Filters let you control exactly which patients receive your transactional emails. Instead of sending the same email to everyone, you can tailor messages based on appointment type, practitioner, location, and more.
What can you use filters for?
Filters are useful any time you want to send different emails to different groups. Common examples:
New vs Returning patients - Send a detailed welcome pack to first-time patients, and a shorter confirmation to returning patients
Different treatment types - Send specific pre-appointment instructions for physio vs podiatry vs massage
Multi-location practices - Include the correct address, parking info, and contact details for each clinic
Practitioner-specific content - Personalise emails with practitioner bios or specific preparation instructions
Appointment format - Send different information for telehealth vs in-clinic appointments
You can combine filters in countless ways to match how your practice operates.
How filters work
Filter groups
When you create a trigger, and you "Who should receive it?" step, you'll see several filter types grouped into categories:
The essentials - Basic filters like business location. Some are mandatory depending on your trigger type (e.g. cancellation reason for appointment cancelled triggers).
Demographics - Filter by patient sex (generally not recommended - see why)
Appointment - Narrow down by Cliniko appointment category, appointment type, practitioner, or appointment count. ⭐️ This is one of the most useful groups.
Other - Additional filtering options such as medical alerts.
Filter types
Within each group are filter types. You can enable none of them, or several. There's one simple rule to remember:
Filters narrow down your audience. If you don't enable a particular filter, no filtering applies.
For example:
This means if you want to target all practitioners or all appointment types, you don't need to select them all - just leave the filter empty. Only use filters when you need to narrow down to a specific audience.
Multiple selections within one filter type
When you enable a filter, you can make multiple selections within it. For example, you might select 5 appointment types from your list of Cliniko appointment types.
The trigger will target people who book any one of those types.
We call this an "or" condition.
Using multiple filter types
When you enable more than one filter type, the trigger will only send to people who match every filter you've applied.
For example, if you select a practitioner and 5 appointment types, the trigger only sends to people who booked with that practitioner and one of those appointment types.
Because of this, it's important not to over-filter. Only enable filters you actually need.
When you select multiple options within the same filter, your trigger fires if any of them match.
Quick reference
What you do | What happens |
Leave a filter empty | No filtering for that type (targets everything) |
Select multiple options in one filter | Targets any of those options (or) |
Enable multiple filter types | Must match all filters (and) |
Tips
Check for overlapping triggers. Before creating a new trigger for a specific group, check if an existing trigger already covers those patients. If so, update the existing trigger to exclude that group, otherwise patients may receive duplicate emails.
Review triggers after Cliniko changes. If you add new appointment types, categories, or practitioners in Cliniko, check whether your existing triggers need updating.
Use exclude filters for exceptions. Sometimes it's easier to target "everyone except..." rather than selecting every group you want to include.
FAQs
What are the filters available?
What are the filters available?
Check our our filter & trigger glossary which explains all the ways you can use triggers to target specific patients when certain events occur.
Why aren't my emails sending to the patients I expected?
Why aren't my emails sending to the patients I expected?
Check whether you've enabled a filter that's narrowing your audience too much.
A common example: you select several appointment categories, but also select one specific appointment type.
Because both filters are enabled, the trigger only sends to that one appointment type (it must match both filters). If you want all appointments in those categories, leave the appointment type filter empty.
Check out our trigger misconfiguration cheat sheet for more.