If you have any questions on how to accomplish this, please let us know, we are happy to help.
Triggers let you control how or when a flow begins or can allow a contact to join a group. A flow can be triggered by a keyword or missed call and scheduled on a future date.
What if you want a trigger to only act upon members of certain groups or to exclude groups?
First, navigate to the triggers tab.
Here, click the blue 'Create Trigger' button at the top left.
You'll see the list of possible trigger types.
For our example, we'll choose to create a message keyword that launches a flow.
At the bottom of this trigger's settings, we see that we can optionally choose to only include certain contact groups or to exclude contact groups.
In our example, we want contacts to send the keyword 'promo' that will trigger a Satisfaction Survey flow in order to receive a coupon. We don't want contacts who've already registered for this promo or a group called 'Segment A' to be able to participate, so we've excluded them.
Only members of these two groups will be excluded from starting the Satisfaction Survey flow- all other contacts who send the keyword will be started in the flow.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
We've updated Contact Imports to allow you to add contacts to a new or existing group! Here's how:
1. Navigate to the contacts tab.
2. Click the "Import Contacts" button at the top left of the page.
3. Download and edit the template we provide (or choose a your own file) and upload it using the "Choose File" button.
Be sure that you only use supported fields for your Column Headers in your spreadsheet. For example, if you want to add a registration date, use the Column Header Field:Registration_Date
. You must separate spaces with underscores only!
Additionally, please check that your telephone numbers include country codes. We support users globally, so we need to know where your contacts are located.
5. After clicking the "Preview" button, you'll see the option to import headers from your file. In our sample, we have 3 headers: a telephone number, name, and field called Team
. Additionally, we will choose group membership.
You have the option of creating a new group and giving it a name or adding the contacts to an existing group in your workspace. If you leave the group membership box unchecked, the contacts will not be added to any group.
That's it! After importing, you'll see the number of new contacts created or updated and any group memberships.
Looking for more information contact imports and exports? See our full help article here.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
Use the 'Wait for Forwarded Call' Split Action in an IVR flow to forward calls to another phone number. Here's how it works:
In our example, we're asking contacts if they'd like to speak to a live agent or leave a message. If they choose to speak to a representative, the flow will forward their call on to another phone number of our choice.
The 'Wait for Forwarded Call' Split Action will have 4 possible exits:
Depending on how the forwarded call is handled, you can create different actions to support your contact after the forwarded call is complete. In our example, we've chosen to send a customized voice message for calls that were successfully answered by a representative vs. those that either weren't answered at all or were busy. We also made sure to alert a team member when a forwarded call fails via a 'Send Somebody Else a Message' action.
After the forwarded call has ended, the contact will immediately move forward in the flow on original call with your voice number.
Be sure to learn more about building your IVR flows here.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
You can now start a contact in a flow directly from their individual information page.
After navigating to the Contacts tab, click on the contact you'd like to start from your list:
On the contact's unique information and message history page, you'll then click the 3-dot menu button:
Choose "Start In Flow" from the dropdown menu:
Finally, select the flow where you'd like to start the contact:
That's it! The contact will then be immediately started in the chosen flow.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
Looking to make your workspace login even more secure? You can now enable two-factor authentication, also called 2FA. Here's how:
1. Log in to your account and visit the workspace settings page. Scroll down the page to find the two-factor authentication section:
2. Click on this section to enable 2FA. You'll need to follow the directions on the following page:
You must download a one-time password (OTP) app like Google Authenticator or Authy in order to use 2FA.
3. Once your OTP app is downloaded and set up, you'll scan the QR code on your page. After scanning the QR code and generating a new account for your login, you'll see the required 6-digit code pop up in the app. It is only valid for a few seconds! Please be sure to use the current code.
4. Enter the valid 6-digit code and your current password and click the 'Enable' button.
5. Once enabled, you'll see a list of backup tokens. These are very important! Please record these tokens in a secure place.
