How do I connect Cliniko or Nookal?

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.

Both are switched on for Australian, New Zealand and United Kingdom organisations, under Settings → Integrations. (If that page does not list one, it has been paused for your deployment — contact support.) In every one of those regions each does the same three things:

• brings today’s appointments into Small Mercy, so once you have confirmed which patient a booking is, you start the consult from it;
• files a confirmed note into Cliniko or Nookal as a draft treatment note for you to finalise there — after you have checked the patient a second time — and reads it back before saying it was sent;
• files a confirmed letter as a PDF copy on the patient’s record. That copy is for the record; you still send the letter to its recipient.

Whichever you connect, it writes into your practice-management account. In the AU cell, which serves Australian and New Zealand organisations, Small Mercy checks Cliniko’s key shard against an Australian allowlist (shards au1–au5). For Nookal it selects the Australian API service, but a Basic Key does not tell Small Mercy where Nookal stores your account data. Check that account-specific location with Nookal before connecting clinical data. United Kingdom organisations connect Cliniko on shards uk1, uk2 and uk3, and Nookal through Nookal’s European API service; the same caution applies there, because the European API service does not establish where your Nookal account stores data either.

The two are set up differently. Cliniko uses your own personal API key, so each clinician connects themselves. Nookal uses one credential for the whole organisation, so a practice admin connects it once and then maps each clinician. Read the guide that applies to you.

The four guides

1. How do I connect Nookal? — for a practice admin: the OAuth client in Nookal, the practice connection, mapping each clinician, and the draft-note template. AU-cell organisations use Nookal’s Australian API service; United Kingdom organisations use the European API service.
2. How do I connect Cliniko? — for each clinician: your own API key, the practitioner it belongs to, and the treatment-note template Small Mercy drafts into. AU-cell organisations use an Australian-hosted Cliniko account (shards au1–au5); United Kingdom organisations use shards uk1, uk2 and uk3.
3. Today’s appointments and starting a consult — the one-day diary on your dashboard and in Capture, how it decides what today is, and the one tap that starts a consult on the right patient.
4. Sending notes and letters, and what to do when a delivery stops — what Small Mercy writes back, as what, when — and each stopped state, what it means, and the button that resolves it.

What Small Mercy never does

• It never reads your diary in the background — not on sign-in, not on a timer.
• It never links a patient for you. Every link is a step you take, once per patient, with no clinical history copied in either direction.
• It never writes a note into a patient’s record until you have confirmed it and acknowledged the exact patient a second time, never files a letter you have not confirmed and chosen to file, and never sends a second copy on its own.