Getting Started

Set up your FrontDesk AI receptionist from scratch in your first 30 minutes.

• What is FrontDesk?FrontDesk is an AI receptionist for healthcare and service practices. It answers your phone around the clock in a natural voice, books, moves and cancels appointments on your calendar within your hours and rules, texts a confirmation, takes messages and hands callers to your team when they ask for a person. Every call is logged in Call Logs with a summary and transcript (and a recording if recording is on). Around the receptionist sit the tools a practice runs on: the calendar, confirmations and reminders by text, a two-way text inbox, online booking and web chat, outbound calling campaigns, patient records, payments, a client portal, and on Pro and above telehealth and AI progress notes. Every account agrees to the Business Associate Agreement when it signs up.
  2 min
• QuickstartSigning up opens a six-step onboarding wizard: Business Information, Business Hours, Appointment Types (prefilled for your business type), Voice Setup (six voices), Test the System (Call Me Now rings your phone) and A Few Quick Questions. Finishing it hands over to the Getting Started checklist on Home: Connect phone number (a new number by area code, or port yours), Configure AI voice settings (greeting, name, tone and knowledge under Receptionist → AI Voice), Make a test call, and Invite your team. Texting is separate: on a paid plan open Settings → Phone & SMS, Texting tab, and click Set up texting; approval takes three to seven business days. The Setup Assistant, the floating orb at the bottom right, can do most of these steps with you from a chat.
  2 min
• Complete onboardingSigning up creates your account, its first location and a 14-day trial of Pro features, then opens a six-step wizard (Step n of 6 at the top): Business Information (business name, type, phone, optional website), Business Hours, Appointment Types (at least one service from a list prefilled for your type), Voice Setup (one of six voices, plus an optional receptionist name), Test the System (pick a scenario, enter your number, click Call Me Now and the AI rings you) and A Few Quick Questions (timeline, goal, call volume). Steps two to five have Skip for now (Set this up later on the voice step). Each step is saved, and the wizard reopens at sign-in until finished. Then the Home screen's Getting Started checklist takes over: Connect phone number, Configure AI Calling and Invite your team.
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• Your first test call: what to expectThere are two ways to test. Have the AI call you: open Receptionist → AI Voice → Call scripts, click Test next to a script, enter your number (or Use My Phone) and click Start Test Call; a live transcript shows while you talk, and it does not use AI minutes. Or call your FrontDesk number from your cell once it shows Answering calls under Settings → Phone & SMS; that is a real call, so it uses AI minutes, and you can watch it live and read the summary and transcript in Call Logs. Try booking, rescheduling, a question and asking for a person. Fix the greeting, voice and knowledge on the AI Voice tabs, services under Services and hours under Settings → Locations, then test again.
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• Your home dashboardHome (the first item in the left navigation) opens with a greeting, today's date and three counts: Appointments today, Unread messages and Unconfirmed tomorrow, with Add patient and Book appointment buttons. The Tasks card lists practice alerts (overdue balances, visits still unconfirmed today, patients due for recall, trial days left, AI minutes used up, email setup, support replies, finished campaigns) and your urgent and upcoming tasks, with All, Practice alerts, Urgent and Up next filters. On the right, the AI Receptionist card shows anyone on the line now with Listen in, then Today's schedule, Today at a glance (unread messages and tomorrow's confirmations) and a Call times heatmap for the last 30 days. Everything reflects the location you have selected.
  3 min
• Use the in-app Setup AssistantFrontDesk has a built-in Setup Assistant, the floating orb at the bottom right, that answers "how do I…" questions from this help center and makes changes for you: buy a phone number, change your voice or greeting, set hours and holiday closures, add, rename or remove a service, add knowledge or import it from your website, set call transfer, invite a teammate, return a call, and more. Type or turn on Voice mode. Changes are shown on a preview card and happen only when you approve (unless you turn on Skip confirm on safe changes), and reversible ones can be undone by saying "undo". Set its name, orb color, voice, auto-greet and memory under Settings → Account → Assistant.
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• Search FrontDesk (⌘K)Click Search FrontDesk in the top bar, or press ⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows) or /. Type part of a name, a phone number in any format, or a full email address to find a client, their next and recent appointments, their text thread and their calls. Use ↑ and ↓ to move and Enter to open. Start with a verb to act instead of open: "call jane" calls Jane, "text 469-555-0142" starts a text, "book smith" opens booking for them. Type a day ("tomorrow", "friday", "9/26") to open the calendar there and see that day's appointments, or a list name ("unconfirmed", "cancelled this week", "missed calls", "voicemail", "unread") to jump to it already filtered. "go" and a page name ("go phone", "go team") opens any page or setting. If nobody matches, Enter on "Add … as a new client" opens the new client form filled in. Type ? for every tip and shortcut.