That's it! Your 2FA is now enabled.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
Twilio two-way SMS messages allow you to carry on a conversation by both sending and receiving text messages. See more about using two-way SMS via Twilio here.
While not complete, the list of Twilio's supported countries for two-way SMS is constantly expanding.
The following countries are either generally supported or in Beta:
Is your number not sending internationally when it should? Be sure you've enabled international sending!
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
You may want to set a limit to the number of times a contact can respond to a specific question in your flow, such as with a quiz or survey. You can do this by using the @node.visit_count
expression within a Split by Expression action.
In the example below, we've created a very simple quiz. We want the contact to have limited opportunities to answer the question, so we will place the @node.visit_count
expression on a 'Split by Expression' node to limit the number of guesses.
In the flow above, we see that after collecting the contact's response with a 'Wait for Response', we're evaluating their answer with a 'Split by Expression'. Since we only want to give the contact two opportunities to answer correctly, here's how we've written the expression and rule:
We've used the expression @node.visit_count
and then written a rule with has a number above 1
since they've already used their one other attempt in the previous 'Wait for Expression', equaling two total attempts.
What this means is that if they've answered correctly on their first try, they'll be routed through the 'Correct' exit on the 'Wait for Response' node and get a congratulatory message. If they get their first try wrong, they'll be routed through the 'Other' exit where we've set a limit to the number of times the contact can be wrong. Because the visit count is set to a number above 1, no further attempts are permitted.
We can see how this works via the Simulator. This contact gave an incorrect response on their first attempt and was given a second and final opportunity to answer correctly. Because we set a @node.visit_count
limit of above 1
via a 'Split by Expression' node, their second incorrect answer means they've used up all their tries.
Another contact, however, studied a bit harder:
Notice that in our follow-up message, we've referenced the number of tries the contact has made. We did this by using the same expression written as @node.visit_count
/2. This would be especially useful if the contact had even more chances to respond correctly so they know how many opportunities remain.
Keep in mind that visit_count
reflects only the current flow run. This means that if the contact is restarted in the flow, the count goes back to zero as counts from previous runs are not saved.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
Great news! Facebook has updated their integration policies, so you can now easily connect a Facebook page to create a Messenger channel in just moments.
If you've already integrated a bot under Facebook's old policies, then you do not need to take any further action. Your channel will continue to work as always.
2. Scroll down to the Facebook Messenger section.
3. Here, review the directions and then click the 'Add Facebook Page' button.
4. Log in to your Facebook account and then choose the page you'd like to add. Then, you'll be asked which permissions you'd like to allow.
That's it! You'll automatically be taken to your new channel's page where you can view your channel log.
You can now create a trigger that will refer a contact when a new conversation is started on Messenger.
Note that Facebook has updated their API to require that all messages sent to a contact after 24 hours have an appropriate 'tag', or what we call a 'topic'.
Message tags allow you to send important and relevant 1:1 updates to contacts outside the standard messaging window of 24 hours after a contact's last message. You will need to add a topic to your Messenger flows to ensure your flow sends if outside of the 24 hour window.
If there is a problem with your integration, you do not need to remove the channel. You can simply click the 'Reconnect' button found within the channel page in your Workspace Settings to refresh the authentication token.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
We are excited to announce that TextIt is now a WhatsApp Business Service Provider and we are starting a closed Beta for our customers. This means you'll be able to use all the tools you know and love with TextIt but on WhatsApp! If you have an active subscription and are interested in entering this Beta, send us a note.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
We've added a new feature that allows you to attach a PDF URL in addition to Image, Audio, and Video URLs.
Once you've entered the flow editor, create a 'Send Message' action. Click on the 'Attachments' tab at the top of the message node:
Choose 'PDF Document URL' from the dropdown menu:
Paste the PDF URL in the text field and click 'OK' to save. That's it!
You can then test out your link in the Simulator. You can click on the attached document and it will open in a browser window.
As always, be sure to test out your link in real messages before sending to your contacts!
