Purpose

SMS messages are another form of Notification Type available in Aspire. Sometimes, you have customers that don't read emails, or they prefer a short message to notify them directly about service without clogging their inboxes. Reach these customers with an SMS notification!

The types of Notifications for SMS messages are Visit Reminder, Work Ticket Complete and Absentee Notification (Internal).

Visit Reminders are used to remind your customers about an upcoming visit for services that your team will be performing when they are onsite.

Work Ticket Complete notifications are sent depending on the trigger type set up when configuring the notification. Notify your customers when the work ticket reaches Complete status in Aspire Mobile, when it is completed in the Subcontractor Portal, or when it is marked as complete on Aspire Desktop.

SMS Absentee Notifications are for internal use only, and alert you when there is no clock in for a work ticket visit after your designated start time. This is helpful when monitoring your onsite teams to stay on track with your daily workflows and ensure that your teams are performing service in a timely manner.

Before setting up a SMS Notification, you must confirm that you have:

✅Assigned the correct user role permissions to Manage Notification Settings.

✅You’ve set up your Contact records to receive Notifications.

📑If you have not yet done this step, go back and read the Notification Overview, here.

Listed below are some recommendations and things to know about SMS Notifications.

🧠All messages should state the name of your business.

🧠Messages that are over 160 characters will be sent as two separate messages by the carrier.

🧠It is strongly recommended to include opt-out instructions with your messages that direct customers to text STOP, Stop, or stop to your toll-free number if they want to stop receiving messages. Go to the Opt-In section of this guide for more information.

🧠Enter text and add tokens that will best communicate important information to your customer.

🧠There is a max character limit of 320 characters. The purpose of this limitation is to ensure that the message is concise. You can create a more detailed message using an Email Notification.

⚠️ All SMS messaging is required to comply with applicable laws and regulations including but not limited to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). This is why there is additional opt-in functionality around SMS functionality.

Once you have clicked Save, your customer will be sent a message to confirm they want to receive SMS messages from your company. You can view their opt-in real-time status in the Notifications column next to their contact name on the Property Details screen.

⚠️ The warning icon indicates that the customer has not opted-in yet:

✔️ Green checkmark indicates that the customer has confirmed their opt-in:

📌 Note: If the customer's number is updated, the customer's number will be opted out since the API will read that as a rejection. The customer will have to re-opt-in by sending a message to the toll free number. This also includes reformatting numbers such as 123-456-7890 ➡️ (123) 456-7890

We strongly recommend not using Bulk Actions for SMS Notifications. Please read the below disclaimer to learn why.

⚠️ DISCLAIMER: We do not recommend using Bulk Actions for the SMS Notification Contact without the prior consent of your customers.

This is because, if your customers were unaware of the opt-in service, and 20% of those contacts that were bulk assigned reported your initial message as SPAM, the telephone providers could flag your toll-free number and block it. This would discontinue your use of SMS Notification Type Messaging.

To update multiple contacts:

⚠️ Be careful as you can potentially associate contacts with a property they shouldn’t be associated with.

To create a SMS Notification Template, from the New Notification screen, you'll configure the following fields, test, and then save your notification.

In this example, we will use the Visit Reminder SMS notification type.

You can manually type out the message you want your customers to see and add message tokens to automatically display specific key information.

🧠 Manually typed text and tokens count towards 320-character count maximum.

📌Note: You must set a time-based route under the Route(s) field to use Time-based Visit Tokens in the Message Body field.

When creating your Message Body, you can use the Placeholder Text already populated for SMS Notifications, or edit or create your own custom SMS message!

Below are the examples of Placeholder text for each SMS Notification type:

Click the Test button in the upper right corner to send a message preview to a number belonging to a Test Recipient before you save the notification template. Taking this step allows you to view how the message tokens you use will reflect on the end of your customer.

⚠️Information added in the template fields will be retained after you click Test, but you still need to click Save to add the notification to the advanced search list!

While displaying a notification on the Notification screen, you can copy the notification to use it as a template for a new notification.

For example: a system administrator could use a main notification template then individual branch managers could copy the template and use it for creating branch-specific notifications.

Go to the Notification you would like to copy.

This will copy the notification and can be updated with more specific wording based on the need.

Once you have configured and enabled your visit reminder, your customer will receive a Visit Reminder the day before the visit at the time you set in your template!

If you delete a work ticket visit, a cancellation notification is triggered to be sent to your customer.

📌Note: Cancellation notifications will not go out if a visit is canceled or rescheduled before the visit reminder for a visit is triggered to be sent to your customer.

If you update the date or the time of a scheduled work ticket, a Reschedule Notification is triggered as long as the original appointment reminder notification was sent.

Absentee Notifications are useful when your team needs to track clock ins of onsite crew members for work tickets that are scheduled. This notification type is set to be sent to your internal team members including the absentee when there is failure to clock in to a work ticket after the designated start time of the scheduled work ticket.

To begin, you'd create the notification template, and ensure that your employees have opted-in to receive notifications to their mobile devices.

You can categorize and filter when an absentee notification is sent for a specific property by adding property tags to your absentee notification templates.

For your team to receive Absentee Notifications, employees must be sent an SMS Notification Invite under the Mobile Phone number field on their contact record.

🧠 You can also opt in multiple employees to SMS Notifications under Bulk Actions in the Contacts module.

🧠 If you need to review the Opt-In status for any of your contacts, you can add the Display column of SMS Opt-In Status:

When an Absentee Notification is sent, only one message will be sent per message template. If an employee is a recipient for templates that have the same Branch and Route but a different Grace Period, separate messages are sent for each Grace Period.

📌 Note: A message can only be received when the device to which it will be delivered is online.

SMS Notifications are just one option of Notification Type that Aspire offers. If you are looking for Email Notification information, click here to read Using Email Notifications.