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• Your first week with FrontDeskAfter onboarding, the Getting Started checklist sits at the top of Home. It has three items: Connect phone number (get a new number or port yours), Configure AI Calling, which holds the two optional steps Configure AI voice settings and Make a test call, and Invite your team. Each item opens the page where you do it and ticks itself when done; the phone step is per location. When the phone number and team steps are done it reads Setup Complete!, and you can collapse it or dismiss it with the X. The Business Associate Agreement is accepted at sign-up, so it is not a checklist step. Then set up texting, online booking, after-hours handling and reminders.
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• Glossary of phone, SMS, and AI termsA reference card for the alphabet soup of telecom and healthcare compliance (A2P, BAA, CNAM, DID, FOC, PHI, STIR/SHAKEN, and more). Bookmark this page.
  7 min
• Set up your practice websiteOnline Booking → Website builds a complete website from what is already in FrontDesk (your services, providers, hours, booking page and client portal). The first time you open it, a setup guide walks you through five short steps, pick a look (your own site shown in every template), brand and photo, the words (with the AI writing every page), which pages, then a review with a "before you publish" checklist and the Publish button. After that the editor lets you change any page or section, preview it exactly as it will publish, and point your own domain at it with a CNAME record (plus an A record so the address without www works too). You can also ask the FrontDesk team to build the site for you.
  22 min
• Buy a domain for your websiteOnline Booking → Domains lets you search for a domain (yourpractice.com, .care, .clinic and more), see the yearly price, and buy it with the card on file. The domain is registered in your name with WHOIS privacy, and when registration finishes a few minutes later it connects itself to your practice website, so visitors reach you at www.yourpractice.com and yourpractice.com. Renewals go on your card each year; turn Auto-renew off to let a domain lapse. The DNS & email panel adds the records for Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 mailboxes, lets FrontDesk send your practice email from the domain with one click, and edits any other DNS record. You can still connect a domain you already own from Online Booking → Website.
  6 min
• FrontDesk for home care and home health agenciesChoose Home Care (non-medical) or Home Health (Medicare-certified) as your business type and FrontDesk speaks your language: clients and caregivers (or patients and clinicians), an agency rather than a practice, and visits rather than appointments, on every screen and in what the AI says on the phone and in chat. You start with a ready-made service list (assessments, personal care, companion care, specialised care, skilled care) with realistic visit lengths; the longest single booking is an eight-hour shift, so overnight or live-in care is arranged as a consultation or repeating shifts. The billing code library includes the HCPCS codes used for Medicaid waiver, long-term care insurance and VA billing, and home health gets the Medicare visit codes. Your website adds a How care begins section, an Areas We Serve page, a Caregiver Jobs page with an Apply button, and Ways to pay in place of insurance plans.
  3 min
• FrontDesk for physical therapy clinicsChoose Physical Therapy as your business type and FrontDesk says patients, sessions, therapists and clinic on every screen and on the phone. You start with 26 services (evaluations, treatment sessions, orthopedic, post-op, sports, manual therapy, aquatic, balance and vestibular). Clinical notes offer four PT templates first: PT daily note, PT initial evaluation, PT progress note / re-evaluation and PT discharge summary. Outcome measures list NPRS, LEFS, UEFI-20, Roland-Morris, ABC and Berg Balance under Recommended for your practice; Berg is scored by the clinician, so it is entered in session. Oswestry, NDI and QuickDASH are not included because they need a commercial license. The charge and diagnosis pickers load a PT code set automatically: 64 CPT and HCPCS codes (97161 to 97164, 97110, 97140, 97530, G0283 and more) and 289 ICD-10 codes grouped by body region. The AI sends red-flag symptoms to the ER instead of booking.
  5 min
• Connect Practice Fusion (EHR)FrontDesk connects to Practice Fusion through its FHIR API and copies your patient directory (name, phone, email and date of birth) into FrontDesk, so the AI recognizes returning callers by phone number. It is read-only and one-way: FrontDesk never changes anything in Practice Fusion and does not read or write your Practice Fusion calendar. To connect, authorize the FrontDesk AI Receptionist app in Practice Fusion, then open Settings → Integrations, click Connect on the Practice Fusion card, and enter your Practice ID (Practice GUID). FrontDesk re-syncs every 60 minutes by default (you can set 15 or more), and Sync now pulls immediately. Disconnect stops syncing and keeps the patients already copied.
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