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
As you know, we launched our new unlimited messaging plan on September 1st. Billing on the new plan was based on the total number of contacts in your account at the end of each month. Over the past month we've received feedback from some of our customers that they'd like to be billed based on the number of messaged contacts in their workspace instead of the total number of contacts. This would more accurately represent the value they are getting from TextIt on a monthly basis.
After considering the pros and cons we've decided those customers are right and our subscription plan now only counts contacts who have sent or received a message (or IVR call) during each subscription period. For example, if you have 15,000 contacts in your workspace, but only message 600 of them during a month, then you will only be billed $25. Each workspace will still come with 1,000 messaged contacts included and each additional messaged contact will still be billed at $0.01 per month.
We've already made this change on our side and all plans have already been upgraded to this plan. You will now enjoy a lower monthly bill and the ability to build up a contact list in your workspace that you can refer to in the future.
As always, if you have any questions, reach out via the support widget on the website!
As you’ve been hearing over the past month, starting today, we’re moving to a monthly subscription plan that includes unlimited messaging. Instead of pricing based on the number of messages you send, pricing will be based on the number of contacts you maintain in your TextIt workspace. Each TextIt subscription will include 1,000 contacts, unlimited messaging and be only $25 per month. Each additional contact above 1,000 will cost just $0.01 per month.
Switch over to subscription from the billing page on your workspace, which you can find on your workspace settings page.
This will let you more easily predict the costs of your projects and let you build awesome interactive flows without worrying about how many credits they will use at scale.
We’ve also launched a new, fresher design of the website. This includes a lot of small improvements that we think will lead to a smoother and cleaner experience for you. We spent a lot of time testing things out, but with any big change sometimes a few things sneak through, so if you see anything amiss, do reach out!
Finally, we are moving from https://textit.in to https://textit.com. Both will work for you for the foreseeable future, but we’ll start redirecting you to the .com in the next few weeks.
If you have existing credits, you can still use them until they expire. However, once you run out of those credits, you’ll have to switch to our new monthly plan. If you’d like the benefits of unlimited messaging immediately, you can convert the value of any remaining credits you have on your billing page.
If your account has no credits, we will be converting you to our free trial plan soon and you’ll have 90 days to evaluate the product with up to 100 contacts.
We've helped organizations deliver over 20 million Covid-19 related messages on TextIt and we are excited to continue that support moving forward. We’ll offer discounted pricing for anyone using TextIt for Covid-19 projects with a plan that includes 10,000 free contacts and half price contact pricing for just $25 per month.
More questions? See our FAQs below!
Do I get to keep my credits?
If you have existing credits, you can choose to stay on the TopUp plan and continue using those credits until they expire or are used up.
What if I have contacts that I don’t use?
You will be billed for all contacts in your workspace over the course of a month, but you can remove any contacts that you don’t use. We’ve added a new feature that indicates when a contact was last used and allows for easy deletion of dormant contacts.
How does billing work?
You will be billed the base subscription rate of $25 at the start of your billing period. A month later, you will be billed a fee for any contacts in your workspace that exceeded the 1,000 contact threshold. If you cancel before the end of the month, your usage fees will be prorated.
Will I pay more for the subscription plan?
We’ve designed our new pricing plan to deliver the benefits of unlimited messaging to all users. Most users will pay significantly less, some users may pay slightly more, but we’ve made sure that no users will have a significant cost increase.
How does the Free Trial work?
New users will be able to use TextIt free of charge for 90 days, with 100 contacts included.
I’m working on a Covid-19 project. Do I still qualify for discounted pricing?
We’ll continue to offer discounted pricing for anyone using TextIt for Covid-19 projects. Our Covid-19 plan will be $25 per month and will include 10,000 contacts with each additional contact priced at $.005.
I’m a really big user. Can I qualify for discounted pricing?
If your account has over 100,000 contacts you may be eligible for volume discounts. Reach out to us if you’d like to learn more!
What if I want to delete my account?
