This article is a comprehensive guide to help you increase your chances of successfully booking an appointment at the Italian Consulate through the Prenotami system.
Before we begin, we recommend reading all our other articles with tips, as they provide detailed information on topics that can greatly assist you in your booking attempts. As I've mentioned before, we have been working with Prenotami for over 8 years, since the old Prenota Online system. We have booked appointments for almost 900 people and are very familiar with all the details of this system. Our intention is to guide those who have the time availability to try to book the appointment on their own every day. For those who do not have time availability due to work, studies, limitations of any kind, etc., please contact us and we will help you.
I will always be updating this post, which I consider to be the largest online guide on booking appointments on Prenotami. The information contained here is the result of 8 years of study and daily (nightly, lol) work with this system, and when I finish this series of posts, I will create an ebook and put the link here on the site for download. Subscribe to our newsletter at the end of the site to not miss any tips. And if you were expecting a simple guide with 15 items, I apologize, but the internet is full of them. Here, we will go into detail and open this Pandora's box called Prenotami. Without further ado, let's get started.
Structure
Most of our posts here detail this topic, but basically, you need to ensure good quality internet, regardless of speed, since a 30mbps connection is enough to book on Prenotami. The important thing is the stability of the link, which should be zero oscillation, and the ping, which should be as low as possible to Rome.
Click here and see how to check this information.
Connecting with cable or WiFi is another important detail, and there is no simple answer to this. The important thing is to test.
Click here and learn how to test which of the two options is better.
Close all other open applications, especially those that use the internet. All browsers and music applications. Make sure the system is not doing any automatic updates. You can schedule how the system will download updates by configuring it not to do so automatically or even by setting specific times.
DNS
Some internet providers may have some kind of problem or slowness in this regard. I will write a post on how to check if your DNS is a problem, but if you know how to change the DNS of your connection, I advise you to use Google's: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. In 99.99% of cases, this is not a problem, so don't worry if you don't know what I'm talking about.
VPN
This is one of the biggest legends that are spread to help you, but in practice, it will certainly hinder you. Take a look at this article if you're curious, but the simple answer is: Do not use a VPN.
Preparation
You should do two things before starting the booking process:
Leave your email open in another window.
Ensure that your files are super compact.
Prepare the "cheat sheet" with the files.
PDF File Size
It may seem obvious, but many people don't worry about this, and it's important that your files are lightweight. The site accepts files up to 1mb, but that's not why you should use files of that size. Use ILovePDF (search on Google) to compress the files. Reduce the quality as much as possible so that they are legible but with the smallest possible size.
File Cheat Sheet
This cheat sheet is very important and will save you a lot of time, and few people do it. You know when the booking form opens and you fill in the first fields, and when it comes to the files, you waste time going to the correct folder and choosing the correct file? Well, don't waste that time anymore.
Open Notepad on your computer and create a cheat sheet file with the .txt extension. It can be Files.txt. In this file, you will put in order, line by line, the complete path of the file on your computer as well as its name. Example of how this file would look:
If you don't know how to find the full path of a file, right-click on it and click on Properties and look for Location.
That's it, just leave the file open in the corner next to the browser. I'll explain later how you'll use it.
Data Cheat Sheet
Following the same logic as above and even using the same text file, put line by line the information you will need to fill in the form. For example, to schedule Citizenship in Rio de Janeiro you must fill in the Address and if you have another nationality. To schedule Citizenship in BH you must put the name of your Dante Causa. Finally, leave the data already filled in this cheat sheet file and when filling out the form just Copy and Paste from the file.
Browser
Choose the browser that is generally faster for you. There is a way to test the best browser, and maybe I'll write an article about it, but in general, the browser is indifferent, especially if it's between Edge and Chrome, which in practice are the same browser.
Opening the browser in incognito (private) mode is another legend. There is no technical evidence that this will help you, I guarantee it. The most important thing about the browser is to ensure that the cache is enabled. Unless you have purposely disabled it, you should not have any problems with this.
More than one window, more than one tab
Another legend that will certainly hinder you. Do not open more than one tab unless you know what you are doing. Do not open another browser window. Do not even open another different browser to log in to Prenotami in two different browsers.
I've seen some people saying to open several tabs and click on all of them. I even wrote an article in 2016 and another in 2017 saying to do this, but at the time it wasn't Prenotami, it was Prenota Online, the system prior to this one.
I will write an article just about this subject because it is quite extensive, but I will try to summarize here:
When you open another tab in the same browser, both tabs share the session, so much so that you don't need to type in your login and password again when you open a new tab. However, they also share the browser's TCP connections because it is the same website.
