Appointment Sessions

In MediRecords, Sessions give practices complete control over how availability is displayed in the appointment calendar. Sessions ensure that both practice-wide and individual provider schedules reflect real-world working hours - including standard practice hours, part-time shifts, meal breaks, home visits, and holidays. By setting up sessions correctly, your calendar becomes an accurate, easy-to-manage tool for staff and patients, preventing double-bookings and ensuring availability is always clear.

This article will guide you through how to create, manage, and adjust different types of sessions, from regular and extra hours to holiday and community sessions for online bookings.

Contents:

1. Session Availability

2. Creating a Session

3. Creating a Session Cycle

4. Adding an Extra Session

5. Adding a Holiday Session

6. Creating a Community Session

7. Editing a Session

8. Deleting a Session

Session Availability

1. To access sessions, go to More > Settings > Appointments.
   
   
   
    

2. Within Appointments, select the practice that you wish to configure sessions for. In this tutorial, we will select MediRecords Admin 1x as an example.
   
   
   
    

3. Within the Practice screen, select Sessions. The Sessions screen is divided into three sections - Regular, Extra, and Holiday.
   
   

    

   Regular Sessions
   
   These are sessions that are set within the operating hours of your practice. 
   When you click on Regular >Select the provider and check the tick box next to the provider's name > then click on  Edit, you will get a pop-up to make your changes. 
   Add in the details you require.
   Cycle 1 of 1 indicates the weekly repeat.

Extra Sessions

These are sessions that are used to indicate provider availability that is outside the operating hours of your practice. 
Appointments that cannot be booked in Regular sessions can be booked in Extra sessions. 
You can access this by clicking on Extra > Select the provider name and check the tick box next to the provider's name and click on Edit. 
You will get a pop-up to change/update extra sessions.

Holiday Sessions

These are sessions that are used to indicate period of time where the provider(s) and/or the practice are on holiday. During these sessions, no appointments can be booked.

Example:
To demonstrate how to interpret sessions in your practice, let us view the following example:
This session indicates that this Provider will work Regular Sessions from Monday to Saturday, 8:00 AM to 06.00PM, starting on 04th December 2025 to 04th December 2030.
Cycle 1 of 1 indicates that this will happen weekly with no exceptions.
The time zone reflects the provider's time zone.
Type - Practice indicates that the sessions are only available to be booked from practice and Community indicates that the sessions are available to the community and can be booked via online widget, Patient Mobile App and the Patient Engage Portal.

After you have added in the sessions you want for your User if you go to the Appointment book you should see those newly created sessions reflecting: 

Creating a Session

Practice Sessions set the framework for appointments in your Clinic. Practice sessions are available only to those working in the Practice.

Follow these steps to create a new Practice session:

1. Click the More tab and select Settings from the drop-down menu

2. Click Appointments

3. Select the clinic

4. Click Sessions

5. Click New Sessions to open the session form  

   

6. Fill in all the session details as required

7. Click Save to create a new session

    

Creating a Session Cycle

Cycle function works when a Provider has somewhat of an irregular schedule each week. This allows Providers to create sessions that are re-occurring but only occur on certain allocated weeks. 
 

Cycle meaning: When you are choosing your cycle period you will need to confirm if the Provider is on a fortnightly schedule or if are on a monthly schedule (do they have 2 weeks of different hours each week OR do they have 4 weeks of different hours each week)

For example, you have a Provider who has a 2 week rotating schedule. 
Week 1: Works Monday -Thursday 8AM - 6PM, and Friday 8AM - 1PM.
Week 2: Works Monday - Friday 7 AM - 4 PM, and Saturday 8 AM - 2 PM.

These sessions will repeat itself until specified.

1. To create a session cycle, navigate to More > Settings > Appointments > Select appropriate Practice > Sessions > Select New Session.

2. Within the new Regular Session window enter all of the appropriate fields as you normally would when you create a session. 

   
    

3. In the Cycle period you wish to create, for example, if the Provider's schedule changes fortnightly then you will enter in Cycle 1 of 2 OR if it changes weekly you will enter 1 of 4.

