Sender Name for Broadcast SMS in SendConsole

[Iwan Suryolaksono]

Dear Mr. Ken Banks,

This is just little question. Is there a way to include recipient name from group members name into text message in Send Console? This function is just like ${sender_name} in Auto Reply Keywords. If we can include it, we can broadcast many SMS with unique name, so that centrally triggered information/ announcement can be transformed to individually approach messages.

Why there are no "Send" or "Auto Send" keywords in New View? It is so strange that basic function of SMS broadcaster doesn't get any special treatment in New View.

Thank you very much for your answer.

Iwan Suryo

[kiwanja]

Hi Iwan

Right now, you can't automatically embed a name in the messages sent out in FrontlineSMS. This is on the list of things to add, but we haven't got round to it yet. But I agree it would be a nice and useful feature.

As for your second point, I'm not sure what you mean by New View not having "Send or Auto Send", so you may have to give me a little more information!

Thanks. \o/

[Iwan Suryolaksono]

All keywords in New View are only can be triggered by incoming SMS (Auto Reply, Auto Forward, Join Group, Leave Group, etc). As if the keyword is not required if frontlinesms' admin want to send SMS messages to all members of a group. He/She can do it directly in Send Console, where the variable of recipient's name listed in the targeted groups can not be included in the message body.

Even Start Date and End Date cannot be set in SendConsole too, which is the main weakness of this Old View than all of Keywords in New View. You may say that the scheduled SMS which is triggered by an external database can not be done by the current version of FrontlineSMS. But this is not about external database. This is about managing and broadcasting SMS directly by admin of FrontlineSMS! If he/she cannot set many variables of his/her own SMS, it means that the administrative function of FrontlineSMS is very limited.

Maybe you can say that admin of FrontlineSMS could handle SMS sending with 'Auto Forward' keywords, but this keywords doesn't give "recipient name" and "recipient number" variable too which is important in many kind of messages.

You can imagine if the message content is "To be notified to Mr. X, who is 0812YYYYY phone number owner, that on Monday July 5, will be held social activities with the whole village. You are invited to participate in these activities." In the message, there must be two variables are included in the message body: recipient name from the Group (Mr. X) and their phone number (0812YYYYY). And that message must be valid from Start Date and End Date before the social activities carried out.

Thank you again Mr. Ken Banks.