Think of each connection as a kitchen helper, and the browser is the chef. When you type a website into the browser, the Chef will prepare the recipe and needs to go get it from the cookbook. He asks a helper to go get it and waits. When the helper arrives, he looks at the recipe and asks all the helpers to go get the ingredients. As the ingredients arrive, he prepares the recipe. In this analogy, the recipe is the website, the browser is the chef, and the helpers are the TCP connections. The first point is that each browser has a limit of Connections (Helpers) per Site (Recipe). It usually revolves around 6 simultaneous "helpers". When you open another tab, it's like you're bringing another Chef into the same kitchen with the same helpers. Do you understand the problem here? If two tabs are loading at the same time, one will slow down the other because the helpers are the same, and they will have to divide themselves between the two tabs. You, as a user, will not notice this unless you were looking at another person on another computer next to you doing the same thing with only one tab. If a page takes 10 seconds to load and you press F5 on two tabs at the same time, it may be that the first one takes 10 seconds and the second one takes 20 because the second one was waiting for the helpers to serve the chef of the first tab. I've gone on too long about this, but it's very important because there are many people giving wrong instructions that can harm you. This is the kind of problem that is practically impossible for a person to notice on their own because they have no basis for comparison, and it's normal for people to self-sabotage for months due to lack of this knowledge.
And just to complement, if you are more technical, you might even say: "But if I use different browsers or use an incognito window and a normal one, the sessions will not be shared, nor will the connections. I tested this with netstat and saw that I had 40 connections open with Prenotami." This is half true, see the screenshot below:
Above you can see 13 open connections to the Prenotami server. This was simulating opening the site in Chrome and Edge at the same time.
This may seem good, but it's an illusion. What happens is that the Prenotami server itself has another limitation to prevent abuse and excessive connections. There is another limit, which is the number of simultaneous connections that the server will process for each person or will leave waiting in a queue. I guarantee you that these numbers are worse than you imagine and only ratify what I said: do not do several things at the same time.
In short, if you click on the first tab, then click on the second, thinking you will double your chances, know that the form will take longer to appear for you because the browser is wasting time with the second tab instead of focusing on just one.
In Prenota Online (the old system), this worked because each Prenota "recipe" had 4 ingredients. In Prenotami (the current system), each recipe has around 40 ingredients, divided by 6 helpers... do the math and see how much this hinders.
My goodness, I talked too much about this. And I apologize for the technical part, but I hope everyone understood the message. Moving on…
Login
This is another important detail. Don't log in to Prenotami too far in advance. Prenotami has a session expiration rule of 30 minutes after login, but there's an important detail: unlike 99% of websites on the internet that expire sessions due to inactivity, Prenotami expires active sessions. In other words, it doesn't matter if you spent 30 minutes staring at the screen or 30 minutes navigating the site, your session will expire exactly after 30 minutes. This is a mechanism the site has to hinder appointment monitoring bots, but in practice, it only hinders unaware users.
Therefore, I advise logging into the system about 10-15 minutes before the scheduled time, not before that.
Booking Screen
At this point, there are 5 minutes left until the slot opens; you have your email open in one corner, the file cheat sheet in another, and Prenotami taking up most of the screen.
The idea now is to click at the right time. What is the right time?
I will write a post about this because it's a complex subject, but the rule is that there is no simple rule. If you've heard somewhere, in a video, post, forum, someone saying "You should click at 59 on the dot" or "I succeeded by clicking at 57", forget all those tips. Each day of the week has an exact moment to click, and each computer has its moment too. So, if it worked for one person, it doesn't mean it will work for you too. You will have to monitor the history of what happened in previous weeks and calculate. Write down in a notebook or spreadsheet, divided by day of the week, the moment you clicked and the moment the page appeared for you. If you clicked at 58 and the page appeared 30 seconds after the time, the following week you click at 56 and keep noting until you get a good idea of the right time to click for the day of the week. A good idea is to use your cell phone's stopwatch. After a few weeks, you will have a complete dossier on the right times to do what and how much time you are wasting on each thing or how long it is taking to load something. This "log" is your most important tool to get the appointment, and your goal is for the page to appear for you as close to zero as possible. Let's call this zero moment T, where T is the exact time the link is released.
