You can set up automated SMS messages which can be sent to your customers or your field workers. The default SMS message templates are:

Each of these templates can be customised with as little of as much information as you like pertaining to the customer, job, invoice and company.
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To find the 'Messages and Communication' feature you will need to navigate to the 'Settings' tab on the left hand menu bar and select the 'Messaging' option from the sub-menu.

In this screen you will find default templates already set up; however, each template can be adjusted to accommodate the fields you require and be personalized as you so wish.

When checking a message template you can enable or disable the SMS and/or E-mail option, this way you can only send SMS notifications, e-mail notifications or both, depending on your needs.

To the right of this screen you will find an expandable selection of fields which can be added to the templates. In some cases, the menu is in the collapsed view. To open the menu is simple, simply navigate to the arrow in the grey box in the right hand corner of the screen and click; the menu should expand and provide you with a full view:

The expanded view looks like this:
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From the menu on the right, there are five categories, each of which expands into a list of variables which can be added to any of the templates.

The variables you can select from are:

Any of the variables can be added to any of the templates and doing so is very straightforward. 

To insert a field into your template, simply click in the space where you want it to appear in your template box on the left of the main screen and then select the variable field you wish to appear there.

For example, if we wanted to have our field workers receive an automated SMS message when they are allocated a job we would navigate down to the 'Job Allocation Information' template and enable this option, also scroll down to the SMS notification option and make sure that this options is enabled as well. This way the 'Job Allocation Information' template is active and it will be sent as an SMS message

You can then customize what information you send the fieldworker, for example you can add the fieldworker's name to the message by going to the right hand side of the screen and under the Job Variables click on the 'Job Worker' variable to add it to the message body, this will add the {job worker} variable to the text message.

The template can be customised using the variable fields provided to suit whatever you wish each automated message to convey. 

In this example, the body of our SMS message to our field worker will say:

Hello {job_worker}     

The following job has been allocated to you    

{job_name}  
{job_reference}  
{job_scheduled_date_time}
{job_address}  
{customer_name}

Thanks    

Each of the references contained within the parentheses indicates a variable field that will update automatically according to which job this particular message is being sent in response to.

Once you have completed each of your templates, don't forget to select the 'Save' button at the bottom of the page or to the left of the screen, under the 'Settings/Company' sub-menu.

​NOTE: At the moment the SMS add-on is only available for companies based in the UK

Related articles:

How to customise automated emails & messages