How to Preserve Original Marketing and Booking Source After a Reschedule

A reschedule should change the appointment time and workflow status without rewriting how the booking was first acquired or where it first entered the schedule. Keep original marketing source and original booking source immutable. Record the latest action channel and reschedule history in separate fields.

This is an editorial data-design rule, not a claim about a vendor’s built-in attribution. Zocdoc documents rescheduling an existing appointment through its appointment identifier, while Doctoralia describes reschedule, confirmation, and cancellation capabilities. Neither source says it preserves the clinic’s original marketing or booking-source fields.

What do the vendor sources actually establish?

Zocdoc’s Appointment Actions documentation shows a reschedule request for an existing appointment_id with a new start_time. It lists appointment states in which a reschedule can be requested and treats cancellation and post-appointment status updates as separate actions.

Doctoralia’s Brazilian page says clinic staff can reschedule, confirm, and cancel appointments in its agenda. It also describes reminders that let patients reschedule or cancel when needed. These are product-capability statements from the vendor.

Neither page defines original marketing source, original booking source, latest action channel, or an attribution-preservation policy. The field model below is therefore an editorial recommendation for clinic-owned reporting. Do not present it as a feature that Zocdoc or Doctoralia supplies automatically.

Which facts should stay immutable?

Keep facts that describe the first supported acquisition and booking event unchanged. The original marketing source records the campaign or channel evidence accepted when the booking was created. The original booking source records where that booking entered the schedule, such as the clinic website, a marketplace, a Business Profile link, or staff entry.

A reschedule answers a different question: how did the appointment’s time change? It may happen through a patient portal, a phone call, the front desk, or a vendor workflow. That action belongs in a new field and event record.

Field	Meaning	Update rule
original_marketing_source	First supported acquisition channel or campaign	Write once; correct only through an audited data-quality process
original_booking_source	Route that first created the booking	Write once
booking_lineage_id	Opaque identifier for one appointment lineage	Stable across reschedules
current_start_time	Latest scheduled time	Update after an accepted reschedule
current_status	Current operational state	Update from the scheduling system
latest_action_channel	Channel used for the latest change	Update for each action
reschedule_history	Dated sequence of approved changes	Append, never replace

The distinction builds on the existing guide to appointment source versus marketing source. Those two sources already answer different questions before a reschedule occurs.

How should a reschedule update the record?

Update the current time, current status, action timestamp, actor class, and latest action channel. Append an event to the reschedule history. Keep the booking lineage and original-source fields unchanged.

1. Receive the reschedule from the authoritative scheduling workflow.
2. Match it to the stable booking lineage.
3. Record the prior and new scheduled times.
4. Update the current operational projection.
5. Append the action channel and source timestamp.
6. Leave original marketing and booking source untouched.
7. Send ambiguous or unmatched events to review.

Do not create a second acquisition merely because the patient used a different channel to move the appointment. A phone reschedule does not turn an original website booking into a phone-acquired booking. It records a later phone action.

Why does overwriting the source damage reporting?

Overwriting moves bookings between cohorts after acquisition. A campaign may appear to lose a booking when reception reschedules it, while the phone channel appears to gain one it did not acquire. The total remains the same, but the source report changes for the wrong reason.

The error also hides operational work. If the source field changes from website to phone, the report can no longer distinguish online acquisition from a later reception action. Keeping latest_action_channel separate shows both facts.

Original-source reporting needs a stable cohort. The article on reporting the clinic funnel by original lead cohort explains why today’s status totals cannot replace the group that first entered during a defined period.

What if the vendor creates a new appointment?

Some workflows may update one appointment, while others may cancel an old record and create another. Do not assume the behavior. Test the actual integration and define a lineage rule that connects the records when the clinic has reliable evidence that they represent one reschedule.

Keep each vendor identifier as observed. Add a separate clinic-owned lineage identifier instead of changing the vendor key or using patient details as the join. The lineage should be opaque and should not encode a name, phone number, treatment, or appointment note.

If the new record cannot be linked safely, leave it unresolved. A queue for ambiguous cases is better than an automatic merge that combines two people or two unrelated appointments.

How do booking status and attribution stay separate?

The scheduling system owns current appointment status. The approved attribution record owns marketing evidence. The booking integration owns the observed operational entrance. A reporting job can combine these facts without giving one system authority over all three.

Use a small status vocabulary for reporting. Created, rescheduled, cancelled, attended, and no-show need separate definitions and transition rules. The clinic booking outcome taxonomy provides a starting point for those operational states.

A status update should never manufacture a marketing source. It also should not erase one. When the campaign link is unavailable, keep the marketing source unknown even if the appointment source remains known.

How should corrections differ from reschedules?

A genuine data correction can change an original source, but it needs a reason, reviewer, previous value, new value, and timestamp. That is different from the normal reschedule workflow. Restrict correction access and report corrections separately.

For example, a parser defect may have classified every Business Profile provider booking as website. Fixing that defect may justify a controlled backfill. A patient moving an appointment from Tuesday to Thursday does not.

Do not let staff use source correction as a convenient way to describe the latest conversation. Give them an action-channel field that fits the real task.

What should a source-preservation test cover?

• Create a booking through each supported operational route.
• Capture the original marketing source only where evidence exists.
• Reschedule through the patient flow and through reception.
• Confirm that current time and latest action channel change.
• Confirm that original marketing and booking source do not change.
• Check cancellation followed by a new booking under the documented lineage rule.
• Replay the same vendor update and verify it does not duplicate history.
• Review an unmatched reschedule and confirm it does not merge automatically.

Store the test date, vendor configuration, rule version, and expected values. A passing test proves the clinic’s implementation at that moment. It does not prove every future vendor release behaves the same way.

Frequently asked questions

Should a phone reschedule change the booking source to phone?

No. Keep the original booking source and record phone as the latest action channel. This preserves acquisition reporting while still showing reception workload.

Does Zocdoc guarantee original-source preservation?

The mapped API documentation establishes reschedule and status capabilities. It does not document the clinic field model proposed here. Test the integration and keep the preservation rule inside the clinic’s reporting contract.

Can staff correct an incorrect original source?

Yes, through a restricted correction process with an audit trail. A correction fixes bad evidence. It should not be triggered by a routine reschedule or later patient contact.

Should a reschedule count as a new booking?

Not in this editorial model. It remains one booking lineage. If a vendor creates a new record, connect it only under a tested rule and keep both vendor identifiers.

References

• Zocdoc Developer Documentation, “Appointment Actions,” retrieved 2026-08-16, https://api-docs.zocdoc.com/guides/scheduling/appointment-actions
• Doctoralia Pro, “Plano Gratuito da Doctoralia para clínicas,” retrieved 2026-08-16, https://pro.doctoralia.com.br/produtos/sistema-de-agendamento/plano-gratuito-clinicas