SMS templates allow you to create predefined SMS messages to send to your to contacts relating to a job. You may want to send an SS to your customer confirming that the job has been scheduled or that the driver is on their way with the details of the job (e.g. due time and reference number). This allows your customers to be informed.

SMS messages can be sent using SMS templates in two ways. You can send an SMS from the Job view screen or automatically when a job changes to a certain status. The help information below will show you have create and edit templates. 

To automatically send an SMS when a job changes status you can configure this for each job type. This can be configured in the job type configuration section (Admin->Administration→Job type configuration). When you open a job type you will be able to add events at the bottom of the job type screen.

Charges explained

All SMS service providers differentiate between the length of a single message and the length of a single SMS. A standard SMS can contain up to 160 characters. But you can send one complete message with a total of up to 1377 characters, though this will actually take 9 SMS messages to send. What happens here is called concatenation.

When you are sending a message that exceeds the maximum character amount of a standard SMS, the SMS provider will break these up into chunks of 153 characters to transmit, before putting them back together to create one long message on the recipient's phone. This is called concatenation.

For a concatenated SMS the costs of each extra SMS will be charged. The table below illustrates the amount of SMS needed to send a message when the corresponding amount of characters is used.

Managing SMS templates

To manage email templates navigate to Admin -> Administration and select "SMS Templates" under the "Notifications" sub heading. If this is the first time you are creating a template then you will see that there are no templates defined. 

Create a new SMS template

To manage email templates navigate to Admin -> Administration and select "SMS Templates" under the "Notifications" sub heading. From the SMS search screen select "Add".

Provide a name for the template. You can then format the SMS message using a combination of text and fields from the "Add field to Message" option to insert information from the job to personalise the SMS message for your customer.

When editing the SMS message you can use "meta-data" fields to allow for custom data to be inserted from the job. Crittah will merge information provided in the job into these meta-data fields to provide important information in the SMS message about the job without you needing to cut and past. Some examples would be to customise an SMS message to refer to the contact by name or to provide a job reference number. The screen shot above shows an example SMS template using these meta-data fields to insert the contacts first name and job due time into the SMS Message. Once you send the SMS message for a job or automatically send an SMS message through the jobs status event change these meta-data fields will be replaced with the relevant information to produce the SMS Message.

Below is a table describing the available meta-data fields that you can use in your email templates. Above the subject and the Email body section you will see a drop down selector that shows all of the meta-data fields that you can choose from to use in the mail template. 

All meta-data fields must be inserted with two square brackets either side (.e.g. [[contactname]])

[[confirmbutton]]

[[contactname]]

[[contactsalutation]]

[[contactfirstname]]

[[contactlastname]]

[[contactmobile]]

[[contactphone]]

[[companyname]]

[[duedate]]

[[status]]

[[internalcontact]]

[[internalcontactfirstname]]

[[jobreference]]

 [[idjob]]

 [[jobtype]]

 [[contactaddress]]

 [[customeraddress]]

 [[jobdeliveryaddress]]

 [[jobdeliveryaddresscity]]

 [[jobadddress]]

 [[jobaddresscity]]

 [[receiptreference]]

 [[receiptammount]

 [[invoicereference]]

 [[invoiceammount]]

 [[quotereference]]

 [[quoteammount]]

 [[jobestimate]]

 [[CFXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX]]

Configuring automatic SMS message to be sent on job status changes

Please refer to SMS Events to create send automated emails when a job status changes.

Sending an SMS for a job

Please refer to Sending SMS Message for a job section of the help guide.