SMS app (texting)
The SMS app makes it possible to send out text messages to groups of users. You need to provide an SMS gateway, for the app to use.
Please note that this app is deprecated.
Setting up an SMS gateway
To set up an SMS gateway:
- Go to the Settings area
- Navigate to Marketing > SMS
- Click SMS
You will see the SMS gateway configuration options (Figure 2.1).
From here you can:
- Provide the email-address of your SMS Gateway – containing a placeholder for the user phone number. The gateway email doubles as the From address when sending texts, so don't use little.miss.piggy@ham.com (unless that's what you do, sell hams).
- Provide an email, if you want to receive copies of the texts sent out by the app
The Gateway address format depends on your service provider, but should start with {0} – the system substitutes the 0 with the phone number of each user you send a text to.
You should only provide an email for testing purposes – unless you want to receive an email for every single text you send out.
Creating and sending a text message
To create and send out a text message, go to the Marketing area and click the SMS node to bring up the message list (Figure 3.1).
Click New text message to go to the create new text message interface (Figure 3.2).
From here you can:
- Name the SMS Session (for internal use)
- Specify a message to send to your users
- You can use @Name, @FirstName and @LastName to personalize the text.
- Select one or more user groups to send to – or select users based on a smart search.
When you are happy with the message and the user groups selected, click Save and send to, well, save and send the texts to your users.
Texting international numbers
The SMS app uses an external service (your gateway) for sending out text messages.
This means that:
- The Delivered row on the SMS app overview page only guarantees that the texts are delivered to the external service.
- Texts are sent to the standard country code of your SMS gateway.
To send texts to foreign telephone numbers, you need to make sure any foreign users have the correct country code prefix in their user information.
Provided that the information in your user database is correct, you should have no problems texting international users.
