In short
- Patients book, change and cancel each sitting on your clinic’s WhatsApp number, at any hour, mostly by tapping buttons.
- Every sitting is its own booking, with its own token number and booking ID.
- Slot length is set for the clinic or the dentist, not per procedure. For a long procedure, an owner or admin can hold the next slot.
- TurnDesk handles appointments only: no charting, X-rays, payments or reminders.
Treatments over several sittings
Treatments such as a root canal or a crown often run over more than one sitting. Patients fit those sittings around work, college and family, and now and then one has to move. Each change usually means a phone call, and the desk takes those calls between procedures, often while the patient at the counter is waiting.
With TurnDesk, patients book, move and cancel sittings themselves on WhatsApp, at any hour, including when the clinic is closed. They send “Hi” to your clinic’s number, pick an open day and time, and get the confirmation in the chat straight away. Your team sees the booking in the dashboard. To see the patient’s side step by step, read our guide on how to book, change or cancel a doctor’s appointment on WhatsApp.
Booking each sitting
A patient sends “Hi” and gets “Namaste! Welcome to” your clinic’s name, with three buttons. They tap Book appointment, choose Myself or Family member, type the patient’s full name, pick a day and a time, check the summary and tap Confirm booking. The name is the only thing they type; the rest is taps. The greeting and the name, day and time questions carry Hindi prompts in Roman script beside the English.
The confirmation arrives in the chat with a token number, the patient, date and time, and a booking ID such as APT-7K2M9Q, and ends “Please show this message at the clinic.”
Each sitting is a separate booking with its own booking ID and its own token. When your dentist asks a patient to come back, the patient books the next sitting the same way. My appointment lists every upcoming sitting booked from that WhatsApp number, each with the patient’s name, date, time and token. A parent can book a child’s sittings from their own phone, and each booking keeps the child’s name.
Two limits to plan around. The day list shows at most the next 10 days that have open times, and the time list shows the earliest 10 open times on the chosen day, so a sitting due in a month is booked closer to the date. And your staff can’t book a sitting for the patient in the dashboard: every booking comes in through WhatsApp, so a patient who wants the next sitting fixed can book it on their own phone before they leave the clinic.
TurnDesk doesn’t plan treatment sequences, link sittings together or remind patients when the next one is due.
Chair time: one slot length per dentist
This is the part to be clear about before you start. Slot length is set in minutes, for the whole clinic or for one dentist, and is 30 minutes unless you change it. Patients per slot sets how many bookings each slot takes; keep it at 1 if your dentist works at a single chair.
Durations aren’t set per procedure. Patients pick a time on WhatsApp, not a treatment, so TurnDesk doesn’t know whether a sitting is a check-up or a root canal. An owner or admin can work with this in two ways:
- Set the slot length to suit a typical sitting at your clinic, so most visits fit in one slot.
- Hold the next slot after a long procedure. When a patient books a sitting you know will run long, reserve or block the following slot or slots in the dashboard, so WhatsApp doesn’t offer them. If the time turns out not to be needed, reopen them and WhatsApp offers them again.
The second way works only if the next slot is still free. If another patient has already booked it, reserving or blocking it doesn’t move or cancel that booking, and TurnDesk can’t message that patient for you. A daily limit can also cap how many appointments your dentist takes in a day.
Rescheduling without the back-and-forth
When a sitting has to move, the patient sends Hi, taps My appointment, picks the booking and taps Change time. They are offered only days and times that are open. Before anything changes, they see the current and new times side by side, then tap Confirm change, or Keep current time to leave it as it was. The chat confirms with “Appointment changed”, the token and the booking ID.
The booking ID stays the same. If the sitting moves to another time on the same day, it keeps its token; if it moves to another day, it gets that day’s next token.
Cancelling is just as short: Cancel appointment, then Yes, cancel. The slot is freed straight away, and another patient can book it.
Patients can change or cancel until the appointment’s time has passed. There is no cancellation cut-off, deposit or no-show fee setting. Owners and admins can also move or cancel a booking from the dashboard, but TurnDesk doesn’t send the patient a message when they do.
Your dentist’s week
Your dentist’s schedule is set in the dashboard, and WhatsApp follows the same rules, so a change there changes what patients are offered right away. You can set:
- up to two sessions a day, such as a morning and an evening session; a day left blank is a day off;
- one-off hours for a single date: closed all day, or open at different hours;
- blocked time for any stretch of dates and times, with a reason (for example, hours your dentist spends at another practice; this is only an illustration);
- a daily limit on appointments, with a different limit for a single date if needed;
- a minimum notice before a slot, and whether patients can book for the same day.
Blocking time or closing a day doesn’t cancel the bookings already in it or message those patients; they stay booked. For the full set of rules, read how a WhatsApp appointment booking system works for a clinic in India, or see the TurnDesk clinic dashboard on our home page.
Toothache at night
A patient with a toothache at night can message your number at any hour and book the next open time your rules allow. Same-day booking and minimum notice still apply: if they rule out the next few hours, the patient sees the next times that are open.
TurnDesk only books appointments. It gives no advice, doesn’t ask about symptoms and is not for emergencies. In a medical emergency, contact emergency services or go to the nearest hospital.
What stays outside TurnDesk
TurnDesk handles appointments and nothing else. These stay in your existing records and systems:
- charting, treatment plans and clinical notes;
- X-rays and other images;
- lab work;
- consent forms;
- billing, payments and deposits (TurnDesk takes no payments).
It has no integrations with other software. It stores only what booking needs: the patient’s WhatsApp number, the names given, the appointments and the current booking step. It doesn’t ask for medical information and there is nowhere to enter it, and the dashboard shows patients’ names but never their phone numbers. Our Privacy Policy has the details.
Visiting specialists can’t be booked separately on WhatsApp, because booking runs for one active doctor per clinic number and patients can’t choose a doctor. If one dentist runs the practice, our page on WhatsApp appointment booking for doctors who run their own clinic covers that set-up in more detail.
Getting started
TurnDesk sets up each clinic with you; there is no self-signup. Email hello@turndesk.in with your clinic’s name and city, the dentist and usual working hours, and how patients book today. Pricing is agreed with each clinic in writing before anything is charged.
Your number is connected through Meta’s official WhatsApp Business Platform, and it can’t be used in the WhatsApp Business app at the same time. Our guide to the WhatsApp Business app vs the WhatsApp Business Platform for clinics explains the difference, and we help you plan the switch.