No problem, if you take no action, we’ll delete your account automatically on December 1st. We’ll send you one last reminder a few weeks before in case you change your mind. If you want to delete it immediately, just reach out to us and we’ll take care of it.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
It is important to note that if you delete any contacts, they cannot be recovered.
To delete a contact, they must first be placed in the 'Archived' folder. You can manually delete individual contacts or send an entire group through a flow to update their status to 'Archived' for easy bulk deletion.
To permanently delete an individual contact, first navigate to the "Contacts" tab in your account:
You'll see a list of all your contacts on this page. To delete a contact, check the box to the left of their name. Then, click the 'Archive' button. This will place the contact in the 'Archived' folder:
Next, navigate to the 'Archived' Folder and again, check the box to the left of the contact's name.
Finally, you can delete ALL checked contacts at once by clicking the 'Delete All' button.
You'll be asked if you're sure to delete ALL the contacts whose names you've checked. Remember that contact deletion is FINAL and no deleted contacts cannot be retrieved!
To place multiple contacts in the 'Archived' folder for bulk deletion, you'll need to change their status from 'Active' to 'Archived', which is easily done in a flow.
Aside from archiving, you can also place a contact in the 'stopped' or 'blocked' folders.
Stopped contacts have opted-out from receiving your messages and are removed from all groups. You cannot send them any messages, but they can opt back in by messaging you.
Blocked contacts are contacts that will not receive outgoing message and all of their incoming messages are automatically archived. They are removed from all groups.
Want to easily identify dormant contacts to be deleted? See our guide.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
In order to delete contacts, they must first be placed in the 'Archived' folder in the 'Contacts' tab.
You could manually move contacts into the 'Archived' folder, but what about many at once? Do this with a flow.
In our example below, we've created a group of contacts called 'Dormant' and added the 'Update the Contact' action in a flow that will automatically place all contacts who pass through the flow into the 'Archived folder:
We'll then start the flow and select the group 'Dormant':
That's it! All contacts who are started in this flow are now in the 'Archived' folder and are ready for deletion. To delete all contacts in the 'Archived' folder, just click the 'Delete All' button:
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
A contact's status can be set to Active, Stopped, Blocked, or Archived. Learn what each status means in this guide.
A contact's status will affect their group membership and whether they can receive outgoing messages or send incoming messages.
Note that you can easily identify dormant contacts by using the 'Last Seen On' contact field in a search and then place those contacts in the 'Archived' folder via a simple flow. This will help you easily delete groups of contacts that you no longer wish to maintain in your workspace.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
Using the 'Last Seen On' field in a campaign or a contact search is helpful in identifying contacts who've last communicated with you relative to a date.
You can use this field to find contacts who've been unresponsive or dormant and reach out to them or delete them from your database.
Using a query with last_seen_on
, you can search for contacts who were last seen relative to a specific date.
You can use the following operators to perform a search on all contacts present in your account:
last_seen_on = "date"
to search for an exact date
last_seen_on > "date"
to search for all contacts seen after a date
last_seen_on < "date"
to search for all contacts seen before a date
last_seen_on >= "date" AND last_seen_on <= "date"
to search for contacts last seen between two dates
last_seen_on != "date"
for contacts not last seen on an exact date
last_seen_on = "date" OR last_seen_on = "date"
for contacts last seen on multiple specific dates
With the resulting contacts, you can create a new group. In the example below, we searched for contacts who were last seen before a specific date.
We'll click "Save as Group" to create a new group with just these contacts:
Last, we'll name the group. Here, we've identified contacts who haven't interacted with us in several months, so we'll name the group "Dormant":
What if we wanted to follow up with contacts who haven't interacted with us recently? We could do this from within a campaign without having to search for contacts or creating a dynamic group. Here's how:
In the example above, we've created a campaign event that will send a message to all contacts 90 days after the 'Last Seen On' field, which is the date they last interacted with us.
