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Reminders and Messages

Jorge Ferreira Filho
  • Updated

Who can use this feature?

Available on ChiliCal (My App)
Available to All Users
Billing Center Get a Demo

Decrease no-shows and increase meeting completion rates with Reminders. Below, we will cover how to set up your reminders and maximize your meeting attendance!

Table of Contents

Where can I find my Reminders?

Reminders are associated with Meeting Types, so they can be found in the Reminders and Messages page of each Meeting Type:

Personal Meeting Types can be found in MyApp, within the Meeting Types option in the left-hand menu

Team Meeting Types can be found by Admins and Workspace Managers in each workspace under Assets

Creating and Updating Reminders

After reaching the Reminders and Messages page of your Meeting Type (more details in the Where can I find my Reminders? section), you can click Add Reminder to add an existing Reminder or create new one based in our pre-defined templates or from scratch.

The page will also list any Reminders that are already associated to the Meeting Type. To edit them, click Edit Reminder

Removing from a Meeting Type vs. Deleting a Reminder

While clicking the three dots next to an associated Reminder, you will an option called Remove from Meeting Type, and another one called Delete.

Reminders are re-usable assets, meaning you can associate one Reminder with multiple Meeting Types. That being said, let's see the difference between both:

  • Remove from Meeting Type: This will remove the Reminder from a Meeting Type, but will not fully delete it. This means the Reminder will still be associated with other Meeting Types, being removed only for the one(s) you selected.

  • Delete: This will fully delete the Reminder and remove it from all Meeting Types using it. 

Duplicating a Reminder

You can duplicate a Reminder with just two-clicks: click the three dots next to the Reminder you want to duplicate, and then click Duplicate.

This will create an exact copy from the original one, saving manual efforts while setting a new one.

Reminder Type

Chili Piper works with two types of reminders: Email and SMS. While adding a new Reminder, you can select its type in the left sidebar:

If you want to work with SMS reminders, there are some requirements you must follow to ensure they will work as expected:

  • A Chili Piper Admin must connect Twilio to your company's Admin Center Integrations page. Click here to check this process in more detail.
  • You must have a Phone field in your Guest Form as this Phone will be used to send the reminder to.

Templates

We will also provide some commonly used templates on the reminder creation initial screen to speed up the setup for you.

Click the template you want to use and a Preview will be displayed on the right to get a better idea of how it will look.

You can still edit the Reminder even if you proceed with one of the pre-defined templates.

Preview

On the right-hand side, you will notice a Preview section. All updates to your Reminder will be reflected in this Preview, so you can better understand what your Reminder is looking like now. 

Dynamic Tags will not be filled out in the Preview mode, but they should work effectively for the Reminders.

General

Reminder Name

Within this field, we will define the Reminder's name, which will be useful for easily finding it and quickly associating it with the required meeting types. 

We recommend using something that easily tells you what the Reminder does, like "Email 1 hour before" or "Email 24 hours if not accepted".

Send Email To

This option is only available for Email reminders and defines whether the Reminder should be sent to the Primary Guest or All Guests involved in the meeting. Using ChiliCal's Scheduler, the Main Guest can be defined during the booking process.

 

Send Replies Emails To

This option is only available for Email reminders that belong to Team Workspaces. This is not available for end-user Reminders created in MyApp.

This one defines to which person an email reply from a Reminder should go: either the Booker or Host. If there's no Booker in the booking process, replies will fall back to the Host.

 

Send SMS To

This option is only available for SMS reminders, and you can enable local presence (local area numbers) when these texts are sent out (available for specific countries only) while using the "Local Area Number" option.

When should we send it?

Now, it's time to define under which circumstance it needs to be triggered. There are a couple of options available to be selected:

  • Before the Meeting: The reminder will be sent at a pre-defined time before the meeting.

  • Before the Meeting - if the Primary Guest did not respond: the Reminder will be sent before the meeting at a pre-defined time, however, only if the Primary Guest has not responded to the invite (Accepted or Declined). 

