How do I connect Cliniko?

Cliniko and Nookal connections require a paid plan.

You connect your practice software once, then choose the exact appointment and patient each time you record. Small Mercy reads your diary only when you ask it to, never mirrors your patient list in the background, and writes nothing into your practice software until you confirm a note or a letter.

Cliniko is connected by each clinician, for themselves, with their own personal API key. There is no practice-wide credential and nothing for an administrator to set up first — what Small Mercy can see in Cliniko is exactly what your Cliniko user can see, and no more.

Cliniko is available for Australian and New Zealand organisations on Australian-hosted accounts (shards au1–au5), and for United Kingdom organisations on UK-hosted accounts (shards uk1, uk2 and uk3). A key from the other deployment’s shards is refused. In every one of those regions, the connection brings in today’s appointments, files a confirmed note as a draft treatment note, and can file a confirmed letter as a PDF copy on the patient’s record.

Before you start

• You are signed in to Small Mercy and can reach Settings → Integrations → Cliniko.
• Australian and New Zealand organisations use an Australian-hosted account (shards au1–au5). United Kingdom organisations use a UK-hosted account (shards uk1, uk2 and uk3). Small Mercy checks the shard in code and refuses a key from the other deployment.
• Your Cliniko user is the practitioner whose diary you record against. A key made under a different user connects that user’s diary, not yours.

1. Create a key in Cliniko

In Cliniko, open your name at the top right, choose My info, turn on API keys if they are not already available, choose Manage API keys, and create one named Small Mercy.

A Cliniko key is password-equivalent. It can reach everything your Cliniko user can see. Create your own, never paste a colleague’s, and Archive it in Cliniko if you ever stop using Small Mercy — Archive is Cliniko’s word for killing a key.

Cliniko shows the key once. Copy it straight into Small Mercy in the next step rather than into a document or a message.

2. Paste it into Small Mercy

Go to Settings → Integrations → Cliniko and paste the key into Cliniko API key under Connect your Cliniko account.

Small Mercy encrypts the key on its own server and never shows it again — not to you, not to anyone else in your practice. The page then displays the Cliniko practitioner the key belongs to. If that name is not you, disconnect: the key is the wrong one.

To rotate a key later, use Replace API key on the same page. To stop this connection, use Disconnect; that removes Small Mercy’s stored key and its Cliniko patient links. Archive the key in Cliniko too if you want it dead at source.

3. Choose a draft note template

Under Draft note template, choose Load templates, then pick the Cliniko treatment-note template Small Mercy should write into.

That is what an unsuitable template looks like: listed, with the reason it cannot be used. Cliniko’s stock templates carry many questions, so a practice’s first load usually shows exactly this until a purpose-made template exists.

The template must have exactly one section containing exactly one paragraph question. Anything else is listed as incompatible with the reason why, so build a purpose-made template in Cliniko rather than reusing a clinical one — in Cliniko, under Settings → Treatment note templates, a template with a single section holding a single paragraph question is all Small Mercy needs.

Small Mercy re-checks that structure before every single delivery. If you edit the template in Cliniko afterwards, Small Mercy stops rather than writing into a shape it no longer recognises, and asks you to choose again.

4. Link patients and start consults

Once connected you can:

• see today’s appointments from your own Cliniko diary on the dashboard and in Capture, and start a consult on one with a single tap — see Today’s appointments and starting a consult;
• open Appointments on the integration page, set a date range of up to 31 days, and choose Sync appointments to fetch your own practitioner diary on demand. Small Mercy does not keep the list after you leave the page.

Pick an appointment to preview the Cliniko patient. Small Mercy suggests local matches on exact name and date of birth, but nothing is linked automatically — you either confirm an existing Small Mercy patient or add a new one from the minimum demographics (name, date of birth, sex). No clinical history is copied in either direction.

With the patient linked, start the consult from that appointment. Small Mercy freezes the destination server-side before recording begins, so a later change to the link or the template cannot redirect a note that is already on its way.

Turning it off

Use Disconnect on the Cliniko page. That removes Small Mercy’s copy of your personal key and the Cliniko patient links for this connection. Your Small Mercy patient records remain, but you will need to link patients again after reconnecting. Then Archive the key in Cliniko as well (My info → Manage API keys → Archive), so it is dead at source and not merely unused.

Disconnecting — or deleting data in Small Mercy — does not remove notes or letters already filed into Cliniko. Those live in your practice’s own Cliniko account and are managed there.

If any delivery is still in an uncertain state, Small Mercy asks you to resolve it first — disconnecting would throw away the only record of what may have been written.