One-Time Campaigns

One-Time Text Campaigns are campaigns that are either sent immediately upon completing the setup or scheduled for one-time execution in the future.

Status Definitions

Select the Campaign name to open the status dashboard. The following Status Breakdown appears:

  • Preparing: A iMIS Text Messenger status indicating that the message is being prepared to send.
  • Error: TO number is not a valid phone number
  • Undelivered: Twilio has received a delivery receipt indicating that the message was not delivered. This can happen for a number of reasons including carrier content filtering, availability of the destination handset, etc.
  • Delivered: Twilio has received confirmation of message delivery from the carrier, (and, where available, the destination handset).
  • Sent: Twilio has not received updated delivery information for your message. Typically, a sent status will be replaced by a delivered or undelivered status within seconds or minutes. Please note that US/Canada long code MMS often remain in sent status due to a lack of final delivery status updates from carriers. Once a message is older than 72 hours, receiving a further status is unlikely, although we will update the record if we receive one. Your messages will stay in sent status forever if you are sending messages using the deprecated /SMS/Message REST API Resource, which does not support delivery status updates.
  • Failed: The message could not be sent. This can happen for various reasons including queue overflows, account suspensions and media errors (in the case of MMS). Twilio charges a Failed Message Processing Fee of $0.001 per message that fails.

Creating the TEXTMSG required activity type

When text messages are successfully sent to members, an activity is written to Activities or to the Communications Log (Interactions). Before the activity can be recorded, the TEXTMSG activity type must be defined in iMIS.

Do the following to add the TEXTMSG activity type:

  1. From the Staff site, go to Settings > Contacts > Activity types.
  2. Select Add new activity type:
    • Type - TEXTMSG
    • Description - SMS Text Message
    • Note - Message
    • CEU type - Category
    • Description - Sent To
  3. Click Save & Exit.

When text messages are successfully sent, activities are created:

  • Activity Type: TEXTMSG
  • TransactionDate:  the UTC date/time the SMS was sent
  • Id: the iMIS ID of the individual
  • Description: the "To" phone number
  • Note: the actual SMS message
  • CEU Type: "iMIS Text Messenger" (hard coded to identify the source application)

Creating a new one-time campaign

To create a new one-time campaign, do the following:

  1. Click the One-Time tab.
  2. Click New One-Time Campaign.
  3. Enter a Campaign Name.
  4. Enter an email address in the Status Report E-mails(s) field. This email address will receive a full status report of the campaign results.
  5. From the Recipient Query Path field, click Browse. Retrieve the result set for the SMS Campaign.

    6. Important! The IQA must have at least two fields (iMIS ID and Mobile Phone number). All columns must have the Alias field populated within the IQA.

  6. This field is then selected for Phone Number Column Name.
  7. Other columns can be included in the IQA for use in the SMS Message which will be described further below.
  8. From the API Mode field, select Live or Test. Test mode allows campaigns to be conducted but texts are not sent. Live mode does send texts.

  9. From the Message Template field, construct the text message that will be sent to members. The Merge Fields are the available fields from the selected IQA, and can be used in the message. For example. addressing your members by name. "Hello ${FullName},"

    10. Important! If you did not Alias all of the query display columns as mentioned above, these Merge Fields do not work correctly.

  10. Enable Write to Activities to ensure the TEXTMSG activity is saved to the member's account upon successfully receiving the text message.
  11. Enable Write to Communication Log (Interactions) to have a communication log item saved to the member's account upon successfully receiving the text message. You will need to create the TEXTMSG activity type if it does not exist in iMIS.

  12. From the Start Date/Time (UTC) field, choose the start date and time for the campaign. This includes the time it takes to run the query and retrieve the list of contacts.

  13. Review the campaign summary to determine how many contacts are returned in the query and how many people you will be sending the text message to:
    • Estimate Segments show and estimation of how many text messages will be sent. A text message might be longer than 160 characters (standard max length for 1 text message) depending on your merge fields from your IQA.
    • Max Segments/Day will show you current amount of segments(messages) you have left to send.
    • Estimated Send Time allows you to know when it will be sent.
  14. Click one of the following:
    • Save and Schedule Campaign - This will set the text campaign in motion by scheduling for execution
    • Save Draft Campaign - This will allow you to edit the campaign until it is ready to be sent.