Setting up SMS notifications in CRM

CRM can notify you and your customers of various invoice-related actions and customers’ birthdays by email and using text (SMS) messages. To enable the sending of SMS, install and set up an SMS provider integration plugin.

1. Install a plugin

Open section “Settings → SMS”. If you have no settings fields there, click the link to Installer in order to install an SMS plugin.

Choose and install a plugin to set up integration with the selected SMS provider.

2. Sign up for an account on SMS provider’s website

If necessary, set up sender IDs in your account. A sender ID is an up to 11 characters long string, which is displayed in recipients’ mobile phones when your notification is being viewed. It may be your company name, for example.

If you do not set up custom sender IDs, then some default ID, assigned by a provider, will be used. It might be your phone number or a registered user name. Check with your SMS provider if it assigns a default sender ID.

3. Set up connection to an SMS provider

Open section “Settings → SMS” paste the connection credentials received from a provider into available settings fields. Those are usually your user name and password, and custom sender IDs. Every SMS plugin can offer its own set of settings fields.

If you have added more than 1 sender ID on the provider’s website, then paste your IDs in CRM settings field “Sender IDs”, each on a separate line.

If you have no custom sender IDs, then you may leave that field empty or enter an asterisk (*), which means the same. In that case, provider’s default sender ID will be used. Ensure that your SMS does apply a default sender ID! Otherwise, enter any ID in “Sender ID” field if you are going to use only one sender.

Each sender ID can be used only by one SMS plugin. If you have set up integration with multiple SMS providers, then you may not specify the same sender IDs in the settings of several plugins.

4. Enable notification sending

1. Open section “Settings → Notifications”.
2. Click “Add notification”.
   
   
   
3. Select the event about which you want to notify: invoice is issued, invoice is paid, invoice is canceled, invoice expires, or customer birthday notification event.
   
   
   
4. If necessary, change default notification name. It will be visible in CRM backend only so that you can easily find it among other notifications in the settings screen.
   
   
   
5. Enable the notification.
6. Select SMS as notification transport.
7. Select a recipient: a client, a responsible manager, or any other phone number.
8. If necessary, edit default notification text template. To add dynamic content, use variables and other Smarty language structures available via “Cheat Sheet” link at the bottom.

Done! Upon saving notification settings, it will start being sent to selected recipients every time the selected event is triggered.

For sending birthday notifications, set up a CRON job in your web-hosting control panel to be executed once a day. You need to do so only once, and it will be used for all future notifications of that type.

Copy the CRON job command from your “Settings → Notifications” screen. Below is shown only an example of the command, which is generated individually for each web-hosting account.