Archiving an appointment type or Practitioner in Cliniko can affect Peptalkr communications. Most of the time there is no impact, but if you have patients with upcoming appointments with an archived appointment type or Practitioner, Peptalkr triggers won't reach them.
Cliniko allows you to:
Archive appointment types
Archive businesses
Delete appointment categories
Make Practitioners inactive
Archive products and billable items
This is useful when keeping your account organised and up to date. For example:
However, this can cause issues if upcoming appointments are still linked to those archived/inactive items.
Please note - anything you delete/archive will no longer be targeted by any trigger. The same applies to businesses, practitioners, products and billable items. This matters if your triggers are targeting them specifically and you now need to update their targeting.
Appointment types
Peptalkr transactional email triggers are often targeting specific appointment types, so when an appointment type is archived, it can lead to missed communications if you have a trigger targeting that appointment type.
This article explains:
Why archived appointment types cause issues.
How to identify affected appointments.
What steps to take to fix the problem.
What happens when an appointment type is archived
When you archive an appointment type in Cliniko:
Existing upcoming appointments will still be linked to the now-archived appointment type.
Triggers in Peptalkr stop targeting archived appointment types, so emails (like reminders) aren’t sent for affected appointments.
Cliniko doesn’t alert you when you are archiving an appointment, that future appointments are still associated to it.
Resolving the issue
1. Review your appointment types and triggers
Keep your Cliniko appointment types tidy:
Before archiving an appointment type, check if any appointments are using it.
Update those appointments to a use the replacement appointment type (Rename the appointment type instead of archiving it where possible)
Hold off on archiving it until future appointments using it have passed. Consider hiding it from online bookings instead, or change the name to contain 'Archived' temporarily to make it clear this type is soon going away so staff don't inadvertently use it.
3. Be proactive with triggers in Peptalkr
To prevent issues with Peptalkr:
Regularly review triggers in Peptalkr to ensure they’re targeting active appointment types.
Avoid archiving appointment types without first checking associated appointments and triggers.
Practitioners
When a practitioner is made inactive, transactional emails sent any duration after an appointment will work as expected. But if you have triggers targeting upcoming appointments with that specific practitioner applied as a filter - it won't work once the practitioner is archived.
Ensure you reassign appointments to another practitioner before making them inactive, and edit your triggers at need to remove practitioner-specific targeting for the inactive practitioner.
Businesses
When a business is archived, it is automatically excluded from all Peptalkr triggers that were previously targeting it.
FAQs
What happens to emails if an appointment type is archived?
Peptalkr stops sending emails for appointments linked to archived types, as it can no longer target them.
Can I still book new appointments with an archived type?
No, Cliniko won’t allow new bookings with archived types, but older appointments will remain unless manually updated.
Why doesn’t Cliniko warn about this?
Cliniko doesn’t currently notify users about future appointments tied to archived types. We’re raising this issue with their team to explore potential solutions but can't make any promises.
What happens to emails if an appointment type is renamed?
Peptalkr will still send emails configured to target that appointment type as normal - provided you are renaming an existing appointment type, there isn't a problem. Note that if you are inserting the appointment type name into emails as a variable, this will automatically update to the new name as well.