Sending a message or flow to contacts who've been dormant is helpful in reminding them to follow up with you or to weed out contacts who can be deleted.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
Over the years we’ve heard from you that you’d love a way to use TextIt without having to pay for each interaction. Well, we’re excited to share with you that we’re switching to a simple, affordable, subscription plan that makes that possible!
Starting September 1st, we’re moving to a monthly subscription plan that includes unlimited messaging. Instead of pricing based on the number of messages you send, pricing will be based on the number of contacts you maintain in your TextIt workspace. Each TextIt subscription will include 1,000 contacts, unlimited messaging and be only $25 per month. Each additional contact above 1,000 will only cost $0.01 per month.
This will let you more easily predict the costs of your projects and let you build awesome interactive flows without worrying about how many credits they will use at scale. We’re also rolling out new features to help you delete contacts you are no longer using.
If you have existing credits, you can still use them until they expire. However, once you run out of those credits, you’ll have to switch to our new monthly plan. If you’d like the benefits of unlimited messaging immediately, we’ll also let you convert the value of any remaining credits you have starting on September 1st.
If your account has no credits, we’ll convert you to our free trial plan on September 1st and you’ll have 90 days to evaluate the product with up to 100 contacts.
We've helped organizations deliver over 20 million Covid-19 related messages on TextIt and we are excited to continue that support moving forward. We’ll offer discounted pricing for anyone using TextIt for Covid-19 projects with a plan that includes 10,000 free contacts and half price contact pricing for just $25 per month.
Do I get to keep my credits?
If you have existing credits, you can choose to stay on the TopUp plan and continue using those credits until they expire or are used up.
What if I have contacts that I don’t use?
You will be billed for all contacts in your workspace over the course of a month, but you can remove any contacts that you don’t use. We’re adding a new feature that indicates when a contact was last used and allows for easy deletion of dormant contacts.
How does billing work?
You will be billed the base subscription rate of $25 at the beginning of each month. At the end of each month, you will be billed a fee for any contacts in your workspace that exceeded the 1,000 contact threshold. If you cancel before the end of the month, your usage fees will be prorated.
Will I pay more for the subscription plan?
We’ve designed our new pricing plan to deliver the benefits of unlimited messaging to all users. Most users will pay significantly less, some users may pay slightly more, but we’ve made sure that no users will have a significant cost increase.
How does the Free Trial work?
New users will be able to use TextIt free of charge for 90 days, with 100 contacts included.
I’m working on a Covid-19 project. Do I still qualify for discounted pricing?
We’ll continue to offer discounted pricing for anyone using TextIt for Covid-19 projects. Our Covid-19 plan will be $25 per month and will include 10,000 contacts with each additional contact priced at $.005.
I’m a really big user. Can I qualify for discounted pricing?
If your account has over 100,000 contacts you may be eligible for volume discounts. Reach out to us if you’d like to learn more!
What if I want to delete my account?
No problem, if you take no action, we’ll delete your account automatically on December 1st. We’ll send you one last reminder a few weeks before in case you change your mind. If you want to delete it immediately, just reach out to us and we’ll take care of it.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
You can use the 'Update the Contact' action in a flow to change a contact's status to either active, stopped, or blocked.
A contact can have 3 possible statuses:
Some channels, like Twilio, have built-in opt-out keywords. If the contact sends any of them to your channel, we will automatically place them in the 'Stopped' folder in the 'Contacts' tab. The contacts are removed from all groups and you will be unable to send them any outbound messages. The contact can opt back in to receiving your messages with the provider's re-subscribe keywords at any time. They will not be automatically re-added to groups.
Using the 'Update the Contact' action in a flow to change a contact's status to 'Stopped' is helpful when a channel does not have automatic opt-out keywords and helps you to track opt-outs yourself. Any time the contact sends you an incoming message, they'll be removed from the 'Stopped' folder and made 'Active' unless still opted-out by your channel provider, like Twilio.
Sometimes, a contact can abuse your service or send offensive messages. While you can manually block a contact if you notice spammy behavior, it can also be useful to build rules in your flows that detect abusive language.
