Table of Contents
Episode Summary
In this episode, our host Zach Malloch is joined by Director of Product Management, Patrick Hayden, and Product Owner, Jordan Tipson to discuss the SMS texting feature that is an available add-on to RecTrac. The group touches on the costs of the add-on, how to direct your patrons to opt-in to the service, and how to send SMS messages from RecTrac using RecConnect.
Recording
Transcript
Zach Malloch 0:04
And we're live. And I don't think that we've got our virtual background working for some reason. Let me just fix that real quick. While I'm doing that, welcome RecChat, everybody. It is I, Zach Malloch manager of education, joined by Patrick Hayden, Director of Product Management. And first time ever with remote participants, Jordan Tipson, live from Connecticut. Hello. How's it going, Jordan?
Jordan Tipson 0:30
Not too bad. Not too bad.
Zach Malloch 0:33
Let me just do this. There we go. Now we are in the proper location for RecChat. Okay, so sorry for the technical difficulties to begin with. But welcome RecChatters to RecChat. Today's edition is about SMS simple messaging services customer. So, Jordan and Patrick, I can swear we sent text messages from RecTrac. A long time ago. Why are we having this chat?
Jordan Tipson 1:01
Yeah, so we actually we can send messages through RecTrac. Currently, the key there is that it's really an email to text functionality. Meaning so I'm sure maybe some of you already use this, this process, now you need to get the customers provider. So it'd be phone number at, you know, say Verizon wireless.com, or at and t.com. So really, the management of that is kind of cumbersome where people change carriers all the time. The other piece of that, too, is it's pretty unreliable as in terms of when the messages actually get delivered and get sent out. So again, because it's an email to text form, basically, when you send these messages out, there's really not a guarantee that the message is going to be delivered in a half hour an hour, four hours today, the next day. So you know, the key here is that, you know, we want to be able to send messages in a timely manner when maybe something is canceled, or maybe something in the schedule has changed. So the current functionality that we have now just just didn't really cut it for some of our customers. So definitely something we looked forward to improve. And we've got a great new solution now.
Zach Malloch 2:06
So this mean, we don't have to pick the provider anymore.
Jordan Tipson 2:11
That is correct, you do not need to pick the provider anymore. So in RecTrac, now what we utilize is a shortcode. So that shortcode is really just a five digit number, as part of this approval process for the shortcode. It's been about 12 weeks for our campaign to get approved. And the key to that is throughout these last 12 weeks, we had to submit to the major carriers. So Verizon AT and T sprint, and so forth, basically what our shortcode would be used for. And the reason for that is they validate that it's not being marked as spam. And then that way, we can send messages out at a rapid rate, we could send 1000s of messages, and it's not going to be flagged as spam or undeliverable. Again, that's kind of why the shortcode processes the one we took so that we can send rapid messages out. And they're already approved by all of our carriers. So that allows for these message to be delivered. And then we also have a little bit of a backup as well. So we have a couple of one 800 numbers associated with our account. There are some small carriers throughout the country that don't accept shortcodes. So we don't obviously want customers to not be able to receive these messages. So it'll always try to use the shortcode that we have. And if it can't get delivered to some of these smaller carriers, then it'll use one of our 100 backup codes. So that way, they can still receive the message and get whatever information is needed from from your department.
Zach Malloch 3:34
All right, that sounds really good. So that's a little bit on the technical side getting things approved from the carriers. But there's maybe for Patrick, this part, there's also for the spam concern. It's an opt in, right, so how does that work?
Patrick Hayden 3:48
Yeah, so like Jordan said, part of the approval processes, kind of ensuring that we're using things properly. And a big part of that, from our perspective was learning about what is proper usage. So someone similar to can spam act that that's more applicable to email, there's similar kind of FCC guidelines for SMS text messages. So like Jordan said, part of that shortcode allows for opting in which we'll talk about a little bit more in a moment, but there's a lot of kind of rules and regulations you need to follow that you really can't follow properly when you're doing the email to text protocol.
Zach Malloch 4:20
Okay. That's interesting. All right. So Well, you said we'd be coming to that opt out opt in in just a moment. Was there something you want to talk about before that or what else?
