(SM-1) Sending Attendee Messages
Welcome to the first lesson in this chapter about sending messages.
We will start with where you will probably spend most of your time sending messages, which is in sending them to your activity attendees.
To be able to experiment with using these features as you read this lesson, we recommend you work with an activity which has a few attendees that have been added while in TEST mode. You should be aware that you can safely use the send message features in Test mode as in this mode the messages are created but not actually send out by the app.
To to go the area to send attendee messages:
- Go to Bookings - Messages
- Select an activity which already has some attendees
In this area, you can see that the screen is divided into three columns:
- Message Column - select one or all of the different attendee messages available
- Attendee Column - select one or all of the attendees on the activity
- Delivery Status Column - work with the message/attendee combination chosen in the first two columns.
As we discussed in lesson DM-3, there are four standard attendee messages, which are the ones shown in the Message column of the image above.
To show all messages in the Delivery Status column:
- Click on [All Messages] in the Messages Column.
To show just one message in the Sending Column:
- Click on the message name
To show all attendees in the Sending Column:
- Click on [All Attendees (x)] in the Attendees Column
To show just one attendee in the Sending Column:
- Click on the attendee name
So that the following paragraphs make sense, leave the settings so they are showing all messages and all attendees.
By default, the Delivery Status column just shows the overall sending status of each message. This can be:
- All Sent
- XX Unsent
- Sending Errors
In our example screen shot shown above, each attendee has received their Place Booked message at the time the booking was made, but the other three messages have not been sent. Hence we can see that Place booked is listed as All Sent, and the other three are listed as 5 Unsent.
You can see more details of each message at the individual attendee level.
To see the the list of attendees, click on the icon which shows the status.
To see the attendees a message has been to:
- Click onfor that specific message.
The list of attendees appears:
To see the attendees a message has not been sent to:
- Click onfor that specific message.
The list of attendees appears:
You can also use the three selection boxes at the top of the Delivery Status Column to show more details for all message at the individual attendee level.
To see all the sent messages
- Select [Show all sent]
In our example, this shows a list of all the attendees for the Place Booked message.
To see all the unsent messages:
- Select [Show all unsent]
In our example, this shows a list of all the attendees for the other three messages.
- Select [Show all errors]
You can see the exact message that was sent out to each attendee:
- Select the [Show all sent] option in the Delivery Status column
- Click on the name of one of the attendees that is listed
A pop up window appears, first showing the sending status of the message, and then the text of the message that was sent:
You can see that the sending status for the message here is Created. This will always be the case for messages sent in Test mode - the messages are created but never sent.
You can see that next to each message which has not been sent, there is a big [Send Unsent] button.
Here is how to use it...
To send a message to one attendee:
- Select an individual attendee's name in the Attendee column
The Delivery Status column now shows the status just for this one attendee.
- Click on [Send Unsent] next to your chosen message in the Delivery Status column.
The message will be sent just to this one attendee - in this example, for the Joining Instructions.
If this means that the message has now been sent to this attendee but not everyone, when you revert to viewing All Attendees, you will see the message status remains as XX Unsent, but XX has decreased by one - in this case to four:
To send a message to all attendees:
- Select [All Attendees (X)] in the Attendees Column
- Click on [Send Unsent] next to your chosen message
This will cause the message status to now be set to "All Sent".
As well as sending messages in this manual way, there is a technique that allows them to be sent automatically. This is discussed in detail in lesson SM-3.
If you want to be sure that a message was sent:
- Go to the Messages - Messages Sent area
- Click on [Refresh message list]
This shows the most recently sent messages in date/time order, with the most recent message at the top.
If you do not see the most recent messages sent:
- Click on [Refresh message list]
To see the status and content of a specific message:
- Select the message on the left
The status and content of the message appears on the right.
Often you will find that you are not ready to send a specific message.
To prevent messages that are not currently relevant appearing in the the Bookings - Messages area:
- Go to Activities - Define Activities and go inside the activity.
- View the relevant message
- Deselect the [Ready to send] option
- Click on [Save]
The message names will now appear greyed out in the message list within Define Activities - in this case, Just Before and Just After:
The messages will now no longer appear in the Bookings - Messages area:
Using this technique can help to make the display much cleaner in Bookings - Messages.
If a new attendee booked onto an activity while you were looking at the Bookings - Messages screen then their details will not appear.
To update the attendee list:
- Click on [Refresh Messages]
We have learned about how the standard attendee message are sent from the Bookings - Messages area. We have seen how to manage the list of messages and attendees, see the delivery status of different messages, and manually send unsent messages.
We will discuss how the messages can be sent automatically in lesson SM-3.
In the next lesson we will discuss how to manually send out the Payment Due messages.