Text message delivered ?

Posted on by March 21, 2016

Check your Text was Delivered.

When you click ‘Send’, a series of live delivery reports will appear on your screen, which show the status of your message. Messages are usually delivered very quickly, so you may not see them all.  As a successful delivery can complete very fast you may not see all of these statuses…

  1. Pending: the message is on its way to the mobile network hosting your recipients phone.
  2. Sent: the message has been passed to the mobile network and they are sending it on to your recipient’s phone. Text-Connect are waiting on them to confirm delivery.
  3. Delivered: Your message has reached your recipients phone, as confirmed by their mobile network.

If your message is delayed or fails, you may see other status updates:

  • FAILED: Your message did not reach the recipient.
  • UNKNOWN – The status of your message is not currently known, we have had no information from the mobile network regarding it’s delivery or failure.
  • EXPIRED – Your text message was not delivered to the phone within the required time. The phone may broken or switched off.
  • COMMAND_REJECTED – There is a problem with the phone number. It’s possibly incorrect or not current.
  • UNDELIVERABLE – Your text has not reached the phone. Similar to Command_Rejected, there may be a problem with the number.
  • COMMAND_FAILED – As per ‘undeliverable’ but for international messages.

If you are sending several text messages in quick succession, you can keep up to date on their delivery status by clicking the ‘Sent’ folder.

Schedule your Message

Posted on by March 21, 2016

Scheduling Your Message

When to send. Now or pre schedule for the future ?

Once you have your message ready to send, you can choose when it is sent.

Text-Connect gives you 3 options:

  1. Send ‘immediately‘.  Send right now.
  2. Send ‘on a later date‘.  Schedule for a date and time in the future.
  3. Send ‘by schedule‘.  Schedule multiple sends over a time period.

Writing your text message.

Posted on by March 21, 2016

Writing Your Text Message

Composing: things to bear in mind…

For each 160 characters you use in your text message to a UK mobile number, 1 credit will be used. 160 is the standard length for a SMS text message, however there are some instances noted below that are worth keeping in mind:

  • Using Text-Connect you can send ‘Long’ messages which give you more scope when communicating complex information.  You can draft long messages up to 456 characters in length (effectively 3 messages long) and this will use 1 credit per 160 character block.
  • Be sure to check the character & message count as you type to see how many credits your message will use.
  • Your messages sent to mobile numbers outside of the UK will use 2 credits per 160 character message. Please call for more information on our International coverage.
  • Some ‘special’ characters (e.g. £, $, &) are counted as 2 because they are not part of the standard GSM character set (a to z, 0 to 9). This could push you over the 160 character, 1 credit threshold for your message.

You can login to Text-Connect to start composing a message here.

Sending a Text. ‘From’ settings.

Posted on by March 21, 2016

‘From’.  Labels & Text Numbers.

When sending a text, you need to specify the ‘From’ information.

The ‘From’ field can be either a a Text Label or your Text-Number.

Text label.

If you choose to use a Text Label you should keep it no longer than 11 alphanumeric characters. An alphanumeric text label means A to Z, 0 to 9 but does should not use spaces or special characters (ie.  &^$£”% etc).

If you choose to use a Text Label you will not be able to receive replies back to your Text-Connect account via your text number.

NB: If you choose a text label that is only 2 characters long, some handsets (often I-Phones) may not display it correctly.

Text-Number.

If you have a Text-Number on your Text-Connect account you can choose this as the ‘From’ label. Click the ‘Virtual Mobile Number’ tab on the ‘Send’ box to select. Reply’s to your message will then be delivered to your inbox.

If you do not have a Text-Number and would like reply’s delivered back to your Text-Connect inbox, order online or give us a call on 01952 820 453.

Send a Text. Choosing Recipients

Posted on by March 21, 2016

Choosing the recipients for your Text message.

Choosing your recipients: We give you 5 options:

Text-Connect has been designed to make it quick, easy and flexible to send your text messages. We give you 5 different ways to select who to send to:

Choose from one of the following options:

  1. Type in the Number manually.
  2. Choose a single Contact from your Text-Connect address book.
  3. Select a Group of contacts from your Text-Connect address book.
  4. Select an uploaded Distribution List of your numbers.
  5. Upload a Campaign List from the ‘Send’ page for a one-off broadcast.

Sending a text message from Text-Connect.

Posted on by March 21, 2016

Sending a text message from Text-Connect in five simple steps…

With your account set up and ready to go, send your first text message with Text-Connect with just a few clicks.…

 

Send-SMS-Text-Connect

Sending a text message from Text-Connect

  1. Click the ‘Send’ to draft a new message.
  2. Enter the phone number you are sending to.
  3. Enter the ‘from’ detail  (maximum 11 characters).
  4. Draft your message.
  5. Click ‘Send message’.

Text Message delivered?

When your text message has been sent from Text-Connect, our system will keep you updated with its delivery progress.