  • After the Meeting: The reminder will be sent after the meeting at a pre-defined time. This is a useful option for follow-up emails, for example.

After selecting the Reminder's behavior, it's time to select when it needs to be triggered. In the example below, we set a Reminder to be sent 2 hours before the meeting, if the Primary Guest did not respond:

Besides hours, you can also select minutes, days, or weeks.

Message

Over here, the message your Guests (prospects) see when the reminder is received will be built.

Subject

The first place to update is the "Subject" field, which, as the name suggests, will define the e-mail subject. Normally, it's used to bring the guests' attention about the upcoming meeting, or any follow-ups if you are sending it after the meeting.

 

Body

At the body, guests will normally find more details about the meeting, like links, the meeting time, URLs, or any other details that may help them confirm the meeting or access any data before it.

After clicking the Body field, you will notice that dynamic tags will be made available. You can use dynamic tags to dynamically populate any relevant data, like using the CP.Guest.FirstName tag to salute your Guest:

Advanced Settings

You can also specify if the reminder should be triggered on specific days of the week to avoid sending e-mails to your prospects at certain times. 

For example, if your reminder is set to one day before the meeting and the meeting starts on Monday, you may want to avoid sending it on Sunday. 

 

Send only if meeting starts at certain time

You will see two options:

  • No Restriction: as the name suggests, the reminder will be sent with no day-wise or any other restrictions.

  • Send only if meeting starts on: When this option is selected, you will see the weekdays and checkboxes to select if you would like to create any day-wise restrictions, like the example we mentioned above. 

Send if the meeting was booked more than selected timeframe

While enabled, this setting determines whether the reminder should be sent only within a specific timeframe. For example, let's use the criteria below:

In this example, the reminder will be sent only if the meeting is booked one week in advance from the current booking date.

That being said, if we have a scenario where a prospect books a meeting for one day in advance, the reminder will not be sent.

However, if the prospect books for 10 days in advance, the reminder will be sent.

How do I know if a Reminder was Sent?

If you are a Chili Piper or Workspace Admin, you can:

  1. Navigate to the Meetings Activity panel in the left-hand menu. Please take a look at this article to learn more about this feature.


  2. Select the meeting you want to check the Reminders' status and click "Open"


  3. An information panel will open on the right-hand side. Scroll down to find all reminders associated with the selected meeting and their respective status.


  4. Reminders can have three statuses:
    • Scheduled: The reminder's time to be triggered hasn't been reached yet. For example, the reminder is set to be set one day before the meeting, and you are checking two days before the meeting.

    • Sent: The reminder was sent.

    • Skipped: The reminder wasn't sent. Hover the mouse in the Skipped flag to check why it wasn't sent:


Why was a Reminder Skipped?

There are some reasons a reminder can be skipped:

  • Reminder schedule time in the past: This error can appear if the reminder's trigger time is already in the past. For example, suppose you have a Reminder to be sent two days before the meeting, but the meeting was scheduled one day before its start time. 

  • Reminder condition not satisfied: This happens if your reminder has any conditions to be met before being sent, and they were not met. For example, your reminder is set to be sent only if the main guest does not respond but responds to the meeting invite.

  • Recipient not found: You may see this error if the recipient (email) set to receive the Reminder (the meeting's Primary Guest) is not found in the meeting.

  • Phone not found: This happens for SMS reminders when a phone wasn't found for the reminder to be delivered. You may want to check if your template's form asks for a Phone or if the prospect has provided a valid one.

  • Violated restriction: This happens if:
    • The meeting has any restrictions (day or time-wise) that can make the Reminder not be sent. For example, the Reminder is set to be sent only if the meeting starts on Monday and Tuesday but the meeting starts on Wednesday.

    • The meeting was booked outside the Reminder's timeframe. For example, you have a Reminder set to be sent one week before the meeting, but the meeting was booked three days in advance.

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