Become Digital Birthday & Anniversary Wishes SMS & Email Module for Perfex CRM

Starting from version 1.9.8 Perfex CRM will support sending SMS via SMS providers for limited actions.To configure SMS navigate to Setup->Settings->SMS and chose the SMS gateway you want to activate, fill the config credentials and make sure that you actually activated this provider. The SMS gateways config is really simple, in most SMS gateways you will be able to find your API keys for the SMS config in your SMS gateway dashboard.

Keep in mind that only 1 provider is allowed to be active, if you try to activate another provider, the previous ones will be automatically deactivated.

Triggers

Triggers are the actual actions when the SMS will be sent.

1. Invoice Overdue Notice – Trigger when invoice overdue notice is sent to customer contacts either manually or via CRON Job.
2. Invoice Payment Recorded – Trigger when invoice payment is recorded, this action trigger when customer pay invoice online or an invoice payment is recorded manually from admin area.
3. Estimate Expiration Reminder – Trigger when expiration reminder should be sent to customer contacts, either manually or via CRON Job.
4. Proposal Expiration Reminder – Trigger when expiration reminder should be sent to the proposal, either manually or via CRON Job.
5. New Comment on Proposal (to a customer) – Trigger when staff member comments on proposal, SMS will be sent to proposal number (customer/lead).
6. New Comment on Proposal (to staff) – Trigger when customer/lead comments on proposal, SMS will be sent to proposal creator and assigned staff member.
7. Contract Expiration Reminder – Trigger when expiration reminder should be sent via Cron Job to customer contacts, because there is no option to manually send expiration reminder for contracts, this action is triggered only via CRON job.
8. Staff Reminder – Trigger when staff is notified for a specific custom reminder.

Testing

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Prior to version 2.0.1, please use the steps below to test the configIn order to test if the SMS sending will work fine after you configure it, you can create custom staff reminder.Also, make sure that in Setup->Settings->SMS the trigger Staff Reminder is actually filled with text, because if the trigger is empty no SMS will be sent.From the main menu click Customers -> [Customer] -> Reminders tab and create a reminder for your user with the nearest date eq if your time is 09:50 add reminder for 09:51. Wait 5 minutes the cron job to run to notify you, you should receive the SMS, in case the SMS is not sent, you can navigate to Utilities->Activity Log to see any activity outputted and a reason why the SMS was not sent successfully.Don’t forget in your profile to add your phone number.

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If you are using version 2.0.1 or newer, you can test the SMS sending directly in the SMS config area.

Notes

• SMS integration is one way messaging, which means that your customers won’t be able to reply to the SMS, perhaps you should mention this in the SMS or leave it without this mention, in real life example nobody is replying to automated SMS.
• If you are using Clickatell, you won’t be able to send SMS to USA numbers as sending SMS to USA numbers requires to way messaging.
• You must keep an eye on the phone numbers, they must be E.164 format if you click on the E.164 link you will be able to see that this is an example by Twilio but this rule is applied to all SMS providers in order everything to work properly.
• On data Eq. invoices, estimates, contracts, proposals older (from the date created) then 45 days, no SMS will be sent. This is protection added by the system in order to protect you from spamming your customers. Very often can happen if you are adjusting some settings or just testing something the system to catch this old Eq invoice via the cron job and send SMS but you didn’t actually want this.