Customizing SMS & Email Templates
flow.vet sends your clients two automatic messages whenever you've turned them on in settings: an appointment confirmation and an appointment reminder. You can also send a vaccination recall yourself, by hand, when a booster comes due. Each of these messages ships with ready-made default wording, and you're free to rewrite any of it so it sounds like your clinic. Only the clinic owner and admins can edit the templates.
Where to Find It
Open Settings from the menu at the bottom-left of the screen and find the Email Notifications or SMS Notifications section. In each one there's a Manage email templates button (or Manage SMS templates on the SMS side) that opens the editor.
Default or Custom
Every message starts out on its default text. Click Edit Template to open the form, change the subject and the body, and save — from then on that message uses your custom version, and that's what goes out on the next send. To go back to the original, click Use Default. Either way your custom text isn't thrown away: it stays saved, so you can bring it back anytime with Use Custom.
Emails have both a subject and a body; SMS has just the message. If you serve clients in both Greek and English, you edit each language on its own.
Personalize With Variables
Variables are the little pieces in curly braces that get filled in automatically for each client as the message goes out. To drop one in, place the cursor where you want it and click the variable from the Click to insert list on the right — or simply type it, braces and all.
| Variable | What It Fills In | Available In |
|---|---|---|
{{pet_name}} |
The pet's name | All messages |
{{date}} |
The appointment date | Confirmation, reminder |
{{vet_name}} |
The vet's name | Confirmation, reminder |
{{clinic_name}} |
The clinic's name | All messages |
{{vaccine}} |
The vaccine's name | Vaccination recall |
{{due_date}} |
The booster's due date | Vaccination recall |
A Note on SMS Length
One SMS credit covers 70 characters in Greek and 160 in English — Greek and accented letters take up more room, which is why the Greek limit is lower. If a message runs past that limit, it's split into several parts and charged per part (a 100-character Greek message, for example, counts as 2 credits).
Keep in mind that variables count toward the length too, and they're swapped for their real values only when the message is sent. So something that looks short in the editor can come out longer — a long pet or clinic name, say — and tip over into a second credit. To stay on a single credit, keep the wording tight.
Send a Test First
Before you rely on a template, it's worth sending yourself a test to see exactly what the client will get. On the email page, Send test emails to … sends a copy to your own address. On the SMS page, the first time you use Send test SMS you verify your phone number once; after that you can send up to 5 tests an hour.
Check What Was Sent
The Delivery History tab keeps a log of every message that went out — the date, the type, the pet, who received it, and whether it was delivered.