If a contact sends unwanted language, you can use a 'Wait for Response' to detect certain words. If found, you can automatically block the contact. This can come in handy when contacts can automatically trigger a flow with an assigned keyword published on a website or advertisement.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
You can easily pass a contact's communications off to a live human agent via email or our Zendesk integration. This is an easy way to better respond to help requests, process refunds, provide more detailed one-on-one information to contacts, and so many more use-cases.
Adding a ticketing service provides an advantage over the 'Send Email' action as the communications between your agent and contact will remain on TextIt and can be viewed as incoming and outgoing messages on the platform.
Email ticketing is a super simple way to handle your live agent responses. It takes just moments to set up.
First, integrate the email address to which all new tickets will be forwarded. Your agent's responses will also come from this email address. Navigate to your account page by clicking on your organization name in the top right corner:
Click the gear icon and choose 'Add Ticketing Service':
Next, click the 'Email' section:
Add your email:
Find the verification email which you'll find in your email inbox and connect the code:
That's it! You're now ready to set up the email ticketing action in a flow.
To begin your email ticketing pipeline, create a flow that will collect any text or fields you'd like to forward to your agent. In the simple sample flow above, we ask the contact to send us free text describing their issue & collect it with a 'Wait for Response' node.
Once we've collected all the responses we'd like, we add the ticketing action:
In the body of the email, we'll reference the free text the contact sent using @results.issue
, using the name we gave to the flow result in the 'Wait for Response' node.
When a contact passes through the flow, a ticket will automatically be forwarded to the email address we integrated to our TextIt account. In your email, you can respond to the contact's request:
All further messages between the agent and the contact will also been seen in your TextIt account. Here's the contact's message history page showing the agent's email message and the contact's response:
Zendesk is a CRM company that builds software designed to improve customer relationships. The platform provides support, sales, and customer engagement software that allows you to integrate live agent chatting, self-service, call center communications and more into a single platform.
After creating your Zendesk account, you'll integrate it into TextIt. Navigate to your TextIt account page, click the gear icon, and choose 'Add Ticketing Service' from the dropdown menu:
Click on the Zendesk section:
Type in your subdomain name and then click 'Allow' on the following page to give TextIt permission to access your Zendesk account.
Follow the steps on the integration page:
Add a display name and the secret key:
Your Zendesk integration is now complete! The next step is creating the pipeline in a flow.
As with an email ticketing service, you'll collect any responses or fields you'd like to forward to Zendesk and add a ticketing service node:
When a contact moves through the flow, a ticket will be forwarded to Zendesk, where the agent can reply:
You'll also be able to see the entire message history for the contact in your TextIt account:
You can see all open tickets by clicking on the 'Tickets' tab which will appear after adding your first ticketing service:
Click on a ticket to see the contact's entire message history:
You can close a ticket with your TextIt account by clicking the checkbox and selecting the close button:
Reopen by clicking the checkbox and selecting the reopen button:
You're now all set up to handle tickets via Email or Zendesk!
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
Viewing your Flow Start Log is helpful in understanding your account's activity. You'll see a list of all the flows that have been started, the user who started them, and more. To view the log, first navigate to the 'Flows' tab:
Scroll down and find the 'Flow Start Log' button on the lefthand side:
Here, you'll see the list of flows started:
Here's a breakdown of the first log as seen above:
all contacts
were started, meaning both contacts who had and had not previously entered the flow and those active in other flows. Be sure to review our start flow sending options article to understand how contacts are started in a flow!Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
Prometheus and Grafana are popular platforms used to build dashboards. The dashboards you can build using them will let you see trends over time, spikes in usage and better understand the activity on your organization.
Prometheus works by fetching the current counts of various attributes on your organization a few times a minute. From that data it builds up a historical database of values it can query against. Grafana is then used to build dashboards using the database Prometheus has built over time.
