consultation for anything personal — it never diagnoses;
* collects the visitor's name and number naturally during the conversation and saves the lead exactly like the guided qualifier does;
* adds a **Book an appointment** button to its reply when the visitor asks to book and [online booking](/guides/online-booking/setup) is live with at least one bookable appointment type. The button opens the full booking funnel in a new tab; it does not preselect a visit type or collect booking details in chat;
* hands off to your team when the visitor asks for a person, mentions pain, or cannot use online booking — the thread flips to human mode and stays with your team. Pain and human requests always take priority over a booking button.
Everything it says is in the Inbox thread, marked as assistant messages. The visitor sees a typing indicator from the moment their message lands until the reply arrives; a reply can take some seconds when the assistant reads your knowledge base and checks online booking first.
The booking button is offered only in the reply to an explicit booking request;
it is not a permanent shortcut in the widget. If online booking is paused, has
no bookable appointment types, or becomes unavailable before the reply arrives,
the assistant falls back to your team instead.
## Build the knowledge base
The **Knowledge base** card on **Settings → Chat widget** feeds the assistant. Three source types:
* **Website crawl** — enter your practice site's address; Smileline reads up to 150 pages on that site's apex/`www` host pair and refreshes them weekly. Re-crawl on demand after big site updates. Links that leave that pair or fail the public-destination safety policy are skipped.
* **Documents** — upload PDFs, text, Markdown or HTML files (price lists, patient information leaflets), 10 MB each.
* **Snippets** — quick free-text facts: opening hours, parking, finance options. Snippets are the fastest way to teach it something.
Each source shows its ingestion status and how many passages it contributed. Removing a source takes its knowledge out of the assistant immediately. For document sources, the uploaded file is also queued for permanent deletion from storage.
Scanned PDFs with no selectable text can't be read — paste the content as a
snippet instead.
## Test before you switch it on
Click **Test the assistant** to chat against your current knowledge base without anything reaching your website or Inbox. Ask what a visitor would — "How much is whitening?", "Are you open Saturdays?" — and check the answers cite the sources you expect.
The assistant is suppressed the moment a team member replies in a thread —
once a human joins, the AI stays out of that conversation.
---
# Guided qualifier
Source: https://docs.smileline.io/guides/chat-widget/scripted-flow
Configure the treatment picker, qualifying questions and contact capture the widget walks visitors through.
By the end of this page your widget will qualify enquiries the way your front desk would: which treatment, how urgent, and how to reach them — and file the result as a journey on your board.
## How the flow works
The qualifier is a short, scripted conversation:
1. The greeting offers your configured treatments as tappable chips (plus "Something else").
2. Picking a treatment asks up to three qualifying questions you define.
3. The widget collects the visitor's **name**, **phone number** (validated) and **email** (skippable), then asks for marketing consent.
4. The lead is created: patient matched or created, a journey opened for the mapped treatment, the whole Q\&A saved as a note, and an attribution touch recorded with intake method **chat**.
If the visitor abandons midway, the conversation still sits in your Inbox with everything they said so far — nothing is lost.
## Configure treatments and questions
On **Settings → Chat widget**, the **Guided qualifier** card lists the flow's treatments:
Click **Add treatment** and give the chip a **Button label** — this is patient-facing wording ("Straighter teeth"), not your internal catalog name.
Pick which catalog treatment it **opens a journey for**. Choose **Enquiry only** to capture the lead without opening a journey.
Add up to three questions. Fill **Answer chips** with comma-separated options for one-tap answers, or leave it blank for a free-text reply.
Good qualifying questions are the ones your treatment coordinators ask first — "How many teeth are you missing?", "When would you like to start?". The answers arrive as a note on the patient's timeline, so whoever picks up the lead has the context.
No treatments configured? The widget skips the picker and goes straight to
contact capture — it still works as a lead-capture form.
## Consent and the capture step
The consent line shown before the final step and the thank-you message are part of the flow configuration. Visitors answer with the two chips, or by typing **yes** or **no** (any capitalisation); anything else re-asks. Consent is recorded on the patient's marketing-consent flag — under explicit-consent GDPR mode, automated messages hold until it's granted.
If a message fails to send — a dropped connection, a busy moment — the bubble stays in the thread with a **Didn't send — tap to retry** link. Retrying resumes the same step; it never creates a duplicate answer or a duplicate lead. While a reply is on its way the widget shows **Sending…**, and **Still working…** if it takes longer than usual.
If Smileline itself is briefly unavailable mid-conversation, the visitor's answers and messages are stored the moment they arrive and delivered once service returns, whether or not the visitor taps retry. An answer that only lands after the visitor has already moved on is placed in the thread as an ordinary message rather than applied to a question the flow has passed, so nothing is filed against the wrong step.
## What happens after the flow
Once the details are captured:
* Without the AI assistant, the thread flips to **human** mode — further visitor messages simply wait in your Inbox.
* With the AI assistant enabled, the visitor can keep asking questions and the assistant answers — see [AI assistant](/guides/chat-widget/ai-assistant).
---
# Set up the chat widget
Source: https://docs.smileline.io/guides/chat-widget/setup
Add the Smileline messenger to your practice website with one line of code.
By the end of this page the Smileline chat widget will be live on your practice website, branded to match, and every conversation it captures will land in your shared [Inbox](/guides/inbox/conversations).
## What the widget does
The chat widget is a messenger that sits in the corner of your practice website. Out of the box it runs a guided qualifier: visitors pick a treatment, answer a couple of questions, and leave their contact details — the lead lands on your journeys board like any other enquiry, with full [attribution](/guides/lead-capture/attribution). With the AI assistant add-on it also answers free-text questions from your own knowledge base (see [AI assistant](/guides/chat-widget/ai-assistant)).
Every message — the visitor's answers, the bot's prompts, your team's replies — is one conversation in the Inbox on the **Live chat** channel. Replies you send from the Inbox appear in the visitor's widget instantly.
## Install it
Go to **Settings → Chat widget** and click **Set up the chat widget**. Smileline creates the widget, its Live chat channel, and a hidden capture hook for its leads.
Copy the snippet from the **Install** card and paste it before the closing `` tag on every page of your website (or into your site builder's "custom scripts" slot):
```html