Atla Flow automates the repetitive messaging around your clinic — welcome emails, cancellation follow-ups, tags, recalls and in-app alerts — so they happen on their own. Find it in the sidebar under Engage → Atla Flow. Only owners and managers can create or change flows.
Booking confirmations and reminders aren't built here. Atlacare already sends those, and you control them under Campaigns.
How a flow works
Every flow has two parts:
- A trigger — the event that starts it, such as a patient being created, an appointment being booked, or an appointment being cancelled.
- One or more actions — what happens next, such as sending an email or SMS to the patient, adding a tag, creating a recall, sending an in-app alert, or waiting a set time. A few actions in the list (emailing a practitioner or admin, creating a task or invoice and adding to a waitlist) are marked Coming soon and can't be used in a flow yet. Flows can't charge patients or take cancellation fees.
When the trigger fires, Atla Flow runs the actions automatically. A flow is a Draft until you switch it on, then Active or Paused with the switch on its card, so you control exactly when it's live.
Start with a template
The quickest way in is a ready-made template. Under Start from a template on the Atla Flow page you'll see:
- Welcome new patient — a welcome email when a new patient record is created.
- Cancellation follow-up — a rebooking email when a patient cancels.
Click Open in canvas, adjust the wording to sound like your clinic, and switch the flow on. Placeholders like the patient's first name and your clinic name fill in automatically for each message.
Build your own
Click New flow to build one from scratch: choose a trigger, add your actions, write the message, and switch it on. Each card under Your flows shows how many times the flow has run and when it last ran, and the run history icon shows each run, so you can tell it's working.
The flow editor needs a larger screen. On a phone you can see your flows and switch them on or off, but open Atlacare on a tablet or computer to edit them.
A note on sending
Flow emails and texts send only on paid plans. On the Free plan, flows can't send emails or texts to patients. Automated SMS also needs SMS switched on (included texts first, then 5p pay-as-you-go), and messages respect your patients' consent and communication preferences — the same rules that apply everywhere else in Atlacare.
Every text comes from the sender name Atlacare, so patients always see one name they recognise, and your clinic's name is always in the message itself.
New clinics: after you move to a paid plan, the Atlacare team does a quick welcome check that your clinic is a real practice, usually within one working day. Until then you can build flows, but their emails and texts are paused. For the first 30 days after you're verified, flow and campaign emails are limited to 30 a day; confirmations and reminders don't count. See why is my clinic being verified?
Want help designing a flow for a specific routine? Click the Help icon (?) in the top bar and send us a message from the bottom of the help centre.