Note that you will need both a Prometheus server and a Grafana server in order to perform these visualizations. You can either host these services yourself or use one of the hosted services such as Hosted Metrics that do this for you.
In either case you will be configuring the "Scrape Target" in Prometheus for your Organization. To enable your scrape target:
3. Then click on the Prometheus line again to get your Prometheus endpoint, username and password. You can then use these to configure a new scrape target on the Prometheus server you are using.
Remember that Prometheus will need to scrape your endpoint for a period of time to build a history of the records, so it will take some time before you have useful historical metrics for graphing.
Your Prometheus endpoint exposes aggregate counts for use in your dashboards. These include:
rapidpro_channel_msg_count{channel_name="BotChannel",channel_uuid="16551115-2483-4c60-98c4-0bb34e7aa218",channel_type="TG",msg_direction="out",msg_type="message",org="Handy"} 993
rapidpro_group_contact_count{group_name="Active Users",group_uuid="f53056f9-302c-4d76-a1b4-7ed0c6132779",group_type="user",org="Handy"} 23251
You can use the attributes on the metrics to filter by or group by in your Grafana dashboards.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
In response to the global Covid19 outbreak, Nyaruka is offering free TextIt hosting to all initiatives aiming to help during this pandemic. Projects we support have already sent and received millions of messages answering questions posed by the public and we want to do our part in ensuring even more people can be reached in the weeks ahead.
If you are working on a project related to the Covid19 outbreak, you can create an account for free at https://textit.in/. Once you have built your system please reach out to us and we will add additional credits to your account to guarantee you can scale nationally.
Projects do not need to be health related, we have customers building takeout and delivery systems using TextIt to help avoid physical contact just as we have customers building informational bots to help spread information in communities. Every little bit can and does help!
Our team is ready and eager to help you with any questions you may have.
Please share this with any of your colleagues who might find it useful.
Stay safe, working together we will all get through this.
]]>
In some cases, you might find that a flow depends on something that no longer exists. When this happens, you will see the action title in red (as seen above) to let you know that a flow issue is present. For example, you might be looking at a flow that references a contact field by using an expression like @fields.age. However, at some point you may have deleted the contact field for Age.
When this happens, your flow will continue to run, however it might lead to unexpected results. In some cases, such as updating a contact field for a missing field, nothing will happen (other than the field will not be set).
In other cases, it might be more noticeable. Perhaps you created a Send Message action that looked like the following example. In this case, it may cause some confusion as the value for @fields.volunteer_id would be left out.
After creating a node with a messing dependency, you'll see that the node itself turns red. If you click on the node to edit, you'll see a notification that says 'Cannot find a field for @fields.whatever_field_name
.
You will also see a new red tab appear to the right of the editor called 'Flow Issues'.
Click on the Flow Issues tab to get a full list of all the missing dependencies and click on each to be taken to the exact node in your flow.
Contact Fields are not the only things that can go missing and result in a missing dependency error. You may see this with a Contact Group that has been deleted, a channel that no longer exists, or a variety of other things your flow may reference.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
Your channel's phone number may automatically allow sending messages to international numbers, which could cause carrier or aggregator fees to add up. To avoid international messaging charges, you can choose to restrict sending.
First, navigate to your account page and scroll down to the phone number you'd like to restrict:
Next, click the 'Edit' button to change the settings:
Uncheck the box allowing sending to international numbers:
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!]]>When viewing your featured fields on the Contacts page, you will see that they are organized left to right starting from earliest creation date. In the example below, the contact field school id
was created at an earlier date than state
.
To change how the contact field columns are viewed, first navigate to the Manage Fields page found within the Contacts tab:
Here, click on the 'Featured' folder to the left of the page:
You'll see a list of all featured fields. Hover over a field to click and drag to the position you'd like.
Navigate back to the Contacts tab to see the contacts fields have rearranged to your specifications:
Don't see a contact field in the list? First, make sure it's featured.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
The Context Explorer feature found in the simulator within each flow's editor allows you to view and better understand all the variables available in your flow. The explorer gives a detailed breakdown of values and their expressions, which can be copied for use elsewhere.
