Reviewing an Appointment Email

Purpose

Appointment requests arrive by email and land in a review queue. You make the business decision; the system classifies the request, validates your choice, commits the appointment change, and then tries to reply to the customer.

Who does this

Office staff reviewing appointment requests.

When you need this

When a booking request has arrived by email for review.

Before you start

• You have the right account for this screen (see Permissions and Access).
• The date and record you are working on are correct.
• Words you do not know are in the Glossary.

Access

Shipping → Email Approval

Screen

Main Features

Before You Start

• Work on one email in one browser tab.
• Keep the original email and its attachments visible while you compare each extracted row.
• Confirm the sender, the reference or load number, the requested date and time, the equipment, the commodity, and the existing appointment when the request changes or cancels something.

Three Different Things

These are not interchangeable:

Layer	Values	What it is
Request type	Create, Reschedule, Cancel, Inquiry	Taken from the email. Editable while the row is open
Your choice	Approve, Reject, Delete	The human action on this screen
System result	Approved, Confirmed, Alternative proposed, Rejected, Manual contact, Error, Ignored	What got recorded

Save and Close do not resolve a request. Manual contact is produced by a safety fallback, not by a button on this screen. A cancel request can also change the appointment itself to cancelled or no-show.

What the Buttons Actually Do

Button	What it does	What it does not do
Save	Applies your edits to the page and redraws the table	Saves nothing durable. A refresh loses the edits
Approve	Runs each selected open row through validation and the action	An inquiry cannot be approved. Resolved rows are blocked
Reject	Rejects every eligible row in the email, then sends one rejection reply	It is a whole-email decision, not a single row
Delete	Marks the selected rows ignored	Does not cancel an appointment and sends no reply
Close	Closes the review	Does not save your edits or assign an owner

Review and Process a Request

1. Open the row and read the original message and attachments.
2. Compare each extracted row against the source email. Correct only what the source supports.
3. Confirm the request type.
4. For an unmatched create, confirm the billing party, shipper, carrier, equipment type and number, commodity, reference, appointment time and remark before approving.
5. Select only the open rows that belong to this one decision.
6. Approve, Reject or Delete using the rules below.
7. Reload and verify the stored result and the appointment itself.

What Each Action Does

Type and your choice	What the system does	What you must check
Create + Approve, unmatched	Creates the load as scheduled and links it	That it reads approved, appears under Yard > Appointment, and shows in Inbound > 1. Planning
Create + Approve, matched	Treats it as an appointment-time change	The appointment time. Do not assume your other edits took
Reschedule + Approve	Exact or unchanged time becomes confirmed. An occupied slot becomes alternative proposed. Unsafe cases need manual contact or fail	The current, requested, proposed and resolved time
Cancel + Approve	A safe target becomes cancelled; no-show wording can produce a no-show	The exact target and the final appointment state before replying
Inquiry + Approve	Blocked	Keep it for manual follow-up, or reject the whole request if that is the decision
Reject	Marks the whole email rejected	That every intended row is rejected, and the reply state
Delete	Marks only the selected rows ignored	That no appointment action was actually intended

Alternative proposed and no-show are results the system derives from the request type, the slot, the appointment state and the wording of the email. They are not buttons you press.

The Customer Reply

• The appointment is committed before the reply is attempted.
• A reply failure does not undo the appointment change.
• A successful send records the message and thread ids; a failure records the error. That is evidence the send happened — not evidence a person read it.
• For an approved create whose reply failed, resend only the eligible create rows from the same email, thread and recipient. An existing reply id blocks a duplicate send.
• For a rejected email, use the rejection retry only for the complete eligible set.
• A manual-contact outcome may notify a configured chat recipient. A notification failure does not authorise a second appointment change — reread the request and the appointment first.

Fields

Field	What it means
Request type	What the email is asking for
Appointment time	The time being requested
Reference / load number	Which job
Carrier, equipment, commodity	What is moving

Status

Result	Means
APPROVED	Accepted
CONFIRMED	The requested time was free
PROPOSED_ALTERNATIVE	The requested time was taken. A different time was offered
REJECTED	Refused
MANUAL_CONTACT	Needs a person to follow up
ERROR	Something failed
IGNORED	Cleared from the queue without an appointment change
CANCELLED / NOSHOW	The appointment itself

Notes

Trade terms you will hear. Booking requests often arrive as an ASN or by EDI — an electronic message from the customer or terminal rather than an email from a person. Treat both as requests to confirm, never as confirmed. See the Glossary.

• An email only enters the queue when Gmail applies the APPT label. The subject line alone does not trigger it. After intake the label is removed to prevent duplicates — so if the label is missing and no row exists, the Gmail filter needs fixing.
• Ask trading partners to use APPT - [Customer] - [Create / Reschedule / Cancel] - [PO or Load #], with the action, customer, reference, date and time, carrier, equipment, commodity, quantity and notes. For a change or cancellation, include the existing appointment reference and time. Natural-language emails still need human review — never guess a missing value.
• One email carrying twenty to thirty loads is one email row with many request rows. Approving runs row by row and can partly succeed, so review each result.
• Save alone is not durable. If your edits vanish, reopen the original email and re-enter them.
• If the requested reschedule slot is unavailable, use the recorded alternative. Do not invent a time.
• If a cancel target is missing, already closed, or already in progress, do not force it. Use the manual path and record the follow-up elsewhere.
• Only the create and reject replies have a supported retry. A reschedule or cancel whose reply failed needs manual contact — do not repeat the business change just to resend an email.
• A row left open by Save or Close is not assigned and not completed.

If Something Goes Wrong

Problem	Do this
The email or row is missing	Check the Gmail APPT label and the filters. A replay can re-ingest an existing message — reread the queue before creating anything
Your edits disappeared	Reopen the original email and re-enter them. Save alone does not persist
Approval returned an error	Reload first. If it did not commit, correct the source-supported fields and retry once. Otherwise do not repeat it
Duplicate or stale row	Compare the email, thread, reference, customer, date and any existing match
The reschedule slot is unavailable	Use the recorded alternative or manual contact. Do not invent a time
The cancel target is unusable	Do not force it. Use the manual path and record the follow-up
The reply failed after the change committed	Confirm the appointment state, then use only the eligible reply retry

The End-of-Day Check

• Every appointment email has a clear result, or a separately managed manual follow-up.
• Confirmed creates and changes are visible under Yard > Appointment.
• New inbound work is visible in Inbound > 1. Planning before it is handed on.
• Cancel and no-show results match the exact appointment they were meant for.
• Reply-failed rows have been safely resent or written down for manual contact.

Related

• What Approving an Appointment Email Does — the business view
• Planning Incoming Deliveries
• Office Control