Notifications

CalGest sends automated notifications to keep your customers and team informed about appointment activity.

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Notification channels

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Customer notifications

Depending on the event, these can be sent to customers by SMS and/or email:

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Default channels

A new business starts with these channels on: SMS only for the reminder, and email for everything else, so the included SMS go to the message that prevents no-shows. Change any of them in Settings > Notifications, or in the reminders step of the setup wizard. Businesses set up before these defaults keep the channels they have. A channel only reaches customers who have that contact. A customer with no phone number gets no SMS, and CalGest doesn’t email them instead. If some of your customers only have an email address, turn email on as well for the events they should get. Customers with both then get both. With these defaults, an appointment you create as confirmed sends the Booking Confirmed and Appointment Confirmed emails. A confirmation goes to the customer the appointment had when you saved it. If you give the appointment to another customer, or remove its customer, before the confirmation goes out, the first customer gets nothing. CalGest doesn’t send the new customer a confirmation; they get Appointment Updated if that event is on. Reminders always go to the customer the appointment has when they are sent. An appointment SMS that can’t be paid for goes by email if the customer has an address. That happens when the month’s included SMS (or the trial’s 15) and your credits have all run out, and when a number outside Portugal has no credits to pay for it. The switch Send by email when an SMS can’t be sent in Settings > Notifications controls this. It is on by default. Turned off, CalGest sends no email in its place and the message list shows the SMS as not sent; an event that already sends its own email still sends it. See Included appointment SMS.

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Add to calendar

Booking Confirmed and Appointment Confirmed emails have an Add to calendar button. It downloads a calendar file (.ics) with the service, your business name, the time and the location, which the customer’s phone or calendar app adds as an event. Nothing else about the appointment is in the file. The link only works for that one appointment, and stops working if the appointment is cancelled, deleted or moved to another customer. The next confirmation email then carries a new link. SMS messages don’t include it, because a link would make each message longer and cost more.

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Language and sender

Customer messages are written in the organization’s Language for customer messages, set in General settings, whatever language each team member uses CalGest in. Emails come from your business name and show it at the top. Below the footer, each one has a small Bookings by CalGest link (Marcações por CalGest in Portuguese) to the CalGest website. SMS messages don’t carry it.

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Internal (staff) notifications

Internal notifications are system-managed and go to relevant team members in-app and, when enabled on the phone, by push. Only team members who sign in get them; a team member who only takes appointments has no login to receive them. Examples include:

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Configuring notifications

Go to Settings > Notifications to customize:

• Enable/disable SMS and email for each customer notification event
• SMS sender name — the name that appears as the sender (up to 11 characters, defaults to “CalGest”)
• Remove accents from SMS, on by default. See SMS length and accents
• Send by email when an SMS can’t be sent, on by default. See Default channels
• Messages, a ready-made version of each customer message or your own text. See Message templates
• Reminder timing and quiet hours — choose reminder offsets and hours when customer reminders should not be delivered

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Message templates

Expand an event in Settings > Notifications, on the dashboard or in the mobile app, to see its message as the customer gets it: an SMS as a bubble under your sender name, an email as an email. Change message opens it.

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Ready-made versions

Each message comes in ready-made versions: Friendly, Formal and Short for SMS, Friendly and Formal for email, written in the language your customers get messages in. Friendly is the default, the one a new business starts with. Pick a version and it’s saved straight away. Every SMS version fits in one SMS with typical names and dates. Restore default puts the Friendly version back. If you wrote your own text, CalGest asks before a version or the default replaces it. Write with AI drafts a new text from a short instruction; nothing is saved until you choose to. Messages saved before October 2026 may use an older format, where words in square brackets were left out when a detail inside them was missing. CalGest still sends these messages the way it always did, without the brackets, and the preview shows them that way. The exception is brackets that hold only details that are always filled in, such as the business name: they are just as valid in the current format, so CalGest sends them as written. Check the preview if you wrote one. The message card says when a text uses the older format. Pick a version to replace it, or open Customise and choose what each field does when it is empty.

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Write with AI

Write with AI drafts the text of a message for you, on the dashboard and in the mobile app. It’s there for people who can edit notification settings.

1. Choose where to Start from: Rewrite current text or Start from scratch. A text too long to rewrite starts from scratch.
2. Pick a Tone: Friendly, Formal or Short.
3. Optionally add Instructions, such as “Mention that customers should arrive 10 minutes early”.
4. Click Generate. The draft is written in the language for customer messages.

Drafts should only contain links, prices and phone numbers that you gave, in the instructions or in the current text. CalGest compares the draft with those and flags any web address, email address, phone number, price or percentage it can’t match, for you to check. The check is a help, not a guarantee: it misses details written in other ways, such as a price in words, so read every draft before you use it. Drafts never contain emoji. When an SMS draft takes more SMS per message than the standard text, the dialog says so, because each SMS counts against the included SMS or your credits. Nothing changes until you click Use this and then save the message. Writing with AI needs an active subscription and uses the organization’s monthly AI allowance, the same one the AI assistant uses. The request goes to Anthropic, CalGest’s AI provider, in the United States. In the mobile app, CalGest asks before sending anything the first time, and Share data with AI in the app’s privacy settings turns it off. Drafts in the mobile app have a Report action.

