Guide
Set up schedules, book patients, and keep your day running smoothly with the Kanban board.
Give each provider full control over their availability with recurring and one-off schedules.
Navigate to Scheduling → My Availability. For each day of the week, set your start time, end time, and lunch break. You can create multiple time blocks per day — for example, morning clinic from 8:00 to 12:00 and afternoon procedures from 14:00 to 17:00. Cari supports 24-hour and 12-hour time formats depending on your locale.
Your weekly schedule repeats automatically. For special situations — an outreach clinic on Saturday, a training day where you are unavailable, or a public holiday — use the Schedule Override feature. Add a one-off availability window or block out a date entirely. Overrides take precedence over the recurring schedule.
Set the default appointment slot duration (typically 15 or 30 minutes) and the maximum number of concurrent bookings per slot. Solo practitioners usually set capacity to one, while group practices or vaccination clinics may allow multiple patients per slot.
Use schedule overrides for public holidays rather than deleting your recurring schedule. This way your regular availability automatically resumes the following week.
Book from the provider dashboard, the patient portal, or at the front desk for walk-ins.
From the scheduling dashboard, click New Appointment. Select the patient (or register a new one), choose the appointment type, pick an available slot, and confirm. Cari checks for conflicts automatically — if the provider is already booked or on leave, the slot will not be available. You can also book on behalf of another provider in your organization.
When online booking is enabled, patients visit your booking link, select a provider and service, and choose from available time slots. The booking page is mobile-optimized and works on low-bandwidth connections — critical for patients in rural areas. After booking, the patient receives an SMS and email confirmation with the date, time, provider name, and any preparation instructions.
For patients who arrive without an appointment, use the Walk-in button to add them to today's queue. Walk-ins are slotted into the next available gap or added to the end of the day. They appear on the Kanban board with a distinct badge so staff can prioritize scheduled patients appropriately.
Walk-in patients still go through the standard registration workflow. If they are new, create their record first, then add them to the queue. The MPI will check for duplicates automatically.
Visualize your clinic's daily flow in real time with drag-and-drop patient tracking.
Scheduled
Upcoming today
Checked In
Patient arrived
In Progress
Consultation underway
Pending Lab
Waiting for results
Completed
Visit finished
The default columns are: Scheduled (upcoming today), Checked In (patient has arrived), In Progress (consultation underway), Pending Lab/Imaging (waiting for results), and Completed (visit finished). You can customize column names and add stages specific to your workflow, such as "Triage" or "Pharmacy".
Drag and drop a patient card from one column to the next as they progress through their visit. When a receptionist checks in a patient, they drag the card from Scheduled to Checked In. When the doctor opens the session, the card moves to In Progress. Each transition is timestamped, giving you data on wait times and bottlenecks.
The Kanban board updates in real time across all devices. If a nurse checks in a patient on the front-desk tablet, the doctor's screen refreshes instantly. This eliminates the "is the patient ready?" guesswork and keeps the clinic running efficiently.
Display the Kanban board on a shared screen in the consultation area so all staff can see the clinic's status at a glance without checking their own devices.
Reduce no-shows with automated SMS and email reminders, and handle cancellations gracefully.
Cari sends appointment reminders via SMS and email at configurable intervals — typically 24 hours and 2 hours before the appointment. Each reminder includes the date, time, provider name, and a one-tap confirmation or cancellation link. SMS reminders are especially effective in African markets where email usage is lower.
Patients can cancel or reschedule through the link in their reminder message. Cancelled slots are immediately released back into the availability pool. If you have a waitlist, Cari automatically notifies the next patient on the list and offers them the freed-up slot.
If a provider needs to cancel — due to an emergency or schedule change — select the appointment and click Cancel. Choose whether to notify the patient by SMS, email, or both. You can also bulk-cancel all appointments for a day if the provider is unexpectedly unavailable, and Cari will offer affected patients alternative slots with other providers in your practice.
When bulk-cancelling a provider's day, Cari sends personalized messages to each affected patient with rebooking options. Always include a reason for the cancellation to maintain patient trust.