4. The Cycle start date is when you want this particular cycle to start. (for example, Cycle 1 of 2 will start on 12/12/2025, soo then, Cycle 2 of 2 will start on19/12/2025) 
    

Below is an example of creating a Session Cycle for a 2-week rotating roster

Hot Tip: If a Provider works Mon-Friday set hours one week and different set hours the next you can create a session cycle for Mon-Saturday and then just delete the session created for Saturday instead of creating a session or each individual day: 

The created sessions will be reflected as seen below

You can now delete the Session/s that are not needed.

Adding an Extra Session

MediRecords offers a second type of session called "Extra Sessions," which can be beneficial in setting up appointments outside of a provider's regular working hours. It is important to note that these extra sessions should be scheduled within the practice's operating hours. The extra session should be created inside the practice operation hours.

1. Navigate to More > Settings > Appointments > Select the practice that you wish to create the extra session. (we will be using MediRecords Admin 1x as an example for this article.
   
   
    

2. Click on Sessions.

3. Select the Extra tab. You will be brought to the Extra screen.

   
    

4. To create an extra session, click on New Session.
   
    

5. You will be shown the following form. The following has been completed as an example. Click Save when you have made your changes. 

   
    

6. The new extra session will now be shown in the list.
   

Adding a Holiday Session

Holidays are the third category of sessions that can be created in MediRecords. This is useful for blocking out time to reflect clinic shutdown periods, or for individual holiday periods taken by your providers. 
 

1. To create a Holiday Session, navigate to  More > Settings > Appointments. Within Appointments click on the practice that you wish to book the holiday session for.
   
   
   
    
2. Click on Sessions > select the Holidays tab and select New Holiday.
   
   
    

3. You will be shown the New Holiday form.
   To input a holiday session for a provider, select their name from Session Provider, input the Reason, Start Date, End Date then click on Save.
   
    

4. The new holiday sessions created will now show in the Holidays list.
   

    

Creating a Community Session

To allow patients to book appointments online via the MediRecords patient mobile app or widget, set up 'Community' sessions for each user and share bookable appointment types. This ensures that available times are shown in the MediRecords calendars.

1. To create a community session, first, navigate to the Sessions section of Appointment Settings and click New Session.
   
   
    

2. When the new session form opens, click Calendar to reveal a drop-down list, and click Community.

3. Complete the rest of the form with all the required details, and click Save
   

After creation, the community session will appear on your appointment calendar and in the MediRecords Community, enabling patients using the mobile app or appointment widget to book appointments online. Remember to create a separate session for each practice and doctor for each day they wish to be visible in the MediRecords Community calendar.

Note: Refer to this article on how to set Community Configuration.

Engage users can refer to Engage: Appointment Configuration for steps on configuring Appointment Sessions for appointments booked in Engage.

Editing a Session

1. Go to More > Settings and click on Appointments.
   
    

2. Within Appointments, click on the practice that you wish to edit sessions for.
   
   
   
    

3. Within the Practice screen, select Sessions. When you check the box next to a session, the following options appear. 
   
   
   
    

4. To edit a single session, check the box next to the name and click Edit.
   
   
   
   5. You will be shown the edit form. Make the necessary changes as required. When you have finished, click Save.
   
   
   
   6. You also have the ability to bulk edit sessions. To do this, select at least 2 sessions and click Bulk Edit.
   
   
   
   7. You will be shown the Bulk Edit form. Note that this is virtually similar to the New Session form, but any details entered here will affect all sessions you have selected. When you have finished, click Save.
   

   *NOTE: This is a permanent action and cannot be reversed.

Deleting a Session

1. Go to More > Settings and click on Appointments.
   
    

2. Within Appointments, click on the practice that you wish to edit sessions for.
   
   
    

3. Within the Practice screen, select Sessions. 
   To delete a session, click the check box next to the session you need to delete and select Delete from the option above.
   
   
   
   
   
   4. You will be shown a warning message. Click Yes if you wish to proceed.