Appointments are now available in ClinDesk

ClinDesk can now help your assistant finish the scheduling loop. When a patient has shared the details your clinic needs, ClinDesk checks availability, proposes concrete times, waits for the patient to choose one, and creates the event only after the confirmation is clear.

The important part is that Calendar stays the source of truth. ClinDesk does not create a second appointment database you have to reconcile at the end of the day. You choose where appointment events should be saved, and you can choose which other calendars count as busy time. If a personal lunch, school pickup, or another clinic calendar is marked busy, ClinDesk plans around it. Events marked free are ignored.

How scheduling works

ClinDesk never treats "can I book?" as permission to book. An open scheduling request gets options first.

Once Appointments are enabled, ClinDesk builds a small set of available slots from your clinic schedule, your enabled visit types, and your busy calendars. It offers up to three concrete times in the patient's chat. If the patient picks one of those times, ClinDesk creates the event only after that confirmation.

Each event includes useful clinic context in the notes: visit type, duration, area or accommodation when relevant, room number, GPS pin if the patient shared one, phone number, allergies, and current medications. The title uses the patient name and the reason for visit, so the calendar is readable without opening ClinDesk.

It respects how your clinic works

Appointments follow the same visit modes you already configure in ClinDesk: clinic visits, home visits, and remote consultations. If a patient has asked for a home visit, available times come from the home-visit schedule. If the clinic allows after-hours care, those slots are marked as after hours and carry the right price evidence for that specific time.

ClinDesk also keeps a lead time before the first bookable slot, so it does not offer something that starts immediately. The current planner looks ahead 30 days and uses one-hour appointments on a 30-minute cadence.

Cancellation is handled too

If a patient with a confirmed appointment writes back to cancel, ClinDesk can remove that event from Calendar and close the active case as a patient cancellation. If the calendar write or delete fails, or if a slot became busy between the offer and the confirmation, ClinDesk does not pretend the appointment is handled. It stops, clears the offered slots, and alerts the doctor to take over.

That fail-closed behavior matters. A scheduling assistant should not say "you are booked" unless the calendar was actually updated.

Where you see it

There is an Appointments workspace in the desktop app. It shows the next 30 days, grouped by day, with ClinDesk appointments and selected busy-time events in the same agenda. Click any row to open the original event in Calendar.

To turn it on, go to Clinic settings, enable Appointments, grant full Calendar access, and choose where ClinDesk should save appointment events. You can read the public feature overview at Appointments.

The goal is simple: fewer back-and-forth messages, fewer copied details, and a calendar that already reflects what the patient confirmed.