Offering times with several practitioners
The Practitioner card on a lead's page, and Ask on the same page.
When an enquiry has not said which practitioner they want, the lead's Practitioner card is where you say who it is for. Open the menu, type part of a name to narrow it, and tick one practitioner and press Assign, or tick several they might see and press Find times, and the next free consultation times of each are listed, up to two days for each practitioner, looking six months ahead. Untick any you do not want to send, then press Email these times.
The email lists the times in date order, for example Monday 23 November, 2pm with Mr Kuen Chin. The date and time open the booking page on that very time; the practitioner's name opens their own page, so the person can read about them first: the address set for them under Settings, Enquiries, or failing that their own enquiry page where they have one switched on. A practitioner with neither is shown in the list as having no public page, and their name is plain text.
A time in a joint clinic is offered too, and the email says so, for example (joint clinic with Ms Isabelle Teo). Nothing is held when the email goes: several people can be offered the same time, and it is reserved for whoever presses it first. The booking page the email opens lists the next eight weeks of free times, and an offered time further ahead than that is shown at the top of it on its own, ready to choose.
Pressing a time books it with nobody in the middle. The time is reserved in the diary at once and the consultation invoice is raised. Where something is owed they are taken straight to pay by card; when the payment lands the booking is confirmed and they are emailed. If it is not paid within the time to pay (30 minutes unless the organisation has set another under Settings, Enquiries), the time is released, the invoice is cancelled and they are emailed with the link to choose again. Where nothing is owed it is confirmed at once.
The lead's history records each step. Where the organisation charges for consultations but cannot take a card, or the invoice cannot be raised, the time is held for staff to confirm with Book instead, as before; the lead's history says so. A payment that arrives after the time was released is flagged on the lead for a person to deal with.
Where the lead already has a practitioner, the same card offers that practitioner's times: press Find times, untick any you do not want, and press Email these times. Nothing else on the card changes. Find times and Email these times need an email address on the lead and an address for enquiries to be sent from. When one of the offered times is confirmed on a lead that had no practitioner, the lead's practitioner becomes the practitioner of that time.
Every Find times leaves a line in the lead's history saying who looked, when, and how many times it found, and the card shows the last one, so nobody looks again without knowing. When it finds none, the card shows No free times with two requests, each written out for you to change before it goes. Ask for clinic dates emails the practitioner's team a form for their next clinic dates; what they send back is written on the lead and appears on Start for the people who answer enquiries, who check rooms and staff and set the clinics up. Ask what suits them emails the person a page to tick the days and times that suit them; what they choose shows on the lead as their reply. The card says what was asked and what came back.
Ask can write the email or the WhatsApp message with the times in it. Type your steer as, for example, offer her appointment times, and the draft carries the practitioner's next free times, each with the link that books it, exactly as Email these times would send them. If you have pressed Find times and unticked some, Ask uses only the ones left ticked. Ask never makes up a time: the times are read from the diary when you press Email or WhatsApp. This needs the lead to have a practitioner; without one it tells you to choose the practitioner first. Read the draft before you send it, and press Draft again for another version.