OU students report technical difficulties when using IMMY appointment portal for February vaccine clinic

Several OU students faced technical difficulties Wednesday morning while attempting to schedule their COVID-19 vaccination appointments through the IMMYLabs portal.

The vaccination appointment portal for Feb. 22 — when IMMY, OU Health Services and District 6 county health departments will host a large-scale first-dose vaccination clinic for those eligible — went live at 9:30 a.m. According to multiple OU students, the sign-up process raised challenges, as the site was lagging and confirmation emails were delayed. 

OU acting junior Bell Reeves said in a text message to The Daily she had experienced loading issues with the site and had to use multiple devices to ensure her appointment. 

“It was just loading on all the pages for a really long time. I had everything open from 9:28 (a.m.) until like 10 a.m.,” Reeves said. “I had the browser open on two computers and (a) phone trying to get an appointment.”

Reeves also said her confirmation email was delayed by about an hour and a half and the appointment times were filling quickly before she could complete her form.

IMMY announced at 11:09 a.m. Tuesday all appointments for the Feb. 22 clinic were full. 

All available appointments for 2/22 are now booked. We apologize for the delays and we appreciate your patience as we worked through some issues with the portal.For those who did schedule an appointment we look forward to seeing you on Monday!

— IMMY (@IMMYdiagnostics) February 16, 2021

OU meteorology freshman Gavin Short said in a text message although he received his confirmation email immediately, he also ran into initial issues with the portal lagging, despite logging on before registration began. 

Short said the technical difficulties he had faced with the site turned his initial optimism into frustration.

“Going into it, I was cautiously optimistic that I would get an appointment, because I do know how past appointment slots have filled up within 15 minutes of them being opened,” Short said. “That turned to frustration when I sat and watched a loading screen for 20 minutes, especially because the few times that it did go through it gave me the ‘appointments are full’ screen. When I did get through to get one scheduled, that became relief and joy.” 

IMMY responded to issues with the portal with a tweet that read, “Due to heavy site traffic this morning, we are experiencing delays to our site. Our team is adding more resources and will have the site back live shortly. We apologize for any inconvenience.” 

It also acknowledged the confirmation email delays many were experiencing.

“We are aware of the delayed confirmation notifications. If you did make it to the final page showing a confirmation code after scheduling then you do have an appointment! The notifications should be coming to your inbox soon,” IMMY wrote in another tweet. 

JT Harrison, vice president of Sales and Marketing at IMMY, said in an email the IMMY team is taking responsibility on their part for the difficulties users had faced, and they will keep working to refine their portal. 

“We learn something new each time we do one of these PODS, and we will definitely implement what we have learned today into the next round,” Harrison said in the email.