🏆 What you'll achieve:
A reliable way to tag and target specific patient groups in Cliniko — so you can send them targeted emails or SMS — without using medical alerts.
Time: 15–20 minutes
💡 When would you use this?
Medical alerts are the most common way to tag patients in Cliniko for targeting purposes — but not every team can add them. This method is a great alternative for any situation where you need to identify and communicate with a specific group of patients, such as:
Any patient group that doesn't have a way to distinguish them easily (such as their appointment history). For example:
Insurance or third-party funded patients
Patients who have been referred to your business
Patients in a specific age group
How it works
The idea is simple: you create a special admin-only appointment type in Cliniko — not a real clinical appointment, but a lightweight "tag" — and book each patient into it at the time they're added to your system, or after the fact. This gives Peptalkr something to detect and target.
Once a patient has this dummy appointment, you can:
Trigger an email or SMS to send immediately when the appointment is created (e.g. a welcome email)
Target them in a segment based on appointment history for use in an Automated Journey
Step 1: Create an admin appointment category in Cliniko
First, create a reusable category to house all admin-only appointment types. This keeps your Cliniko calendar organised and makes it easy to exclude these appointments from your real clinical triggers later.
In Cliniko, go to Settings → Appointment types
Click into Categories and create a new category — something like Admin Only or Internal Admin
💡 This category can be reused whenever you need to create other admin-type appointments in future — so it's worth naming it something generic.
Step 2: Create the dummy appointment type
Still in Settings → Appointment types, create a new appointment type
Name it something descriptive — e.g. Admin – Insurance Patient or Admin – Program Enrolment
Assign it to your Admin Only category (created in Step 1)
Set the duration to something very short — 5 or 10 minutes is fine
Assign it to a practitioner (see Step 3 for guidance on which one to use)
Step 3: Decide which practitioner to assign
The dummy appointment needs to sit in someone's calendar. You have a few options:
Option | Best for |
Create a new "Admin" practitioner | You have a spare practitioner seat available. Create a new practitioner (e.g. named Admin or Reception) using your admin email address. Dummy appointments live in their calendar and won't interfere with any real practitioner's availability. |
Add a practitioner role to your admin account | Your admin email already has a Cliniko login. You can add the "practitioner" role to that existing account and use it for dummy appointments. |
Create a new Cliniko "business" for admin use | You want to keep dummy appointments completely separate from real clinic calendars. Create a new Business in Cliniko (this is free) — e.g. call it Admin — and assign your chosen practitioner to it. Dummy appointments booked under this business won't affect availability at your real locations. |
💡 Any of these options works well — it comes down to what feels easiest for your setup. The "separate business" option is great if you want a clean separation between admin and clinical activity.
Step 4: Book patients into the dummy appointment
From now on, whenever a patient in this group is added to Cliniko, your team books them into the dummy appointment type for the same day they're added. It takes seconds and doesn't represent a real clinical booking — it's purely a tagging mechanism.
⚠️ Important: Make sure your team understands this is an admin-only step and not a real appointment. A brief note in your intake SOP is a good idea.
Step 5: Set up your email or SMS trigger in Peptalkr
Now that patients in this group can be identified by their dummy appointment, you can trigger communications to them.
Option A: Target patients with an SMS or Email trigger
If you want to send a welcome email or SMS at the time the patient is added to the dummy appointment type - use the "After an appointment is created" trigger:
Create your email template in Peptalkr as usual (skip if SMS)
Create a new SMS or email trigger
Set the trigger type to: After an appointment is created
Set timing to: 5 minutes (or immediate)
Add a filter: Appointment type → [your dummy appointment type name]
Carry on with the remaining trigger creation steps for email or SMS.
✅ This is the recommended setup for sending a welcome or "book your first appointment" message.
Option B: Target patients in an Automated Journey or Campaign via a segment
Use segments if you want to send a series of emails based on this patient group, or want to send a one off marketing campaign.
In Peptalkr, go to Subscribers → Segments and create a new segment
Set the condition: Appointment type attended → [your dummy appointment type name]
Use this segment as the trigger for your Automated Journey (Subscriber enters a segment)
Step 6: Exclude the dummy appointment from your other triggers
This step is important. Because the dummy appointment is a real entry in Cliniko, it may accidentally trigger other communications — like appointment confirmations, reminders, or follow-ups — unless you exclude it.
For any trigger that uses broad targeting (i.e. no specific appointment type filter), add an exclusion:
Exclude by appointment type: Add a filter to exclude your dummy appointment type from firing
Exclude by business (if using option 3 above): Add a filter to exclude the Admin business entirely
💡 You won't need to do this for every trigger — only those that are broadly targeted. If a trigger is already filtering to specific appointment types (e.g. only Physio Initial Consultations), it won't pick up the dummy appointment type anyway.
🚨 Not sure which triggers need updating? Review each of your active triggers and check whether they use a specific appointment type filter. Any trigger without one should have the dummy appointment type explicitly excluded. See our guide on how to use trigger filters.
Summary: How the full setup works
Step | What you do |
1 | Create an Admin Only category in Cliniko |
2 | Create a dummy appointment type (e.g. Admin – Insurance Patient) assigned to that category |
3 | Decide on a practitioner / calendar to host these bookings |
4 | Book each new patient in this group into the dummy appointment when adding them to Cliniko |
5 | Set up a Peptalkr trigger or segment targeting this appointment type |
6 | Exclude the dummy appointment type from any broadly-targeted existing triggers |
FAQs
Will this dummy appointment show up in clinical reports?
Will this dummy appointment show up in clinical reports?
It may appear in appointment count reports in Cliniko depending on how those reports are filtered. To keep things clean, we recommend assigning the dummy appointment type to its own Admin Only category so it can be easily filtered out of reporting.
Can I use this method for multiple patient groups?
Can I use this method for multiple patient groups?
Yes! Just create a separate dummy appointment type for each group (e.g. Admin – Insurance Patient, Admin – DVA Patient, Admin – Program Enrolment). They can all sit under the same Admin Only category and be targeted independently in Peptalkr.
Does the dummy appointment affect the patient's appointment count?
Does the dummy appointment affect the patient's appointment count?
Yes — if you use appointment count filters in your triggers (e.g. to target new patients with exactly 0 prior appointments), the dummy appointment will contribute to that count. Make sure you account for this when configuring filters, or use appointment type-specific count filters rather than total appointment counts.
What if a patient in this group later books a real appointment — will they get duplicate emails?
What if a patient in this group later books a real appointment — will they get duplicate emails?
Only if your other triggers aren't properly filtered. This is why Step 6 (excluding the dummy appointment from broad triggers) is important. As long as your existing triggers are scoped correctly, real appointment triggers will only fire for real appointments.