(SM-4) Managing Live Messages
Last updated
Last updated
Having discussed in detail how different types of messages are sent, let's now take a look at how live messages are handled in Workshop Angel.
Live messages are sent through two different service provider we use.
Emails are sent through a company called Postmark. Your email address is registered with our account in Postmark when you sign up to use the app, and then each email sent from your account has a "From" address as that email.
Text/sms messages are sent through a separate service provider called ClickSend. You are not required to register your phone number with them. However there is a significant charge of several pence/cents for each 160 characters of text/sms message sent, and we pass those costs on to you in addition to the percentage of your revenues that you pay for using the app.
When you sign up to the app, we make an attempt to register your provided email address with the Postmark service. That email address can only be registered if it comes from your own domain (e.g. myname@mydomain.com), rather than from a generic email provider such as gmail or hotmail. If you provided a generic email address, you will need to change it to be a domain specific one before you can send live emails from the app.
When you register with a domain specific email address, Postmark will send you an email asking you to confirm the address we have sent them:
To complete the email registration process:
To work with the registered email sending address:
If you did not click [Confirm Sender Signature] in the email sent from Postmark, you will see the following warning message:
To resend the confirmation email message:
When you have confirmed the email sent by Postmark, the field will look like this:
By default, the email address used as the "From" address is the one that you signed up to the app with.
To change the from email address, you will need to enter the new one, send the confirmation email, and then click [Confirm Sender Signature] in that email.
Here are the steps:
The app will contact Postmark and have them send a "Confirm Sender Signature" email to this new address, and you can follow the process above to confirm the new email address.
When you are operating the app in Test mode, then emails are created, but not actually sent.
When you or your clients create a booking in live mode, then the messages we have discussed are sent out. It is worth adding a few live attendees who have email addresses you own yourself to an activity to gain experience of how live email sending works.
From the client's point of view, the email arrives.
From your point of view within the app, you can monitor the email's journey through the delivery status field.
This status is shown once the email has left the Workshop Angel app.
This is shown once the email has been delivered to the client's email system.
Note that it does not 100% guarantee the message is visible in their inbox... we will discuss this topic a little later in this lesson!
In theory, this means they have actually opened the message. Of course, this is no guarantee they have read it!
In practice, it seems that some email systems return the "opened" signal at the same time as the "delivered" signal, so it is not 100% certain the message has actually been opened.
We are working within the limitations of how other systems work which are outside of our control, so you need to be accepting about that.
This means that the Postmark sending system has not been able to deliver the message. This could be for a wide variety of reasons, and the reason that has been returned by the email world will be shown along with the message.
The example shown above is one type of error that is within your control - your sending email address has not been registered with Postmark, as discussed above.
The text/sms sending service does not have the ability to detect if the message was opened or not, so there are just two status options that you will be able to see.
For a text/sms successfully sent you will see:
For a text/sms that could not be delivered, you will see:
To see the delivery status of an individual message:
To see the delivery status of a range of emails, you can use the Notifications area:
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This area displays a one line notification for a message each time its status changes.
In the area on the left, you can select the time frame and the type of status you wish to search for, and the message notifications will appear on the right.
We have learned about how emails are sent through the Postmark system, and how to register your email address with them. We've seen the range of delivery status values that can be returned when a message is sent, and how to see these.
In the next lesson, we will look at how to manage the very important situations where you have a message delivery error.