Patrick Hayden 4:30
Probably what the Jordan pick it over and kind of show how that process would work for an actual agency trying to onboard with this new service
Zach Malloch 4:38
back over to you Jordan
Jordan Tipson 4:40
Alright, sounds good. So I'm gonna share my Screen out now. And I assume you can see that okay, Zach, yes, we can. Alright, so we'll hop into RecTrac in a second show how to actually use the process. But one of the key pieces with the approval of the shortcode is that the customer themselves so your patron needs to be the one opting themselves. And that's that's definitely a key component to this is that they need to opt themselves in. So what we can do is we've created a template, obviously, it would need to be updated by your department or your organization to match specific to you guys. But what we do is we opt these customers in using WebTrac. So this is an example message that we have set up here. So this is a message directly from RecTrac. And it can be sent out through RecConnect, in RecTrac, to all of your patrons, and basically just some information regarding this new service, and then a link to log them directly into the area within WebTrac, where customers can opt in. So I'm going to go through that process now. So again, this can be a customized email to your liking. If I Click on the link to my WebTrac instance, you'll notice some brought to my login Screen. So as a WebTrac patron, I can log in, and through the URL we're passing, we're bringing them right to the login Screen or right to the update Screen for SMS messaging. So this is my household, you'll notice I have myself, my wife and my fake child in here. And then basically the cell phones that are associated with my household. And then over to the right here, I can determine which of these numbers I want to opt into. So for example, I want to opt in to receive messages my wife, or in this case, my child has a cell phone. So I can opt into these messages from here as well. So it's a simple process, just an opt in opt out box, this information at the top here can be completely customized to your organization. But as soon as I Click my opt in my submit Button, right away, I'm going to receive a message a text message on my phone to this number here, saying that I've been opted in to start receiving messages from your organization. So they get that confirmation message right away, they can opt out at any time by texting stop back. And that's in the message that is sent out. And there's also a help reply help for help. And that's more it's not a live help option there, it's really more of a way you can put in as an organization, maybe a phone number, they can call an email address they can they can reach out to so that they're not if they do have questions or not just stuck on that Screen.
Patrick Hayden 7:13
And that's something that we'll you know, obviously going to subscribe a number of things are, that's all kind of part of some of the onboarding process to inform people about those. And sometimes we'll be providing some kind of documentation best practices on because some of this stuff that is required to really be in compliance and meet the regulations required here isn't so much just the technology, that's a big part of it. But it's also how you use these things in the kind of information you provide. So we we set you up with a good starting point. But there's some certain things you need to kind of guideposts you need to stay with
Zach Malloch 7:43
and kind of take ownership for yourself with these pieces. Alright, well, one thing I noticed real quick here, Jordan is that says cell for the phone Type on your Screen. And I know that a lot of times with the modern day moving back and forth between everything, a lot of customers are giving their home phone numbers even or their their cell phone numbers, and that's their primary number. So it might be flagged as home or cell or whatever. How would we come around that?
Jordan Tipson 8:08
Yeah, so in the license Profile. So during the onboarding process, you as an organization, actually determine which phone numbers you want to display in here. So it could be so it could be home. Obviously, we can't send a message to a home phone number, you know, a landline per se. But as a as an organization during the implementation process of this. You define what in WebTrac? Which cell phone types you want to list in here.
Zach Malloch 8:35
So if you did want to include home phone, you would see those numbers there, the patron would log in, and they would decide, okay, well, that is actually my cell phone number. This is flagged as home, I'm still going to opt in, they're still good, correct?
Jordan Tipson 8:48
Absolutely yupo.
Zach Malloch 8:49
That's very convenient. Okay, so how do you actually send a message, just people.
