Hourly
Text appointment reminders and follow-ups from a sheet
Clients in your appointments sheet get a text the day before and a follow-up afterwards, with each send marked in the sheet.
- Runs
- Hourly
- Apps
- Google Sheets, Twilio
- AI
- Not needed
- Access
- Sheets edit; Twilio send
Send this to your assistant
Create a ClickRuntime automation: every hour, check my Appointments sheet; text clients 24 hours before their appointment and 2 hours after it with a thank-you, and mark each one sent.
First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.
Why use it
Why teams use this automation
Missed appointments cost independent practitioners real money: physios, tutors, mechanics and groomers all lose a slot when someone forgets. A reminder the day before cuts no-shows dramatically, and a follow-up afterwards brings people back.
Keeping appointments in a sheet and letting reminders and follow-ups send themselves gives you both without a booking system subscription.
What you get out of it
Fewer no-shows
A text the day before reminds clients while there's time to rearrange.
Clients come back
A thank-you after the visit invites the next booking.
No booking system needed
Works from the sheet you already keep.
Nothing sent twice
Sent columns record each reminder and follow-up.
How it works
What happens, step by step
Every hour it reads your Appointments sheet.
Clients with an appointment in the next 24 hours who haven't been reminded get a reminder text.
Clients whose appointment ended a couple of hours ago get a thank-you text.
Each send is marked in the sheet so nobody gets the same text twice.
Before it runs live
- Connect your Google Sheets account and pick the spreadsheets it may use
- Connect Twilio
What you get
Build your own
Need it to work differently?
Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.
Changes you can ask for
- Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
- Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
- Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
- Combine it with other Google Sheets and Twilio steps into one automation
Under the hood
The code that runs this automation
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from twilio.rest import Client
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http
SHEET_ID = "your-spreadsheet-id"
FROM = "+15005550006"
def sms(to, body):
return Client(credentials.secret("TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID"), credentials.secret("TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN")).messages.create(to=to, from_=FROM, body=body)
sheets = lambda: build("sheets", "v4", credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")), cache_discovery=False).spreadsheets().values()
@on_trigger
def run(event):
rows = sheets().get(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, range="Appointments!A2:E").execute().get("values", [])
now, sent = datetime.now(), 0
for i, r in enumerate(rows, start=2):
name, phone, when, reminded, followed = (r + [""] * 5)[:5]
try:
at = datetime.fromisoformat(when)
except ValueError:
continue
if not reminded and now < at <= now + timedelta(hours=24):
sms(phone, f"Hi {name}, a reminder of your appointment on {at:%a %d %b at %H:%M}. Reply if you need to change it.")
col, sent = "D", sent + 1
elif not followed and at + timedelta(hours=2) <= now < at + timedelta(hours=26):
sms(phone, f"Thanks for coming in today, {name}. Book your next visit any time by replying to this text.")
col, sent = "E", sent + 1
else:
continue
sheets().update(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, range=f"Appointments!{col}{i}", valueInputOption="RAW", body={"values": [["sent"]]}).execute()
return {"sent": sent}FAQ
Common questions
What columns are needed?
Can I change the timing?
Can the follow-up ask for a review?
What permissions does it need?
Does it need AI?
How many runs does it use?
Can I change how it works?
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