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Daily

Text appointment reminders and see confirmations in Slack

Clients get a text the day before their appointment, and the team sees in Slack who confirmed, cancelled or wants to reschedule.

Runs
Daily
Apps
Slack, Twilio
AI
Optional
Access
Twilio account SID/token; Slack chat:write

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every day at 10am, text clients with appointments tomorrow asking them to reply YES or NO; when they reply, post who confirmed, cancelled or wants to reschedule to #front-desk.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A front desk at a clinic or salon spends much of the morning phoning tomorrow's clients to confirm. Texts are faster, but replies then land on a phone that one person holds.

Sending reminders automatically and posting each reply in Slack lets the whole front-desk team see confirmations and cancellations as they come in, so empty slots can be refilled quickly.

What you get out of it

  • No confirmation calls

    Reminders go out by text automatically.

  • The whole team sees replies

    Confirmations and cancellations appear in the Slack channel.

  • Cancellations spotted early

    Freed slots are visible the day before, in time to refill.

  • Free-text replies understood

    Replies like 'can we do Thursday instead?' are recognised as reschedule requests.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every day it reads tomorrow's appointments from your bookings feed.

  2. Each client gets a text asking them to reply YES to confirm or NO to cancel.

  3. When a client replies, YES and NO are recognised directly; other replies can be read by AI.

  4. Each reply is posted to your front-desk channel in Slack.

Before it runs live

  • Connect Slack, then invite the app to the channel (type /invite @ClickRuntime there)
  • Connect Twilio

What you get

RunsDaily
Text appointment reminders and see confirmations in Slacktoday, 9:00Succeeded
Slack · #front-desk:calendar: Riley Chen (14:30) reschedule: "Could we do Thursday instead?"

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.
  • 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
  • Change what the AI looks for, or how it writes the result
  • Add another app, for example also send it to Google Sheets
  • Combine it with other Slack and Twilio steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.
sms_appointment_reminders_with_a_slack_log.pyexample
from twilio.rest import Client
from clickruntime import on_trigger, on_event, credentials, http, notify, state, ai

FEED = "https://bookings.example.com/api/tomorrow"
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)

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    appts = http.get(FEED, headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.secret('BOOKINGS_TOKEN')}"}).json()
    for a in appts:
        sms(a["phone"], f"Hi {a['name']}, reminder of your appointment tomorrow at {a['time']}. Reply YES to confirm or NO to cancel.")
        state.set(f"appt:{a['phone']}", {"name": a["name"], "time": a["time"]})
    return {"reminded": len(appts)}

@on_event
def handle(event):
    f = event.json or {}
    appt = state.get(f"appt:{f.get('From')}") or {"name": f.get("From"), "time": "?"}
    body = (f.get("Body") or "").strip()
    intent = {"YES": "confirmed", "NO": "cancelled"}.get(body.upper())
    if not intent:
        try:
            intent = ai.generate(body[:300], system="One word: confirmed, cancelled or reschedule.", max_output_tokens=5).text.strip().lower()
        except ai.AIError:
            intent = "replied"
    notify.slack(f":calendar: {appt['name']} ({appt['time']}) {intent}: \"{body[:200]}\"", channel="#front-desk")
    return {"intent": intent}

FAQ

Common questions

Where do appointments come from?
Any booking tool or sheet that can list tomorrow's appointments at a web address.
Is AI needed to read replies?
No. YES and NO are recognised by rule; AI only helps with free-text replies.
Do I need two trigger links?
No. The daily reminders run on a schedule and replies come to the trigger link set on your Twilio number.
What permissions does it need?
Twilio account SID/token; Slack chat:write. Nothing else in your accounts is used.
Does it need AI?
No, but you can ask for an AI step (for example a summary). It then uses ClickRuntime's built-in AI allowance.
How many runs does it use?
One run each time it runs (daily). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.
Can I change how it works?
Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Set up “Text appointment reminders and see confirmations in Slack” from your assistant

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