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Send a text message with a trigger

Use a trigger to send a short text instead of an email: add the person's mobile number, pick Send an SMS, write the message and check it went out.

The trigger system can send texts. Build the trigger the same way as an email trigger, choose the Send an SMS action instead of the email action, and write a short message; the text goes to the people the trigger is set to reach, from Allmoxy's shared text number. This feature was built for your employees, not customers: use it to tell the person who verifies orders that one came in, or the shop floor lead that a process ended.

Applies to: every Allmoxy site and every order type. Building triggers needs the Add/edit site triggers permission. Each person who should get a text needs a mobile number on their contact record.

In this article

Before you start: add the person's mobile number

First, make sure the employee has their cell phone number saved on their contact record, in their personal settings (the same place you'd edit their permissions). No carrier is needed: Allmoxy checks and formats the number before sending, and the text goes out from Allmoxy's shared number. A contact with no mobile number gets nothing, and nothing is logged anywhere for them, so this is the first thing to check when a text doesn't arrive. The contact must also be active.

Build the trigger

  1. Go to Settings > Operations > Triggers and click Add Trigger (or clone an email trigger you already have).
  2. Pick the event and its condition, for example Order Status Changes To with Ordered ticked, and choose the target: all companies, one company or companies with certain tags.
  3. Under Action, set the Type to Send an SMS instead of Send an email, then pick the people who should get the text.
  4. Write your message. Keep it short, like a text: a few words and the variables you need, such as {company_name}, {order_num} and {job_status}. Plain text only; HTML is not rendered in a text, and a variable that prints several lines (an address block, a product list) reads oddly on a phone.
  5. Set Active to Yes and click Save.

Check that it went out

Cause the event on a test order and give it a few minutes. Each text that was accepted for sending is written to the Email Log, and each one the trigger ran is a row in the Trigger Call Log (Reports > Managerial > Trigger Call Log, needs the Trigger History permission). A text is logged as Success when it was handed off, not when it was delivered, so a Success row with no text on the phone usually means a wrong number: check the digits on the contact record.

If the number can't be looked up at all, the Trigger Call Log shows one Failed row, the Email Log shows nothing, and the person saving the record sees that the trigger couldn't be fired. More on reading the log: My trigger didn't fire, fired twice, or sent the wrong thing.

Things to know

  • One bad number stops the rest. When a number can't be used, that trigger's remaining texts are not sent; fix the number and the next event sends normally.
  • Texts go to the people the trigger is set to reach. Build it for employees; it was built for them, not for customers.
  • A text logs Success without checking delivery. The Email Log row means Allmoxy sent it, not that the phone received it.
  • Task and announcement actions can text too. A person who turned on SMS in the Reminders section of their contact record gets a text when a trigger assigns them a task or posts an announcement to them. See Notes, tasks and announcements.
  • Keep it short and plain. Variables work, HTML does not, and the same message that reads well in an email is usually too long for a text.

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