The Yodl API: What You Can Build for $20 a Month

What the API add-on includes

Three things, each with a plain-English job:

The add-on is $20 a month per workspace, flat. It sits on top of the Team plan, so a one-location office with the API pays $30 a month. The full description is on the API page.

First, the HIPAA frame

A quick reminder before building anything. A practice is a covered entity under HIPAA, and almost everything about a patient's appointment is protected health information (PHI): any detail that identifies a patient and relates to their health, care or payment. Yodl signs a Business Associate Agreement (BAA), the contract in which a vendor accepts HIPAA obligations, with every customer, so PHI posted by a bot is covered the same way PHI typed by a person is.

Example 1: a "new booking" alert in #front-desk

The problem: bookings arrive through the website or a booking tool, and the front desk finds out when they next look at the calendar. The fix: when a booking is created, your booking system (or a small script that watches it) calls the Yodl REST API and posts a message as a bot user into #front-desk.

What the message should say is a judgment call. Inside the BAA-covered channel you may include the patient's name, but you do not have to. A message like "New booking: 2:30 pm Thursday, new patient exam with Dr. Lee" tells the desk what it needs for most tasks. Add the name when the desk needs to act on it. Sharing the minimum necessary detail is a HIPAA habit, and it also makes alerts easier to read.

Yodl can already drop website form submissions into a channel without the API. The API is for the bookings that come from another system.

Example 2: a bot that posts the morning schedule summary

At 7:00 am a "Schedule" bot posts to #clinical: how many visits today, which provider has openings, any room that is out of service, and who is working the desk. Clinical staff read it between the first two patients instead of asking. A script that reads your scheduling system each morning and posts one message is enough; it does not need to be clever to be useful.

• Give the bot its own name so people know it is automated and nobody @mentions it expecting a reply.
• Post counts and gaps, not full patient lists, unless a channel genuinely needs the list.
• Make the bot a Member of only the channels it posts in. Bots follow the same channel roles as people.
• Keep each post to one message so questions land in its thread.

Example 3: exporting channel history for records

Some practices want a copy of a channel's conversation stored with their own records: a shift-handoff channel kept for the year, or a project channel closed at the end of a renovation. The REST API can read a channel's messages so a script can save them where you keep records. Retention controls, legal hold and the audit viewer's CSV export already exist in the admin panel without the API; the API is for teams that want the export to happen on a schedule, or to land somewhere specific.

Who does the building, and what it costs

You need someone comfortable writing a short script, or a vendor who does this routinely. Many booking and EHR vendors have integration teams, and the Yodl side is the easier half. A simple alert is a small job for anyone who has worked with a web API before.

A few security notes for bots

• Treat the API key like a password: store it in the system that uses it, never in a channel message.
• Bot users are members of the workspace, so their posts are part of the same record as everyone else's.
• Retention rules apply to bot posts. A bot that posts the schedule every day for a year creates a year of PHI; set retention accordingly.
• A bot can be removed from a channel or the workspace as easily as a person, so misbehaving automation is a quick fix, not an outage.

If you want a channel tool that your other systems can talk to, Yodl is $10 a month for 5 people with a signed BAA, with the API as a $20 add-on, on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions