Text Manager
Overview
Text Manager is a cloud-based Twilio integration for iMIS that allows marketing communication texts/SMS messages to go to members. The app will allow staff to schedule text campaigns to go out on a schedule, one-time or recurring.
Basic System Requirements
iMIS 2017 or newer OR iMIS Cloud
The messaging industry is changing the message volumes that can be sent over Restricted (previously called “unverified”) and Pending (submitted for verification) Toll-Free numbers. Increased message filtering will also occur in addition to the new limits applied to both Restricted and Pending. If you’ve already verified your Toll-Free numbers, no further action is needed.
Effective April 1, 2023, Twilio will apply the following industry-wide thresholds for messaging sent over Restricted and Pending Toll-Free numbers:
Restricted:
- Daily limit: 500
- Weekly limit: 1,000
- Monthly limit: 2,000
Pending:
- Daily limit: 2,000
- Weekly limit: 6,000
- Monthly limit: 10,000
Toll-free verification will be submitted by CSI. You must have Opt-in language on your website within your membership profile information for their mobile phone numbers in order to consider being approved for toll-free verification. This is a carrier requirement. During the pending state (the time period after which you submit your verification and before it has been approved) your number will have the restrictions noted above.
Approved(verified) toll-free numbers have a 3 MPS(messages per second) throughput.
Here is an example of what a member profile should include for the appropriate Opt-in language:
Opening Text Manager
You can access Text Manager through the CSI Cloud Dashboard.
To sign in, enter your iMIS username, iMIS password, and your Cloud ID which you received from CSI or from your IT or Network Admin, then click the blue Log In button.
Click the Text Manager app link in the left navigation. A fly out menu will appear with Home, Campaign, or Settings choices.
If it is hidden, click on the CSI icon in the upper left corner. This menu can be pinned or unpinned for your preference.
Home
The Home flyout menu on the left or the "Text Manager" tab is the Text Manager Dashboard. This page will give you a lot of valuable information.
- This identifies the current performance level your organization is on. Currently, there is 1 performance level:
- Flex- Pay per text usage
- Number of texts sent today.
- Number of texts sent this month.
- Daily limit count/usage. (3,000 is the current daily limit)
- TBD
- Number of texts sent/failed lifetime.
- Current Campaigns in the Draft stage.
- Current Campaigns in the Scheduled stage.
- Current Campaigns in process.
- Current Campaigns Completed.
- Archived Campaigns.
Campaigns
One-Time
One-Time Text Campaigns are campaigns that are either sent immediately upon completing the setup or scheduled for one-time execution in the future. There can be several statuses that include: Draft, Scheduled, Sending, Completed, or Archived. If you click on the Campaign name itself, the link will take you a complete status dashboard. See below.
Statuses Definition:
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.
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.
Preparing = A validation error occurred and this message will not be sent. Error: The To number is missing/empty.
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 does not charge you for failed messages.
Campaign Information
To create One-Time Campaign: On the "One-Time" tab click New One-Time Campaign button
Identify your campaign name. Next, you will be able to specify when exactly to start the campaign and can also supply an email address to receive a full status report of the campaign results (optional).
Target Audience
In this section, you specify the IQA to retrieve the result set for the SMS Campaign.
IMPORTANT: The IQA must have at least 2 fields (iMIS ID and Mobile Phone number)
This field is then selected for Phone Number Column Name.
Other columns can be included in the IQA for use in the SMS Message which will be described further in the next section.
Message
API Mode will allow you to select either LIVE or TEST. In test mode you will be allowed to conduct a campaign, but no SMS message will be sent. Live mode will send SMS messages.
Message Template is where you will construct the text message to your members. The Merge Fields to your right are fields from the IQA used. You can use these fields in your message. For example. addressing your members by name. "Hello ${FullName},"
iMIS Contact Data
Write Activities or Interactions (coming soon) to your member records upon successful messages sent.
You will need to create the TEXTMSG activity type if it does not exist in your system. See below.
To create the TEXTMSG activity type. Login to your Staff site. Navigate to Settings→Contacts→Activity Types.
Click on "Add new activity type". The fields should look similar to this:
Click Save & Exit to save the activity type.
Activities will be created for the member for each successful text sent:
Activity Type: TEXTMSG
TransactionDate: the date/time the SMS was sent
Id: the iMIS ID of the individual
Description: the "To" phone number
Note: the actual SMS message
Category: "Text Manager" (hard coded to identify the source application)
Campaign Summary
This instant summary let's you know how many contacts were pulled back from your IQA and how many people you will be sending 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.
Now you are ready to either Save and Schedule Campaign (this will set the text campaign in motion by scheduling for execution) OR Save Draft Campaign (this will allow you to edit the campaign until it is ready to be sent).
Recurring
Recurring campaigns allow an organization to schedule a text campaign on a scheduled recurring basis.
When you click on the Recurring tab your layout will be a little different. You will see all of your current recurring jobs. You can edit or delete 
your jobs.
You can also View Runs which will show you all of the runs for that job and current dashboard statistics/metrics as seen below.
Campaign Information
To create a Recurring Campaign: On the "Recurring" tab click New Recurring Campaign button.
Identify your campaign name. Next, you will be able to specify when the campaign is to run and where to send status reports (optional).
If, for example, you specify every month on the 2nd at 8:10. The campaign will run on that time on the 2nd of every month.
Target Audience
In this section, you specify the IQA to retrieve the result set for the SMS Campaign. The IQA must have a column for the mobile number. This field is then selected for Phone Number Column Name.
Other columns can be included in the IQA for use in the SMS Message which will be described further in the next section.
Message
API Mode will allow you to select either LIVE or TEST. In test mode you will be allowed to conduct a campaign, but no SMS message will be sent. Live mode will send SMS messages.
Message Template is where you will construct the text message to your members. The Merge Fields to your right are fields from the IQA used. You can use these fields in your message. For example. addressing your members by name. "Hello ${FullName},"
iMIS Contact Data
Write Activities or Interactions (coming soon) to your member records upon successful messages sent.
You will need to create the TEXTMSG activity type if it does not exist in your system. See below.
To create the TEXTMSG activity type. Login to your Staff site. Navigate to Settings→Contacts→Activity Types.
Click on "Add new activity type". The fields should look similar to this:
Click Save & Exit to save the activity type.
Activities will be created for the member for each successful text sent:
Activity Type: TEXTMSG
TransactionDate: the date/time the SMS was sent
Id: the iMIS ID of the individual
Description: the "To" phone number
Note: the actual SMS message
Category: "Text Manager" (hard coded to identify the source application)
Campaign Summary
This instant summary let's you know how many contacts were pulled back from your IQA and how many people you will be sending 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.
Now you are ready to Save Recurring Campaign.
Settings
Your Settings page is not something you will be typically concerned with. The Default E-mail Address should have the administrator e-mail. This e-mail (along with the Campaign email) will be used if anything goes wrong in sending the messages.
Country Settings: The default country prefix will automatically insert the prefix before the phone number returned from the IQA. If the IQA returns a phone number starting with a "+" then the default will be ignored. For example, if your default is set to "United States (+1)". An IQA returns a phone number from the UK, (+44 20 7234 3456)...then TextManager will ignore the "+1" prefix and send the message to the UK phone number.
Per-Campaign Segment Limit - This is the maximum number of segments that can be sent for that campaign.
Opt-Out Keywords
If a member wants to Opt-Out of text messages from Text Manager, they are able to use any of the following keywords:
STOP, STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, or QUIT
They will receive the following response:
You have successfully been unsubscribed. You will not receive any more messages from this number. Reply START to resubscribe.
Do note that the Opt-Out is all controlled by Twilio and is set based upon the Mobile Number and not by any setting in iMIS.
Release Notes
| Version | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 5/1/2020 | Initial Release |