MakePlans Calendar and Appointments

BestRx offers an optional integration with MakePlans that allows pharmacies to have patients preview and schedule available appointment windows at the pharmacy from the COVID-19 Online registration portal.

To use the integration, you will need to make and configure your own MakePlans account from MakePlans.net. From there, you can click on “Free Trial” to register and they have the first 14 days free.

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Unique URL: Customizes the URL link to be given to patients. Should ideally be the name of the pharmacy, as this will be the URL of the booking site used for the integration setup later on (pharmacy.makeplans.net, for example).

Time Zone: The time zone selection here should indicate the time zone of your pharmacy and patients. Make sure to select the correct time zone.

MakePlans Account Configuration

After completing the sign-up above, your account will need to be configured on the MakePlans website before the integration can be set up.

You will need to setup your MakePlans Service Name, such as “COVID-19 Vaccine”, with a duration of 20 Minutes, as well as their Resource Name such as “COVID-19 Vaccine”. Here, you can click on availability, and for now deselect all the available slots. As your supply of vaccine doses isn’t infinite, you will want to have it configured to only allow for specific dates, allowing you to control how many appointments are available.

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Next, we will see the MakePlans calendar. We can click on the gear in the upper right corner to go into setup and begin configuring the account and resources.

Under Services-> COVID-19 Vaccine Registration (20 Minutes), you can edit how many appointments per calendar slot you want to make available; for example, if you want to vaccinate two patients in the same time window, it would be configured here.

Under → Booking Site → “Verification method for new reservations”, change this option from SMS to “No Verification (not recommended)”. This is because BestRx will be handling the API for scheduling, and won’t require a verification.

Under → “Notifications - customer”: At the top, de-select Send SMS Reminders, then below the top section is a sub header for “Automatic messages (in the admin system and the API)”; every option in this lower section all the way to the bottom of the page needs to be configured to deactivate outgoing SMS messages. This is because BestRx is handling the confirmation messages sent to patient with our email/messaging system.

Under → “Notifications - User”: You will need to uncheck the boxes for Email and SMS messages for each reservation, otherwise your pharmacy will get too many notifications.

Next, we need to show the pharmacy how to choose which days to open up for appointments and adjust appointment windows. Click on the “Calendar” button in between Agenda, and Customers along the top of the screen.

In a weekly lay-out you can click on the clock button pictured below to get the weeks appointment outlook. From there they can activate a particular day, and for a certain number of hours and appointments.

Here they can specify which days have appointments and what hours they have available to make appointments in.

MakePlans Integration Setup

The BestRx system will need some information from your MakePlans setup in order to complete the interface setup, namely an API Key, and your Booking Site URL.

Booking Site URL

MakePlans.net → Setup → Booking Site → “Your booking site is available at pharmacyname.MakePlans.net” → Copy the URL somewhere for reference.

API Key

MakePlans.net → Setup → Integrations → API (near the bottom of the page) → Click on link to “Enable API” → Copy the API-Key somewhere for reference.

Next, we will need to input this into BestRx: BestRx → Misc. → Interface Setups → COVID-19 Immunization Registration

After inputting your pharmacy’s URL and API key, click on Get Calendar and it will load the resources tied to your MakePlans account. For now, only one resource should be available, which is the one you just created: “COVID-19 Vaccine Registration”. The status should say “Active”, and then you can save. Now, when your patients access your pharmacy’s COVID-19 Registration Portal, it will show a calendar with available appointments windows for patients to schedule.

Only available appointments should show, on days you selected to have open availability. Customers typically have the ability to cancel appointments they make when a pharmacy has a MakePlans integration; however we will not be using this service with this integration, so patients will not be able to cancel through MakePlans or the registration portal. Patients must call your pharmacy to re-schedule the appointment instead. Communication for confirming appointments is handled by BestRx email/messaging.