Understand a message’s Features tab

Note: Message alert functionality may not be available in all countries.

The Message Alert setting lets you send a ‘flash’ message ahead of your main message. This feature is commonly used for critical emergency notifications to ensure recipients are aware of new messages. What recipients see depends on their mobile device platform: iPhone users see a message on the Home screen while Android users may see the message as a separate text message.

Additional charges apply when using message alerts because they are sent as a separate message 60 seconds prior to the follow-up SMS message.

Important! Whispir recommends using message alerts sparingly. They’re intended to be used only for critical messages, not as a standard type of messaging.

1. Select the Message Alert check box.
2. In the text box that appears enter a short alert message (maximum of 160 characters).

Push notifications (messages that pop up on a mobile device) are only applicable if your company has an app registered against it in Whispir (such as Whispir’s pushie app). You enter the content for your push notification on a message’s Mobile tab.

Notes

1. Select the Push Notifications check box.
2. In the Send notifications to field select the app (for example, select pushie).
3. Select one of the following options:
   • Send Push notifications only
   • Send SMS and Push notifications simultaneously (Note: This is the default option)
   • Escalate Push Notifications to SMS after (X) minutes
     This setting allows an SMS to be sent if the recipient hasn’t received the main message after a specified time. That is, the Web channel’s status hasn’t been updated to Received, indicating that the recipient hasn’t yet viewed the web page content
4. Select the Prevent Chat for this message check box if you don’t want message recipients to be able to use the app’s chat function for this message.

Some messages require no response from recipients.

1. Select the No Reply check box if you want to disable recipients’ ability to reply to the message.
   The message will be sent from a designated ‘no reply’ phone number in your region and from a ‘no reply’ Whispir email address.

When an SMS message is sent from Whispir, service providers (by default) provide message delivery information to Whispir to advise whether the message was successfully delivered to the mobile device. The information is added to the message’s Status page. See View and understand a sent message’s status.

Note: Your company may incur additional charges for using this service.

1. Select the No SMS Receipts check box only if there is no requirement to know if a message has been successfully sent.

You can add a message alias to your message if you want recipients to see customised sender details (such as your company’s name) when they receive the message via the Mobile, Email and Voice channels. Aliases lend credibility to your messages – recipients are more likely to view or listen to a message that appears to be from a credible source. If you don’t set an alias Whispir’s default generic phone number and email address are shown instead.

Note: Aliasing may be blocked in some markets and by some service providers. We recommend that you test this function before you use it.

1. Select the Message Alias check box.
2. Select an alias from the pre-configured list.
3. Hover your mouse over the question mark icon to see the configured alias for each of the Mobile, Email and Voice channels.

Message throttling is an imposed limit on the rate of mass message sendouts. It’s used to help manage a message that’s being sent to a large number of recipients.

For example, a call centre is sending a message to 1000 recipients and they decide to apply a throttle of 50 recipients per hour, instead of sending it to all 1000 at the same time. Throttling ensures that staff won’t be overwhelmed with message responses.

1. Select the Message Throttling check box.
2. Select a throttle value from the drop-down list.

See Configure message throttling for more information.

Escalation is the process of automatically forwarding a message to another listed recipient or device. There are two types of escalation:

• Person-to-person escalation: Used to notify subsequent recipients (contacts) if an intended recipient doesn’t receive or reply to a message. This type of escalation can only be used with a static distribution list that has a defined escalation path set up in it. Ensure that the people involved are aware of the escalation process and they understand that if they don’t reply as expected, escalation will be triggered. See Add and edit person-to-person escalations.
• Device-to-device escalation: Used to forward a message to a recipient’s secondary (and potentially tertiary) email address or phone number in the same channel if the message was undeliverable to the first. The email addresses and phone numbers must be configured in the message recipient’s contact profile (in the Default Notification Options section). For example, if a contact has a work email address and a personal email address, the message could be forwarded to the personal address if the work address couldn’t be reached.

Note: Messages will escalate between people as a priority. For example, if you’re escalating to a second person in 1 minute, and a second device in 2 minutes, the message will be sent to the second person and the device escalation will be ignored.

To add person-to-person escalation:

1. Ensure that the message’s To field contains a static distribution list with escalation contacts added.
2. Select the Escalation check box.
3. Select the Escalate this message if not check box, and then:
• Select Received if you want the message to be escalated based on its Received status
• Select Replied to if you want the message to be escalated based on its Acknowledged status.

Note: Read an explanation of message statuses: to understand what the Received and Acknowledged statuses represent across Email, SMS, Web (rich messages) and Voice channels.

4. Select the number of minutes until escalation is triggered.

To add device-to-device escalation:

1. Select the Escalate between devices after check box.
2. Select the number of minutes until escalation is triggered.

You use the Delivery Report setting if you want to receive an SMS message and email notification when a message is either delivered successfully or not delivered within a specified time. It’s a quick way of checking a message’s status without having to view the message’s Status page in Whispir.

Tip! If you’re using this feature make sure that the Email and SMS settings are activated in the Default Notification Options section of your Whispir user profile.

1. Select the Delivery Report check box.
2. Do one of the following:
• Select the Notify when message is delivered check box.
  or
• Select the Notify if message is not delivered within check box, and then enter the number of minutes.