Text broadcasts

Who can send one, and when the page works

• Broadcasts needs the "Send text broadcasts" permission. Owners and Administrators have it by default; Office Manager, Bookkeeper, and the built-in technician role do not. It is deliberately a separate grant from email blasts — a text interrupts in a way an email does not — so give it out on its own or on a custom role. See roles and permissions.
• The tab only appears for people who hold the permission. Without it the Phone section shows its usual four tabs and there is no missing entry to wonder about.
• Broadcasts go out over the same line as your automated texts, so they need a business line of your own ($25/mo) with texting registration Live. Until then the page reads "Texting isn't live on your number yet" with a Check your registration link.
• If the master "Send automated texts" switch is off, the page reads "Texting is turned off for your company" with an Open Automated texts link. Turn the master switch back on to send one.

Inside the tab are two inner tabs: New broadcast and History.

New broadcast: who gets it

The audience picker is exactly the one email blasts use — same filters, same meanings — under the heading Who gets it. Leave everything blank to reach every active customer, or narrow by technician, day of week, job type, body of water, equipment type, equipment brand, city, zip code, customer status, customer tags, and "has active jobs only". (The blast composer's "Include additional emails" checkbox has no meaning for a text and is ignored.) See email and blasts for what each filter matches.

Underneath, a panel answers the only two questions that matter before you press send:

• Will get this text — a big green number, with "N customers match these filters" under it. Those two numbers are different on purpose: matching a filter is not the same as being reachable.
• Estimated delivery — e.g. "~9 minutes" or "under a minute", with "Texts go out paced under your carrier limit." A broadcast is metered by your registration's per-minute allowance; nothing is sent faster than the carrier permits.
• Five tiles account for every customer who matched but will not be texted: No phone number, No consent on file, Opted out, Texts turned off, and You unchecked. Each of the first four is something you can fix — collect consent, add a phone number, honor an opt-out.
• A recipient list under the tiles shows names, phone numbers, and a status. Uncheck anyone you want to leave out. Reachable customers read "Will get this text" and become "Unchecked" when you untick them; everyone else is greyed out with their reason — No phone number, No texting consent, Opted out, or Texts turned off — and cannot be ticked back on.
• Large books are previewed in pages — Show more customers loads another 100. On very large books an amber line warns "You have more customers than this preview can scan, so these counts are a floor."

New broadcast: what it says

• Message — the text itself. Placeholder: "Heads up: rain has pushed this week's visits to Friday."
• An Insert: row offers two variable chips — <code>{firstName}</code> and <code>{companyName}</code>. They are the only two available, because nothing else is knowable about a whole filtered audience at compose time; a <code>{visitDay}</code> or <code>{amount}</code> would render empty for everyone. Clicking a chip inserts it at the cursor.
• A live counter reads e.g. "118 characters · 1 segment · GSM-7", with the note that it is counted with the "Reply STOP to opt out." line carriers require. Keep it under 4 segments (and 1,000 characters) or it will not send — carriers filter longer traffic. A single curly apostrophe pasted from a word processor flips the whole message to UCS-2 and halves the budget, which is why the counter names the encoding.
• Image — optional, one image, sent as an MMS. Add an image uploads and compresses it; Remove image takes it back off.
• Preview renders the message as a text bubble, labeled "as [name] would see it" using a real reachable customer from your audience.

A broadcast has no saved template — it is written once, per send. If you want reusable wording, that is what the automated texts on the Automated texts tab are for.

Review and send

Review and send opens the "Send this broadcast?" dialog. It restates how many customers will get it and the estimated delivery, repeats the content rule, and offers:

• Send later — tick it and pick a date and time. The note under it: "Quiet hours still apply — a text scheduled outside them waits until the window opens." The button then reads Schedule broadcast.
• A promotional-wording check runs while the dialog is open ("Checking this message for promotional wording..."). If it flags something, an amber card appears — "This may read as promotional" with the reason — and the send button changes to Send anyway. It is a warning, not a block: you signed the registration and you can send. The flag is also recorded on the broadcast afterwards.
• Otherwise the button reads Send to N customers.

What happens after you press send

• The audience is frozen at send time. One recipient row is written per matched customer — including the ones it will not reach — so "who didn't get it and why" stays answerable months later. A customer added to your book after the send is not in it; a scheduled broadcast picks its audience when it fires, not when you scheduled it.
• Quiet hours apply (8:00 AM–9:00 PM by default, your company's time zone). A broadcast started outside the window waits for it to open.
• The per-customer daily cap applies — a customer who already hit "Most texts per customer per day" does not get a broadcast on top of it.
• Consent applies. Customers with no texting consent on file, or who replied STOP, are never included.
• The "Reply STOP to opt out." line is appended for you on the carrier's cadence — do not write it into the message or it will appear twice.
• A broadcast never delays an on-the-way text. Broadcast sends ride the shared outbox at bulk priority, so a 400-person notice queues behind the time-critical texts rather than in front of them.
• Replies land in the Phone inbox, in each customer's own thread, exactly like any other text — and each customer is counted once per broadcast, no matter how many times they write back.

History and the detail page

The History inner tab lists every broadcast, newest first. Each row leads with the message itself (a text has no subject line), then the counts, when it went out or is scheduled for, and who sent it. Empty state: "No broadcasts yet — Use New broadcast to text a service update to a group of customers."

A broadcast carries one of six statuses:

Click a row for the detail page. It shows the message, the image if there was one, who sent it, any promotional flag it was sent despite, and a strip of seven counts: Matched, Sent, Delivered, Waiting, Failed, Not sent, and Replies.

Below that is every recipient, with a name that links to their customer page, their number, a status, and whether they replied:

• Waiting to send — queued, or held for quiet hours.
• Sent — handed to the carrier.
• Delivered — the carrier confirmed it landed.
• Not delivered — the carrier rejected or failed it.
• Not sent — with the reason beside it: "No texting consent on file", "Customer replied STOP", "No phone number on file", "Turned off for this customer", "Customer hit their daily text limit", "Quiet hours ended before it could send", "Your daily text limit was full", "You unchecked this customer", or "You canceled the broadcast".

Cancel broadcast appears while a broadcast is Scheduled or Sending. It pulls back everything not yet handed to the carrier and tells you how many ("Broadcast canceled — 214 texts pulled back"). Texts already delivered cannot be recalled. In the automated-texts Activity log those rows read "Canceled before it sent".

A scheduled broadcast has no recipient list yet — the page says so: "The audience is picked when this sends, so there's nobody listed yet."

Broadcasts vs email blasts vs automated texts

• Text broadcasts — one service update, now, by text. Same audience filters as an email blast. Service updates only: no promotions, no offers, no marketing.
• <a href="/help/email-and-blasts">Email blasts</a> — the same audience filters, by email, with a subject line, rich text, saved templates, and open/click tracking. Promotional content is fine in an email blast; it is not fine in a text.
• <a href="/help/texting-and-the-phone-inbox">Automated texts</a> — standing rules that fire on an event (on the way, invoice ready, visit reminder, service report ready, review request, lead follow-up), not a one-off you compose.

Frequently asked questions

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