Everything you need to configure, operate, and get the most from your Hala AI clinic receptionist.

Hala is a conversational front desk for clinics with two connected surfaces. The Patient Desk is the public conversation experience where patients ask questions and book appointments. My Desk is the private clinic workspace where you manage knowledge, conversations, the calendar, the agent's behavior, analytics, and settings.

What Hala does: answers patient questions from your clinic knowledge, converses in Gulf Arabic and English including mixed language conversations, checks real calendar availability, books confirmed appointments, and hands conversations to your team when human assistance is needed.

What Hala does not do: Hala does not provide medical advice or diagnosis, does not invent appointment availability, does not answer from information outside your clinic knowledge, and does not operate outside the controls you set in My Desk.

Booking architecture in one sentence: patient request, service identification, doctor matching, calendar availability check, slot offer, collision check at confirmation, patient details, confirmation, calendar write.

Step 1. Create your clinic account. Sign up, verify your email, and open My Desk for the first time.

Step 2. Add your clinic information. In Knowledge, complete the clinic profile: name, address, location details, parking, and contact information.

Step 3. Add services and prices. Enter every bookable service with its price and duration. Duration drives how Hala finds calendar slots, so set it accurately.

Step 4. Add doctors. Add each doctor with their languages and the services they perform. Hala uses this to match the right doctor to each request.

Step 5. Configure clinic hours. Set your weekly hours, including Friday hours, and any exceptions. Hala only offers times inside working hours.

Step 6. Add FAQs. Capture the questions your reception team answers every day: insurance, preparation instructions, cancellation policy, and anything patients commonly ask.

Step 7. Configure Hala's greeting and personality. In Agent, set the greeting, tone, and language behavior so Hala sounds like your clinic.

Step 8. Connect your calendar. In Clinic settings, open Calendar connection and complete the steps for your provider. This is what makes bookings real.

Step 9. Test patient conversations. Open your own Hala Desk and behave like a patient: ask prices in Arabic, mix languages, request an appointment, and confirm the booking lands in your calendar.

Step 10. Publish and share your Hala Desk. Switch the desk to public and share the link on your website, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Google profile.

Knowledge is the single source Hala speaks from. It covers the clinic profile, services, prices, duration, doctors, doctor languages, doctor services, hours, insurance, location, parking, and FAQs. Changes apply to new conversations immediately after saving.

The governing principle: Hala answers from the clinic knowledge you provide. If a patient asks something outside your knowledge, Hala says it does not have that information and offers to connect the patient with your team, rather than guessing.

Keep knowledge current the way you keep your price list current. An accurate desk is a trusted desk.

How Hala handles conversations: it recognizes the patient's intent, follows Gulf Arabic, English, and mixed language conversations, helps patients discover the right service, handles appointment requests, answers follow up questions in context, and asks for any information it still needs instead of assuming.

Human handoff: your team can take over any conversation from the Inbox. Hala steps back, your staff continues with full conversation history, and the patient experiences one continuous conversation.

The complete workflow: patient request, then service identification, then doctor matching, then calendar availability, then slot selection, then collision check, then patient details, then confirmation, then calendar booking.

Two rules govern everything. First, Hala does not invent availability; every offered time comes from the connected calendar at the moment of the conversation. Second, availability is verified again at confirmation; if the slot was taken in the meantime, Hala informs the patient and offers the next genuine options.

The calendar connection is the bridge between conversation and reality. This covers connecting a calendar, working hours, doctor schedules, service duration and how it maps to slot length, how availability is computed, how booking conflicts are prevented, and how canceled appointments, completed appointments, and no shows are represented in My Desk.

The Agent section defines behavior: the greeting patients hear first, personality and tone, language behavior including how Hala responds to Arabic, English, and mixed messages, voice availability on plans that include it, the patient information Hala must collect before booking, and escalation and handoff rules for conversations that need a human.

Configure once, review monthly, and adjust as you learn from real conversations in Analytics.

Put your digital receptionist where patients already are: clinic website, Instagram bio and stories, WhatsApp chats and status, Google Business presence, QR codes at reception, email signatures, and direct links.

Important: sharing through WhatsApp shares a link to your Hala Desk. It does not connect Hala to your clinic's WhatsApp Business number.

Analytics describes how patients use your desk: conversation volume, language mix between Arabic and English, services requested, appointment requests and completed bookings, answer rate, engagement, and appointment activity over time. Use it to spot busy periods, popular services, and questions your knowledge should answer better.

Covers the trial, subscribing, payment, plan changes, failed payments and how booking pauses until payment succeeds, billing status, and referral rewards. Billing is managed from Clinic settings.

What Hala handles: clinic knowledge you provide, patient conversations on your desk, and booking details such as name and mobile number. What clinic administrators control: the knowledge, the agent behavior, who on the clinic side can access My Desk, and how conversations are handled.

Patient information considerations: Hala collects the minimum needed to book, and clinics should instruct patients not to share detailed medical histories in chat. Human oversight is built in through the Inbox and takeover. AI limitations are stated plainly: Hala can misunderstand and is therefore constrained to your knowledge and your calendar, with humans always able to intervene.

A note on claims: Hala does not describe itself with compliance labels it has not earned. If a certification or formal compliance status is obtained in the future, it will be stated precisely, with scope.

Technical guidance for calendar connection failures, booking discrepancies, authentication problems, desk availability, voice issues, browser issues, notification delivery, and payment failures. Each article follows the same shape: symptom, likely causes in order of frequency, resolution steps, and when to contact support.