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Customise

Customise opens the editor. Names, dates and other details appear in the text as labelled fields, such as First name. Insert one with the buttons below the text, and delete it as one piece with Backspace or Delete. The arrow keys stop on a field before moving past it. The service, the team member and the appointment title can be empty: an appointment may have no service or nobody assigned. Click one of these fields, or select it and press Enter, to choose what happens then:

• Leave out this sentence. “Service: [Service].” disappears from the message when there is no service. This is what a field starts with.
• Write a word instead, up to 20 characters. “with [Team member]” set to write “our team” becomes “with our team”.

The mobile app has the same editor, with one difference: the fields that can be empty in the message are listed under the text, each with these two choices, instead of opening from the field. A sentence ends at a line break, or at ”.”, ”!” or ”?” followed by a space. The only exceptions are a title such as “Dr.” or “Sra.” followed by a name or a field, and an initial after one (“Dr. A. Silva”). Any other abbreviation ends a sentence: “Call us on tel. [Phone].” left without a phone still says “Call us on tel.”, and the “If a detail is missing” line under the preview shows it. Names and services filled in never split a sentence, so “Dr. A. Silva” as a team member’s name is safe. When a sentence is left out, the space or line break around it goes too, and a blank line between paragraphs stays.

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The preview and the SMS count

Next to the text, the preview shows the message exactly as it goes out, with accents removed when that setting is on. Long name and service switches the preview to a long customer name, two services joined, a long team member name and the longest date and time, which is how a busy day’s messages can look. Under an SMS, one line says Fits in 1 SMS or Counts as 2 SMS, and how many characters you have left. When a message takes more than one SMS, the line offers a fix:

• Remove accents, when that alone brings it to one SMS. It turns on Remove accents from SMS for every SMS your business sends, so CalGest asks first. Only people who can change settings see it; others see a note saying it would help.
• Shorten, otherwise. It puts the cursor in the text and marks the part that doesn’t fit.

If a message fits with typical values but a long name or service would push it over, the line says so. Under the preview, a line starting If a detail is missing shows the message with every field that can be empty left empty, when that changes it. Appointment and aftercare SMS to Portuguese numbers come out of the monthly allowance on paid plans, and the first 15 are free during a trial. SMS to numbers abroad use credits. The editor shows no prices. SMS, email, aftercare messages and the editor previews all write dates and times the same way. With DD/MM/YYYY and a 24-hour clock a reminder says “15/03/2026 at 14:30”; with D MMM YYYY and a 12-hour clock it says “15 Mar 2026 at 2:30 PM”. Month names follow the language customer messages are sent in.

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SMS length and accents

One SMS holds 160 characters from the standard SMS alphabet. A single character outside it, such as á, â, ã, ê, í, ó, ô, õ, ú, ç or an emoji, switches the whole message to a format that holds 70. Longer messages are never cut. They go out whole, split into parts of 153 characters, or 67 in the 70-character format, and each part counts as one SMS, both against the included allowance and when paid with credits.

• Accents are removed by default. After the names, service and date are filled in, CalGest replaces accented letters with plain ones and typographic punctuation with the plain kind. “João Conceição” goes out as “Joao Conceicao”, curly quotes become straight quotes, long dashes become ”-” and ”…” becomes ”…”. Emoji and characters with no plain equivalent stay as they are. To send accents, turn off Remove accents from SMS in Settings > Notifications. Each message can then count as two or three SMS.
• SMS templates hold up to 110 characters of text. Fields don’t count, which leaves about 50 characters for the names, service and date filled in. Words written instead of an empty field do count. The editor shows how many characters you have left and won’t save a longer text. Aftercare messages, which go out by SMS, have the same limit. Email templates have none.
• The editor measures the message as it goes out. See The preview and the SMS count.

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Team inbox

Use the bell in the dashboard or mobile Schedule screen to open the in-app inbox. It shows the unread count, supports marking one or all notifications as read, and loads older results as needed. Selecting an appointment notification opens the related appointment.

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SMS costs

On a paid subscription, the plan includes 150 SMS a month to Portuguese (+351) numbers for the first person who takes bookings and 100 for each more, shared by the team. That covers reminders, cancellations, time changes, booking received, booking confirmed, booking declined, appointment confirmed and aftercare. The allowance counts SMS parts, not messages, so a message split into 2 parts uses 2. That is why accents are removed by default; see SMS length and accents. Past the allowance, these messages use your credits, or go by email if you have none. See Included appointment SMS. During a trial, these messages to Portuguese numbers draw from the trial’s 15 SMS instead. Every other SMS uses credits from your SMS balance: messages to numbers outside Portugal, and messages past the included ones. Credits come in packs from €10. You can view your current balance and buy credits in Settings > Usage.