Yesterday I got an email from Bryan Gilliom of Level 5 Coaching Group, a fellow who was goodly enough to reply to my “welcome, how’s it going?” email that gets sent to all coaches shortly after they grab an account¹.  In addition to giving a really nice account of what he was looking for, he let me know his wish list so far for the system.  The first on this list was this:

1) To improve my own efficiency I want to be able to send worksheets based on an appointment.  So it seems like I am going to have to remember each session to schedule a “Check in” worksheet and reminder, and I will have to schedule a pre-meeting worksheet.  This seems like repetitive work that would be better done by defining triggers tied to the appointment.

In this I love both his forwardness to ask and clarity of reasoning behind it.  (Incidentally, the second item on his wish list was essentially a request for the forthcoming Team Edition.)

To his first request I replied:

Tying a worksheet to an appointment type is a really good idea, one which I’ve toyed with in the past and am just about sold on as being worth adding.  As you might imagine my to-do list is quite flush with good ideas but I reckon I may add this sometime in the near-ish future.

Then I realized I was just a few days off from a trip to Vegas for MicroConf, and thus it wasn’t a good day for doing any major architectural wrangling for Team Edition.  Instead, a quick project was a perfect way to spend the day.  So I did just that.  And now, as of this morning, coaches can tie worksheet assignments automatically to their appointment types.  Let’s take a look.

When setting up an appointment type it’s as simple as choosing which worksheet template you want assigned to your clients prior to those appointments, and setting rules of timing (when to assign it, and when is it due):

Check the box and you’ve got a few options. By default the system suggests assigning one day before the appointment, and having it be due one hour prior.

That’s pretty much all the setup you need and CA takes care of the rest.  When you as coach schedule an appointment with one of your clients you have the option, if you feel so inclined, to override this assigning behavior:

The worksheet assignment is checked by default, but you can cancel it if the situation so deems appropriate.

When clients schedule themselves for a given appointment type, any associated worksheet assignment is automatically done by CoachAccountable at the right time.  In all cases CA sends clients an email the moment the worksheet is assigned, with a magic link that puts them one click away from working on it.

Cheers to Bryan for his well-timed and well-articulated request, I’m happy to have this one all done reckon it’ll be a win for a large number of coaches besides him.