Troubleshooting Patient Self-Scheduling Issues in the SigmaMD Patient Mobile App

If a patient is unable to find availability for self-scheduling in the SigmaMD mobile app, there may be several reasons. Below are the possible causes and how to resolve them.

Check for existing events blocking availability

Any appointment or other event on the clinician's SigmaMD calendar prevents self-scheduling during those times. Blocks also prevent self-scheduling if the "Block calendar" option is turned on.

This includes Busy events from a clinician's connected Google or Microsoft calendar, which appear on the grid as External event unless the clinician shows their titles. To stop them blocking booking, the clinician sets the calendar to SigmaMD to Google or SigmaMD to Microsoft under Sync settings in their own external calendar settings (Personal Settings > Integrations); patients can then book over those events. A calendar marked Connection expired keeps blocking times with the events from its last sync, even ones since deleted, until the clinician clicks Reconnect.

Watch for all-day events. An all-day event marked Busy — whether created in SigmaMD or synced in from Google or Microsoft — makes the entire day unavailable for patient booking, not just the hours it appears to cover on the grid. A birthday, travel day, or out-of-office marker sitting on a clinic day will empty that day completely. If one specific date shows no availability, check it for an all-day event first. See Why External Calendar Events Aren't Blocking Patient Scheduling.

Verify calendar availability and shifts

Each clinician's availability is set in their calendar, under Practice Settings > Scheduling > Calendars.

• The clinician's calendar may have no availability, or it may be set incorrectly.
• Shifts may be configured to exclude specific visit or appointment types, which can limit availability.

Important:

• If you add new appointment types in Practice Settings, you must manually turn them on in each shift of the calendar's availability.
• Admins can update any calendar; other team members can update only their own.

To check or update a calendar, hover over it in Calendars and click Manage calendar. Click a shift to see its appointment and visit types, then click Edit availability to change them, or click Availability to add hours.

Verify the settings for each appointment type

In Practice Settings > Scheduling > Appointment types, hover over each appointment type and click Manage appointment type to review its settings.

Restricting an appointment type to a specific location

To control where an appointment type appears, use the Locations setting within the appointment configuration. Select only the clinic(s) where this appointment should be available. Avoid using All locations unless the appointment is intended to be offered across your entire clinic. If patients from one clinic are seeing an appointment type that doesn't apply to them, set it to the correct clinic to remove it from the wrong patients' scheduling view.

Choosing Bookable Clinicians

Use the Bookable calendars setting to control which clinicians are available for each appointment type. Each bookable clinician also needs availability in their calendar (see "Verify calendar availability and shifts" above).

• All clinicians — The appointment type is available for every clinician.
• Patient assigned clinician — Patients can only book this visit with the clinician assigned to their chart.
• Selected clinicians — Choose one or more clinicians who can be booked for this appointment type.
• Bookable resources — Patients book a selected resource, such as a room or equipment, instead of a clinician.

Self-scheduling settings to check

• Ensure Enable patient self-scheduling is turned on.

• Earliest time period for booking and Maximum time period for booking determine how soon and how far ahead patients can book. For example, an earliest period of 1 hour allows same-day bookings with notice; a maximum period of 2 weeks limits booking to two weeks ahead.

  Important: if the maximum time period is shorter than the gap between the days you actually see patients, the calendar will look empty most of the time. A clinician who works Thursdays and Fridays with a maximum period of 2 days offers nothing bookable from Saturday through Monday, because that two-day window never reaches a clinic day. This most often shows up on urgent or same-week appointment types with short windows. If you work only a few days a week, set the maximum time period wide enough to reach at least two of your clinic days.

• Visit types — patients see only the visit types turned on for the appointment type.
• Availability — a patient who has never been seen won't see a type set to After first visit only, and a patient who has been seen won't see one set to First visit only. Archived, Canceled and No show appointments don't count as visits; imported patients count as seen. If a type is missing for some patients but not others, check this setting first.
• Daily limit — when Max appointments per day is on, the appointment type stops being offered on that day once the limit is reached. With per location, the limit applies to each location; with per clinician, to each clinician across all locations. Appointments your team books count too, while Canceled, No show and Archived ones don't. If one date, or one clinician, has no times for this type while others do, check this limit first.
• Patient memberships: Check that the patient matches the appointment type's membership rule. Under All memberships and Selected memberships, only active memberships count by default. A membership with a future start date is Deferred, and a paused one is Paused. To let these patients book, turn on Allow deferred memberships or Allow paused memberships on that appointment type.

Once these settings line up, the clinician's open times appear in the patient app.