To illustrate, during general hours (midnight at Rome), if the form appeared up to T+5 (where T is the opening time, 6:00:00 PM for example, and 5 are the seconds elapsed after T: 6:00:05 PM), you have more than a 90% chance of getting the appointment if you don't make any mistakes in the following steps. At T+30 (6:00:30 PM), this chance drops by half in consulates like SP. On the other hand, T+30 for Citizenship in Rio, your chances are around 20% of success. In CABA (Buenos Aires), your chances are zero. You can close the browser and go have a "chimarrão" (traditional South American caffeinated drink). In CABA, the competition is huge, and you need to be very lucky or have a lot of technique to hit the magic number, which is up to T+5. Each Consulate, Service, and day of the week has its unique indicator. That's why I say, reading on the internet "You should click at moment X because it worked for me" is a huge misinformation. If it worked on a Monday for Passport in NY, it doesn't mean it will work on a Wednesday for Citizenship in London. Note: this rule does not apply to consulates outside general hours like PR-BR, where booking is very fast.
Important: Do not keep pressing F5 quickly, especially if you ignored my advice about not using multiple tabs. Do not install those bots and browser extensions that keep refreshing the site or clicking the service button by themselves. I've seen people who programmed the browser to keep clicking the booking button by itself until the slot opened. There are people who do worse, they open 4 tabs and program them all to keep auto-refreshing. Besides being useless due to what I explained above, for Prenotami it's as if you were making "non-human" use of the site due to the speed and excess of clicks, and you will probably have your account blocked: The famous "Account Bloccato" that many people have already received occurs for this reason, among others. If you see this message, you have lost the account and will not be able to recover it.
Form
Ok, the time has come, you clicked the service button and after a while the form loaded halfway. At this point, that obvious and well-known tip is valid, don't click on anything, wait. The field with the appointment type has not yet loaded, and only after it loads will the other fields appear. What happens here is that the Chef has already finished the whole recipe but is waiting for a helper to go get one last ingredient. Do you understand now the importance of not using other tabs? If at this moment you are loading Prenotami in another tab or even in another browser, this will hinder this loading.
If your consulate/service has OTP on the form, click on OTP first and keep an eye on your email, which should be visible in the window next to it. I advise memorizing the OTP just by reading it without opening the email and without taking your attention away from the browser. Emails like Gmail can be configured to show the first line of the email as soon as it arrives without having to open it. But here, do as you feel most comfortable.
OTP
If you think the click on the OTP button failed, click again. There is no problem clicking twice. If you clicked twice in a row and an email arrived, do not wait for the second email because different numbers will not be generated. It can happen, but it's almost impossible. You will receive two emails with the same number. So take the first code and do not wait for the arrival of another email.
The numbers are recalculated in 3-minute cycles synchronized with the turn of the hour. Example: an OTP is valid for that service and for that login for a period of 3 minutes. But it's not 3 minutes from the moment you received it, but rather 3 minutes from the last cycle change. An OTP generated between 6:00 PM and 6:03 PM can always be used within that period because it will always be the same no matter how many times you click the button. When it turns from 6:02:59 PM to 6:03:00 PM, this OTP will lose its validity and a new calculation is made to generate the OTPs for the next 3 minutes. Many bank apps use similar systems but with shorter cycles, of 1 minute. As an hour contains 60 minutes and 60 is a multiple of 3, then in one hour exactly 20 OTPs are generated in cycles of 3 minutes each, and obviously every turn of the hour the OTP loses its validity. Obviously, if you use an OTP, it cannot be used again. What I'm explaining is that if you request 10 OTP codes within the same 3-minute cycle, you will receive 10 emails with the same code. So unless you are close to T+3 minutes on the form screen, don't worry if you clicked the button twice because you will receive the same emails. But as not everything is rosy, if you happen to click on the OTP, receive the code, fill out the form, fill in the OTP and click to submit the form after 6:03:00 PM (in the example where T is 6:00 PM, RJ for example), you will be very unlucky because you will have done everything right and will receive the message "Wrong OTP Code" because the 3-minute cycle turned before you submitted the form and that OTP you had received is no longer valid. Yes, it's rare, but it happens all the time. This explanation is not exactly a tip, but it's good to know how it works, even to understand why sometimes we are sure we typed the correct OTP and the site says it's wrong. In "fast consulates", like Curitiba for example, this doesn't happen because the whole process until the end takes place in seconds and doesn't even come close to the OTP expiring.
Anyway, all fields loaded, be quick.
Fill in the fields obviously without wasting time. Use the cheat sheet and Copy and Paste the data from the cheat sheet into the form. Some browsers have the autofill feature. I won't go into that detail here, but find out how to use this feature to your advantage and not have to type in the text fields. You can type a letter and the browser will suggest filling in the entire field.
If you have to fill in any date field, such as the passport expiration date in the case of renewal, do not click the button to open the calendar. Click directly on the day and type. It's much faster.
