Auto-appointment rules let you automatically offer patients an appointment based on how they answer questions in a request, saving your team from manually reviewing and booking every matching request.
Note: If your practice uses PCN settings, you'll need to switch Auto-appointments to Use own settings before you can create rules.
How to set up a rule
Go to Organisation settings → Practice details, and find Auto-appointments.
Click Set auto-appointment rules.
Pick a request topic, then click Add rule.
Under Answers, choose the questionnaire answers that should trigger the offer.
Set the Formula:
ANY — offer the appointment if the patient picks at least one of the selected answers.
ALL — offer the appointment only if the patient picks every selected answer.
Click Configure and choose the appointment to offer — location, delivery, clinician, type, category, and whether it's a double appointment. At least one filter must be set.
Optionally, tick Submit request? If this is left off, a matching patient will be offered the appointment but their request won't be submitted.
Set the booking window — how many days ahead the patient can book, up to 42.
Click Save Settings, then Save changes on Practice details. Saving the modal alone isn't enough — you must also save the Practice details page.
Once set up, whenever a patient completes a request on that topic and their answers match the rule, Anima will offer them an appointment using that template.
Before you save
Anima will block saving unless:
Every rule has answers selected
Each rule has an appointment template with at least one filter set
There are no overlapping rules on the same topic