Message templates

Templates save you retyping the same answers — opening hours, directions, deposit reminders. This page shows you how to insert one while replying and how to manage the practice's template library.

Insert a template while replying

For email replies, a template with a subject also fills the subject field if it's still empty.

Merge tags

Template bodies can contain merge tags that resolve when the template is inserted:

Location tags resolve against the site set as the automation location in Settings → Practice, falling back to your first location.

A tag that can't be resolved — for example a patient tag in an unlinked conversation — is inserted as blank text, never as raw braces.

WhatsApp templates and Meta approval

WhatsApp only allows free-text messages within 24 hours of the patient's last message. Outside that window — and when starting a new WhatsApp conversation — you must send a template that Meta has approved for your account.

Smileline handles the approval for you. Every WhatsApp-channel template is submitted to Meta automatically:

• The standard reminder set (booking confirmation, appointment moved, 48-hour and 24-hour reminders, after your visit, missed appointment, cancellation) comes with every practice as WhatsApp templates. They are submitted the moment your WhatsApp connection is active.
• A WhatsApp template you write yourself is submitted within a few minutes of saving it.
• Templates you already created in WhatsApp Manager are imported into the list, with their Meta status.

Each WhatsApp template shows its status in Settings → Templates:

The merge tags in your text become Meta's placeholders in the order they appear, so what you see in Smileline is what Meta approves and what sends. Each merge tag can appear only once in a WhatsApp template, because Meta rejects a template that reuses a placeholder; the editor tells you if you repeat one.

Choose a Category when you write the template: Utility for appointment confirmations, reminders and account updates, Marketing for offers and promotions. Meta reviews the category too and may re-file it — the template then shows the category Meta chose. Marketing templates cost more per message, are subject to WhatsApp's marketing opt-out, and are not delivered to US numbers. Language defaults to your practice's country; pick another when the text is written in a different language.

Editing an approved template

Saving a change to an approved template sends the new text to Meta as a new version. The approved text keeps sending until the new version is approved, at which point the template switches over — nothing is interrupted, and reminders already scheduled with the old text keep working. Smileline asks you to confirm before it submits. A change that only swaps one merge tag for another — {{patient.firstName}} for {{patient.preferredName}}, say — does not go back to Meta at all, because Meta's copy is unchanged.

Imported templates

A template created in WhatsApp Manager arrives with Meta's numbered placeholders ({{1}}, {{2}}, …). Replace each one with a merge tag and save; the template is then ready to send without going back to Meta. A template that uses features Smileline cannot fill yet — named parameters, a picture or document header, buttons with variables, or an authentication template — is shown read-only with the reason.

Manage the template library

Templates live in Settings → Templates. Owners and managers can create and edit them; everyone else can use them in the composer.

It is the same editor everywhere a template is edited, including the Edit template button inside an automation step — so an email keeps its design no matter where you change it.

To retire a template, click Archive on its row — it disappears from the composer but stays in the list, and Restore brings it back.

The email visual editor

Email templates are written in a visual editor rather than a plain text box.

• Plain paragraphs read like a personal email — that is the default, and usually the right one for a follow-up.
• Type / for layout blocks: headings, lists, quotes, buttons, dividers, sections and columns.
• Type { to search the merge tags and insert one. Keep typing to filter the list, then press Enter, or click the one you want.
• Select text to get formatting options.
• Click Image to add a picture, or paste and drag one straight into the body.
• Press Escape once to close an open menu, and again to close the dialog.

Images

Click Image below the editor to upload a picture or reuse one you have already uploaded. Anything you upload joins your practice's image library and stays available in every template, campaign and reply, so a logo only needs uploading once.

Use JPEG, PNG or GIF, up to 2 MB each. Images are hosted for you and load from a link in the email, so keep them small enough to appear quickly on a phone.

Deleting an image from the library breaks it in emails you have already sent, because those emails load it from that same link. Leave it in place unless you want it gone everywhere.

Many people read email with images switched off, so never put words that matter, such as an appointment time or a cancellation link, inside a picture.

Writing the HTML yourself

Some emails are easier to paste than to rebuild — a design an agency sent you, a layout with its own styling, a newsletter you already use elsewhere. Above the body, switch from Visual to HTML and write the markup directly.

Your HTML is sent untouched, style blocks and all, so responsive layouts keep working. SmileLine builds the plain-text version of the email from your markup automatically, for the small number of people whose mail app cannot show HTML — which is why a design made only of images is refused unless it has a subject to fall back on.

An HTML template cannot be re-opened in the visual editor with its markup intact — the visual editor only understands its own blocks. Keep a template in one mode or the other.