PDF Files
When you get to the file(s), you should double-click on the first line of your cheat sheet, which should be open and visible. When you double-click, the line will be selected, then press CTRL+C (Copy), press the form button to insert the file and don't waste time clicking on folders. Go straight to the bar below, press CTRL+V (Paste) and ENTER. Do this for all files and you will save precious seconds. See the screen below:
Fill in the OTP, if you haven't already, and if your screen has an OTP, check the Policy and click Next. At this point, you already know that a window (completely useless) will appear for confirmation. Here you can already save 0.5 to 1 second. When you click the button with the mouse, do not move the mouse up to click on the window. If you are right-handed, your right hand will be on the mouse and the left will be on the keyboard, just hit the spacebar with your thumb immediately after clicking the button to submit the form and the OK will be clicked almost instantly ;)
ps: This tip does not work in all browsers, but in Chrome, I'm sure it works.
Calendar
Now you are waiting for the calendar screen. Here's another tip: You have to know in which month the slots will open. This is mandatory. If it's June and the slots are being released in September, you have to know that. If you don't know, try to find out, if you can't find it, send me an email and I'll tell you, even the day I'll tell you, but you need to know. This is for the case of bookings that are not released in the current month. If it's a booking for the current month, you need to know the day it will be released. Ask me if you can't find it out there.
If the slot to be released is in the current month, the calendar will load all red. Do not click on the next month, just wait for the chef's assistant to return with this ingredient (day to be released). When it loads, this day will turn green, and if you already know the day, it's much better because you will hover your mouse over it, like in Formula 1, waiting for the red to turn green. Click quickly and wait. Don't miss this click.
Wait with the mouse on the right side of the screen in the position where the times appear. When the times appear, click and scroll down and confirm. The tip to confirm the window with the spacebar is valid again.
If the month to release the slot is not the current one, keep clicking fast until the correct month and wait.
Regarding the time, I could even say something like "Click on the time that has fewer slots because everyone will click on the time with more slots," but that doesn't make sense. First, if 300 people read this article and do that, I'll be harming everyone because they'll all be sabotaging each other. Second, the screen you see is already in the past, and the millisecond you thought about moving the mouse, those numbers have already changed internally. So click on impulse, and it will work :)
If your consulate or service has OTP on this screen, follow the rule I mentioned earlier. You wait for the OTP to arrive, type it quickly, and confirm. Here's a tricky catch: Some consulates open this OTP pop-up already clicked, meaning you just have to wait for the email, and others you need to click. Only experience will tell you what your consulate has programmed.
Note to Brazilian friends: This OTP I mentioned now does not exist in Brazil. It's an OTP that appears after choosing the time in some consulates. Ignore this part.
Finally, if everything went well here, just wait for the confirmation screen and celebrate.
Extra Tips:
If there is a server error at any time, just press F5 (refresh the screen), especially on the last screen. A window may appear asking if you want to resend the Form, just confirm.
Write down everything, especially the times, catalog by day of the week. This will be your main tool.
Pay attention to daylight saving time: this tip is golden. The time the slots are released is Rome time. If daylight saving time changes in your country, the Prenotami time will not change, so you will always have to align with Rome time. But the golden tip is to keep track of daylight saving time in Italy because this will never be news in your country, and when it happens, the same thing always happens: Tens of thousands of people wondering why the slots didn't open, when in fact the slots were released an hour before or an hour after the time you are used to. After a few years without daylight saving time (here in Italy called Ora Legale), this rule is back, and D-day will be October 27th. Therefore, the first day of slot release after this date will be a guaranteed slot for those who read this article. Whoever books on this day, come here and comment ;)
Some services require that the booking be Confirmed. This occurs in services where the appointment is very far from the current date. This confirmation must be done between 10 and 3 days before the scheduled date, and you will do this within Prenotami on the screen where you can see the scheduled services. Don't forget, put it on your cell phone calendar, Google calendar, all possible calendars. If you do not confirm the booking up to 3 days before the appointment date, the booking will be canceled and the slot will be automatically released in the system. If at the time of booking, on the confirmation screen, the message appears that the booking is Confirmed, it means you do not need to confirm it later.
That's it!
I'm not saying that if you do all this, your slot will be guaranteed. I'm just trying to increase your chances of success. If you had a 1% chance of success, I hope that after this article your chances increase to at least 20%, and that's already excellent, be sure of it.
Anyway, I will write many other posts to detail several points that I didn't want to go into too much depth here, and I will always be updating this post. I hope it helps, and if you have any questions, comment below, send me an email at info@prenotami.help, and once again, if you don't have time availability, patience, or good infrastructure, we are available to make your booking for you. Access the contact form, and we will be happy to assist you.
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