My patient got an automated reply that said their request could not be processed for an appointment confirmation. Why did this happen?

Introduction & Issue description:
This guide is intended to help your team better understand what is happening when patients see a message saying their appointment cannot be confirmed. This happens when Denticon Patient Communication (DPC) Automated Campaigns try to confirm a cancelled or deleted appointment. 

Signs:

• Patient received a text stating: ”This is an automated response. We could not process your request. Please contact your dentist office.”
• The patient replied Yes, Sì, Confirm, etc. to a message for an appointment that no longer exists. (Ex. appointment was cancelled, deleted, etc.)

Troubleshooting steps:

1. Check the message history of the patient.
2. Review the patient's appointment history.
3. Contact the patient to explain and reschedule.

Best Practices:

If a patient's appointment needs to be removed from the schedule, contact the patient to tell them the appointment has been cancelled and ask them to reschedule.

Advanced troubleshooting steps:

1. Check the message history of the patient.
   1. Select the patient who received the message in Denticon. (ex. search their name or patient ID)
   2. Access the Patient Overview via Home-shaped icon or Patient > Patient Overview dropdown menu.
   3. Click the patient's phone number to access Message Hub.
   4. Scroll through the patient's message history to find the most recent future appointment confirmation message at the time of the patient's reply. If there are multiple, review each of their responses and the applicable patient replies.
2. Review the patient's appointment history.
   1. On the Patient Overview of the same patient as Step 1, review the Appointments area (bottom-left).
   2. Check to see if any appointments here are cancelled by hovering your mouse over the Status field of each appointment.
   3. If the appointment may have been deleted, ask a team member with access to the Reports > Management Reports dropdown menu to run an Audit Trail Report of actions taken within the time frame of the appointment. Deleted appointments will show on this report.
   4. You can also check the Patient > Notes dropdown menu to see the history of appointment changes here.
3. Contact the patient to explain and reschedule.
   1. From the Patient Overview, click the patient's phone number to access Message Hub. You can text the patient to advise the date of the cancelled or deleted appointment and asked them to reschedule with you.

Contact support:
If you have taken these steps and are still having issues, please take screenshots of the error and send them to the Denticon Support Team via Help > Get Help > Submit a Ticket or reply to your existing ticket via Help > Get Help > your name > My Activities > click ticket title. How can I reach Denticon's Customer Care Team for Support?

Conclusion:
When patients attempt to confirm a cancelled or deleted appointment via DPC, they will get a message stating: ”This is an automated response. We could not process your request. Please contact your dentist office.”

Contact your patients directly to reschedule for the best outcomes.