To use the Context Explorer, first navigate to the flow's editor. In our example, we want to see all the available variables for a flow asking contacts to join a group of their choosing to earn a free coupon:
At the bottom right corner of the editor, we see the Simulator button:
By clicking the 'Run in Simulator' button, we will run a test contact through the flow up to whichever point in our flow we'd like to view. Here, we've run the test contact all the way through to the flow's exit, or end.
We'll then click on the '@' symbol found at the bottom left of the simulator to view the Context Explorer:
In our example flow's explorer, we can immediately see the test contact's telephone number, the global API key set in our account, how many inputs were received from the contact, the results of the flow, and the flow's run:
We can expand each value to view even more detailed information like when the contact was created, the language of the contact, their group membership, and more:
We can hover over a value and click the clipboard icon:
This will copy the expression for that value to the clipboard for use elsewhere:
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!]]>By clicking on the column header of a featured contact field on your Contact page, you can change how the fields are sorted.
For example, we can change how the fields are viewed to either sort youngest to oldest or vice versa:
This feature is useful in this case to see the breakdown of our contacts' ages to better organize our demographic information.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
Facebook has updated their API to require that all messages sent to a contact after 24 hours have an appropriate 'tag', or what we call a 'topic'.
Message tags allow you to send important and relevant 1:1 updates to contacts outside the standard messaging window of 24 hours after a contact's last message.
By default your flows will use the NON_PROMOTIONAL_SUBSCRIPTION
tag for your outgoing messages which aren't replies, but support for this tag is being removed in March 2020.
You can now select the tag to use when sending broadcast messages by clicking on the first message of your flow and navigating to the "Facebook" tab as seen at the top of the message node:
For our example above, we'll choose the 'Event' tag since our message pertains to an update for an upcoming event. This will then mark the message with that tag when it is sent. You only need to do this on the first message in your flow.
It is important to note that as per Facebook policy, message tags may not be used to send promotional content, including but not limited to deals, offers, coupons, and discounts. Learn more about sending messages with tags as well as details on new and currently supported tags here.
Looking for information on how to create and submit your Messenger bot? See our guide.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!
Globals are shared values that can be referenced in flows, as well as broadcasts and campaigns, within your account referenced by @globals.value_name
. They allow you to create a value once and use it repeatedly without having to reenter the value. Likewise, globals make updating a shared value much easier. Rather than manually changing a value everywhere it's used in your account, simply update the value found in your 'Globals' page.
Say you have 5 different webhooks in your account that all use the same Airtable API Authorization key. By saving that key as a global variable, you can easily reference the key without having to look it up in your Airtable account every time you create a webhook.
We've got a flow where we want to retrieve data from a table in our Airtable account multiple times. This means we'll need to use more than one Call Webhook action, and each of those will need to be configured using the API Authorization key from Airtable. To avoid having to look up the key for each configuration, we'll create a global to save time.
Go to your account page, then scroll down to to the @
globals section.
Here, you'll find your Globals page where you can create and manage your global variables.
To create a new variable, click the 'Create Global' button. Choose a name and enter the value. For our API key example, the value is the same value that we'd enter for the 'Authorization' header in our Call Webhook action in our flow.
Note that by clicking on the 'uses' link next to each global variable on your 'Globals' page, you can see every place your global is used.
After creating the shared API key global, we can reference it in all of our new Call Webhook actions in our Airtable flow.
When we create each new Call Webhook node, we don't need to enter the text value of the Authorization header.
We can instead simply reference the value using the global variable we've created using @globals.api_key
. Recall that we named the variable API Key
when we created the global earlier.
That's it! For any other webhook where we would also use the same Airtable API Authorization key, we don't need to look it up. We can easily enter the global instead.
Note that globals can only be edited or updated within your Globals page and not within flows.
Want to learn even more about using TextIt? Check out our Help Center.
Questions? Comments? Let us know!