Triggering a Service with a Broadcast

This "Trigger Service" option enables you to trigger a service for end users in a subscription (or multiple subscriptions). Triggering the service via a broadcast is akin to each end user having triggered the service by texting into its short code.

To trigger a service using a broadcast:

1. Click the Broadcasts tab.
   This Broadcasts home page appears. Here you will see a history of broadcasts sent from your account. You can click on the broadcast here to view and download results.

   
   

2. Click Create Broadcast.
3. On the Broadcast Types page, select Trigger Service.

4. The Service Broadcast page is where you set the details of the Trigger Service broadcast. The top half of the page is the general settings for your broadcast. The second half lets you select the end users to which you are broadcasting. At the bottom is an Advanced Settings section, which contains additional settings you may wish to use.

   

5. On the top half of this page:

   1. By default, the Broadcast name field is populated with Service Broadcast. You can optionally change the name, which is not visible to end users. This can help you find it at a later date if needed. If you do not specify a name, a default name is used.
   2. From the Service drop-down list, select the service collection you want to trigger.
   3. If there are any sub-service collections located within the parent service, select that sub-service collection from the second drop-down list.
   4. Choose whether the broadcast Start Time is Now or Later. If you choose Later, select the date and time for the broadcast.
      Note that may get a message from MEP to tell you that you have gone over the character limit for a single part SMS or that you need to use a different character set — for more information about these, for more information about these, see Single and multipart (concatenated) messages and Character encoding options in broadcast messages.
5. Select the Send To recipients for the broadcast. You have three options to do this:

   • Selecting one or more MEP Subscriptions that are already available.

     
     

   • Enter Users Manually by either adding numbers into the field or by cutting and pasting text into the field.

     
     

     When adding users manually, you can optionally click Correct missing country codes to automatically fix number the international format for US and/or UK, US, UK, Australian, or Irish numbers. You can also click the Require network check box to require that the network operator id be passed as well. A link in the right-hand pane opens a list of network operator codes
     

   • Upload a file of mobile numbers with their mobile operators. You can use one of these file types:
     

     • XLS/XLSX — character encoding can be windows-1252, ASCII or UTF-8
     • CSV — character encoding can be windows-1252 or ASCII, but not UTF-8

     
     

     You will be presented with a pop-up that allows you to check the contents of the file. The file can contain additional details for each end user, that you can then include as a variable in the SMS message. For more information see Customize messages with uploaded values.
     

6. Now that you have created the message and chosen its recipients, you can send the broadcast. However, there are some additional options that you might consider using in the Advanced Settings:
   • You can spread the broadcast over a period of time. This is an especially useful feature if you are sending a call-to-action message that will direct end users to your business or call center.
   • If your message is time-sensitive, you can set an expiry date after which delayed messages are no longer delivered.
7. When you are ready, click the Send Now to immediately send the MMS broadcast, or if you selected to send later, click Schedule.
8. Click OK to confirm.