We were hoping to be able to automate aftercare instructions, eventually for all treatment items, but initially to start with extractions. So when a patient has an extraction done, they would immediately have after care instructions emailed to them. We trialled this, however, it was only possible to send the automated email, to be initiated by the appointment reason. This caused several issues, such as patient booked in for urgent, who had an extraction, wouldnt get the aftercare instructions. Or, patient booked for extraction, but then changed their mind on the day, would then get aftercare instructions even though the treatment hasn’t gone ahead. I have been told that it is not possible to have automations run of the actual treatment item. Has anyone managed to automate aftercare instructions / information successfully? Or, has anyone used something like Zapier to automate emails from their own practice emails rather than relying on dentallys email system?
Hey 
At the moment Dentally’s automations only know about appointment events ( “created” and “updated” ). They don’t get told when a treatment item is actually completed, which is why the standard automation either misses real extractions or fires when nothing was done.
I’ve got two work-arounds practices have managed to get going. They’re not perfect, but they do plug the gap for now:
1. The “quick diary tweak”
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When an urgent slot turns into an extraction, the clinician (or nurse) edits the appointment reason to Extraction before they press “Completed”.
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Because the appointment reason now matches your existing automation rule, the after-care email goes out as soon as the appointment saves.
It’s simple and uses Dentally’s own tools, nothing extra to buy or connect. The downside is the human factor: if the team forgets to flip the reason, no email.
2. A lightweight Zapier flow (a bit more techy as it may require fiddling with webhooks)
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Use the private Dentally Zapier app
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Trigger: Appointment Updated.
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Zapier filter step:
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state = “Completed” and
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treatment_description (the free-text notes field) contains “Extraction”.
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Action: send your after-care template from Gmail / Outlook etc.
Once it’s running, it’s hands-off. You’ll see a minute or two delay, it uses a Zapier task each time, and the filter relies on someone typing “extraction” (spelling counts!). Keep in mind that in this case the email is fired outside Dentally, the patient record stays blank.
If you need a paper trail, you could add a step in your Zap that calls Dentally’s Create Note endpoint and drops something like “Sent extraction after-care via Gmail” onto the chart. Also remember that the message is subject to your practice email account’s security and retention rules.
I’ll pass your feedback to Product so they can see another real-world need for a proper treatment-completed trigger. No promises or timelines yet, but the team is exploring deeper automation and AI-driven features.
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