  • Pending: Your message is on its way to the mobile network of your recipient.
  • Sent: The mobile network is sending your message to recipients phone.
  • Delivered: Your text message reached the phone.
  • Undeliverable: The phone could not be reached, and your message has failed.

Sent Folder.

If you are sending multiple text messages you can check their status in your ‘Sent‘ folder, found under ‘Messages‘.

Need more Credits?

Eventually you will need to top up your Text-Connect account with more credits. It’s quick and easy to order online from your account (Click Buy), or just give us a call.

Manage Rent Arrears with text messaging

Posted on by July 3, 2015
Houses

Managing Rent Arrears with tenants is a difficult task for Housing Associations and rental agents.

Text messaging gives you an additional management tool and means of communicating directly with tenants to prompt the resolution of outstanding rents.

We have many clients in the Housing Association and Rental Agent community who use text messaging and Text-Connect in this application and report that it is a vital tool in minimising rent arrears.

Critically, with Text-Connect you are able to communicate directly with individual tenants, yet our ‘mail-merge’ and bulk text messaging features mean that it’s a quick & simple task to send a personalised text to large numbers of tenants.

You can monitor undelivered messages with our reporting functions and because the message is sent directly to the tenants mobile phone,  you can be confident that your message will be read.

Text-Connect clients using the system to manage rent arrears confirm that it’s an extremely effective tool.

Our clients typically use our ‘Business Package’ and we have a Rent Arrears case study covering the practical use of the system here.

remote triggering

Posted on by July 3, 2015

Text-Connect is a powerful way to communicate with staff and clients distributed across a wide area and is proving popular in the Facilities Management industry.  The ability to keep a centrally managed list of contacts who can then be sent a text message at the drop of a hat makes distributing urgent and critical information to widely spread individuals simple and easy.

A handy feature our clients find helpful is the ability to remotely trigger a text shot to a contact list on their text-connect account,  using a text message from their own mobile phone.

This is particularly important when a mobile data connection isn’t available or local Internet connection is down. Text messages can often reach recipients even when mobile coverage is patchy and voice and data is unavailable.

Here is a quick ‘How To’:

Remote Triggering works as follows:

1. You define a mobile number(s) from which text message shots can be remotely triggered. See inbox, manage, “Allow triggering from”.

2. Recipients of the text shot are set up as a named ‘List‘

3. When you need to trigger a text shot, simply send a text to your text-number formatted as detailed below. Keeping a pre drafting a message on your phone will speed the process.

4. Text-Connect recognises the senders number and interprets their text for sending a text shot.

5. The SMS text message must contain the name of the distribution list to trigger, followed by the source address to send it from (ie a number or text label\name), followed by the actual message to be sent. A confirmation SMS will be sent to your mobile when the list has been triggered. Please note that you can only trigger distribution lists that have no spaces in their names.

This way authorised users of your account (i.e. those with mobile numbers specified on the system) can trigger text messages to go out to specific lists of people.

Remote triggering works with Text-Connect accounts with a Text Number and enough message credits for sending the text shot.

Message Status meanings in delivery reports.

Posted on by July 3, 2015

A key benefit of choosing Text-Connect for your business text messaging is that the message reports tell you if your message has been delivered.

Text-Connect’s  reporting functions mean that you can quickly check the current status of your message. When sending individual text messages our ‘Real Time’ message status gives you a live on screen report of current message status which updates automatically.

For multiple messages the ‘Sent’ menu gives you the status of all messages sent in the last 24 hours. For older messages you can  run a ‘Message Report’ in the Reports menu.

Once a message has been sent the current status is derived from updated information provided by the mobile network who the recipients phone is registered with. There is sometimes variation in description of the message status between networks.

Below are the common status names and a description of their meaning:

  • PENDING: The message is waiting to be accepted by the operator who provides the recipients mobile service.
  • SENT – the first delivery attempt has been made. If delivery is not successful, the message will stay in this state until it expires
  • DELIVERED – the message was successfully delivered to the handset.
  • EXPIRED: Means that the handset may have been switched off or out of signal for a long period of time, and the networks validity of the message has expired. They do try to send the message to the mobile over a 24-48 hour period, after this time frame the message would have expired.
  • COMMAND_REJECTED – the message was invalid in some way and was rejected by the operator. Often this is due to a ‘bad’ number.
  • UNDELIVERABLE – everything was fine with the message, but the handset was not able to receive the message.
  • UNKNOWN – The message has expired, but no delivery or expiry receipt was received from the operator, thus delivery status is unknown
  • FAILED/COMMAND_FAILED – The operator received the message but was unable to process it for some reason.

Message status reports in Text-Connect give you reduced usage costs by giving you the tools to manage your contact lists. ‘Bad’ numbers are easy to add to your account ‘black list’ and then cleaned from your existing lists so preventing wasted credits.

More info on text message reporting types is available here