Testing Your Setup Without Contacting Clients
Testing Your Setup Without Contacting Clients
What is Test Mode?
Test Mode lets you run through the full FullSlot workflow — connecting your scheduling tool, opening slots, notifying the waitlist, and claiming appointments — without sending any messages to real clients.
When Test Mode is on, every notification that would normally go to a client is redirected to you instead. Your clients are never contacted.
When to use it
- You just connected Calendly, Acuity, or Square and want to verify that cancellations are detected correctly
- You're setting up for the first time and want to see what the notification messages look like
- You changed your message templates and want to preview them end-to-end
- You're onboarding a staff member and want to demo the flow without involving real clients
How to turn it on
1. Go to Settings 2. Scroll to the Test Mode section 3. Toggle Enable Test Mode on 4. Enter your phone number if you want to receive test SMS messages 5. Click Save settings
A yellow banner will appear at the top of every page while Test Mode is active — this is intentional, so you always know it's on.
What gets redirected
| Notification type | Normal recipient | In Test Mode | |---|---|---| | "A slot opened" SMS | Client's phone | Your phone (if set) | | "A slot opened" email | Client's email | Your account email | | "You're confirmed" SMS | Client's phone | Your phone (if set) | | "You're confirmed" email | Client's email | Your account email | | "Someone claimed" alert | You (owner) | You (owner) — no change | | "Slot broadcast fired" alert | You (owner) | You (owner) — no change |
Every redirected message is prefixed with [TEST] so you can distinguish it from real notifications in your inbox.
What stays the same
Everything else works exactly as it would in production:
- Cancellations are detected from your scheduling tool
- The waitlist is sorted and notified in the correct order (VIPs first, then priority groups)
- Claim links in messages are real — you can click through and claim the slot to test the full round-trip
- All data (slots, claims, waitlist entries) is written to your account as normal
Turning it off
Click Turn off in the yellow banner, or go back to Settings → Test Mode and toggle it off. Make sure to turn it off before you go live with real clients.
Note: Any slots or claims created while in Test Mode are real records in your account. If you want a clean slate, release or delete test slots after you're done testing.