Text from a workflow

The Assignar Pay Send SMS action texts people at the moment something happens: a safety checklist comes back failed, a shift is cancelled the night before, an invoice tips into overdue.

A text sent by a workflow is an ordinary Assignar Pay SMS. It comes from your organization's sender number, uses the same credits, appears in the same Outbox, brings replies back to the same Inbox, and follows the same consent rules. Setting up SMS, consent, groups and credits is covered in Text your crew.

Before you start

• SMS is set up for your organization, with a sender number. If Compose shows SMS not configured, ask your Assignar account manager first.
• The people you text have opted in themselves. Anyone who has not is skipped; a phone number on file is not consent.
• You have credits left. Workflows and hand-sent messages draw on the same balance.

Send a text

1. Build and test the trigger first, for example Form Submission Created filtered to your Site Safety Checklist, or Invoice Status Changed with To Status set to Overdue.
2. Add an action, search for Assignar Pay and choose Send SMS.
3. Write the Message. Use the data selector to put details from the trigger into the text, for example: Safety check failed at {site}. Raised by {submitted by}. Call the site supervisor.
4. Choose recipients under People, Groups or both. Groups are the SMS groups your organization already uses; when a crew changes, you update the group once and every workflow that texts it follows.
5. Test the flow. The test sends a real text and uses real credits, so send the first one to yourself.
6. Publish the flow.

The pickers list everyone, including people who cannot receive a text right now. Anyone marked as not opted in, or with no mobile on file, is skipped when the workflow runs. Seeing them in the list is how you notice that half a crew has never opted in.

One step reaches up to 200 people and 20 groups. For a bigger send, split it across steps or send it by hand from SMS.

A workflow can only text people in your organization and your SMS groups, never a number typed into the step, because consent is recorded per person.

Read the result

Each send reports how many messages were dispatched to the carrier, how many failed, who was skipped and why, and the credits charged and left.

A send that reached nobody still counts as a success, with everyone listed as skipped: the workflow ran, and nobody on the list could be texted.

Credits are charged per segment for each person: about 160 characters, or 70 when the message contains an emoji or an unusual character. A text to 10 people costs at least 10 credits. See Buy credits.

People are skipped when they have not opted in, have no valid mobile number on file, or are no longer members of your organization.

Warn yourself before credits run out

1. Create a workflow with a schedule trigger, for example every Monday at 7am.
2. Add the Assignar Pay Get SMS Credits action.
3. Add a branch: if the credits available are under a number you choose, send an email or a notification to the office.

When a text does not go out

"SMS is not set up for this account. An Assignar administrator has to enable SMS and provision a number before a flow can send messages." Your organization has no sender number yet. Ask your Assignar account manager, then retry the failed step.

"This message needs 12 SMS credits and the account has 4 left. Top up SMS credits in Assignar Pay, or send it to fewer people." The numbers are your own. Buy credits as described in Text your crew, then retry the failed step.

"This send would reach 240 people and the limit is 200 per request." Split the send across fewer groups or more steps.

Retrying the failed step does not text anyone twice. Running the whole workflow again from the start is a new send, so retry the step when a later step is what failed.