Jordan Tipson 8:56
All right. So again, the key piece is being opted in. So at this point, you can see here that I am opted in. So if I hop into RecTrac now, and I think this is a really important piece is that, you know, being able to extract the data that you need directly from RecTrac in all one one processes is obviously a really nice feature. You don't need to get an activity roster and then export it out to a third party vendor or something like that. The nice thing with RecTrac is that it stores all of your data, all of your registrations. So if there's an activity, maybe that's being cancelled, or league that's maybe being rescheduled facilities being closed, all that stuff, you have all the data directly in RecTrac. So for this example, here, I'm going to use an activity that I'm going to cancel for the day. So if I just happen to Section inquiry, so I have a favorite setup for activities section inquiry. And this piece here, this RecConnect Button. So this was recently added I believe in Build. Oh 905. So a lot of our inquiry programs now have the RecConnect Button that brings you directly into, you know, interact Kinect for whatever options you select. So in the league module, same process, I'm going to use an activity as an example. But I've got this basketball showcase program here that you can see I've got nine people enrolled into. So again, just through RecTrac, through section inquiry, I can Click my RecConnect Button. And now I'm prompted with the normal RecConnects, you know, Screen that you're used to seeing. Obviously, it's important your match option here, you kind of need to just take a moment and think about who you want to target. So a lot of times, maybe if summer camp is being canceled or delayed for the day, well, you might want to, you know, choose unique household so that way, the parent or the Guardian is the one receiving that message. So certainly take a look at your match options, we've got some good help in there as to what that is. But if I just hit continue, it's gonna go through my RecConnect, you know, process. I ran this a little while ago. So instead of waiting for it to pop up, I will just bring up the results from RecConnect. So in this case, here, again, I have my source description. So my basketball showcase, that's the program that I decipher that I picked. And then here's my nine enrollees that I have in the program. So a new feature a new option. Now within RecConnect Is this process SMS option. And again, this is all controlled by the licensed device in, you know, or licensed Profile when you're setting up yourselves for SMS. And now we get this new drop down at the bottom for SMS options. So I think everybody knows that you can only send a certain amount of mess of characters in an SMS message. So we didn't necessarily restrict you to 160 or fewer, because if there is some information that you do want to get out, and it does span over two messages, we probably want to still out for that. So we do keep a count on here just to help you understand where you're at with your messages. And then we've also got templates set up so you can ahead of time. So for example, if I get rid of this, you can ahead of time maybe set up some of the default templates that you have, maybe there's a weather one, maybe there's a facility closed one. So that way you're not having to freeform every single time. So when I choose my weather template here, you'll notice it's going to pre populate with the information that I want, I could obviously update this make changes to it. But as you can see here, just like with email RecConnect, you can choose fields from the database. So in this example here, I have my activity description, the name of the enrollee, and then the current date. So today, because it's going to be cancelled today, and then whatever messages or whatever text I have after that, as well as my stop, and my help so that customers if they don't want to keep receiving these, they can do it and respond right back to the message, or reply help and get a message right back with a phone number or an email address for something to go through with.
Zach Malloch 12:47
And so Jordan, right, that's a we have a question that came in. And I think that the title at the bottom of your Screen right now might live or go towards that. So the question is, what if the customer accidentally puts in a landline? And they flag it as cellphone? I mean, theoretically, I would think that they just wouldn't opt in on that number if they recognize the issue, but it didn't recognize it. And they did leave a landline. And we know that that was a landline and get that on a report.
Jordan Tipson 13:14
I don't think we would I think it would I don't think we have in our report to show undeliverable because as soon as this is processed, that message is sent out, we're not necessarily waiting for a response back from from the provider saying this was deliberate or not, I mean, part of the approval process of our shortcode is, you know, that kind of guarantee per se that the message is going to be delivered. But obviously, if it's to a landline, then I don't think we're gonna get a response back saying it was undelivered.
Zach Malloch 13:41
Okay, so to answer that question all the way for Elaine, it is up to the customer to pick which of their lines they opt in on. So hopefully that error wouldn't occur. But we wouldn't necessarily know if they had selected the wrong line.
Jordan Tipson 13:55
Right. So yeah, I'll show this to here. So invalid and no phone number. So basically, what this just means is this report is going to kick back, anybody that's opted out themselves, or they just don't have a phone number on file at all in the household. So I created a new household, maybe weren't requiring phone numbers, and I just didn't have a household to begin with. So if I go through and process this now, so again, I have my eight people, you can still do your selected records. In this case, I want to do all records. So it's going to choose everybody again, this is going to be my message, I have my Toggle on for my invalid no phone number. I'm gonna go ahead and process this RecConnect. So here's the nice thing as well it pops up and lets you know how many messages that will be sent that will be sent out. I know in the past, maybe some of you would like reports and stuff, you print it and it's 100 pages long because you maybe miss something or your criteria was off. So it's always a nice little alert that we give you letting you know that this is the number of SMS messages based off your results that are going to be processed. Again, this doesn't necessarily mean these are the ones that have been Did out or they don't have a phone number just based off the selection, you know, my all records that I selected? This is this is what it's going to try to send out.
Zach Malloch 15:08
Okay. Now we added a couple of things coming in, I think it's related to really they saw in your template that it said reply stop to stop help for help. What if they reply with something else? Is there anything else that we would get through we
Jordan Tipson 15:19
do, we do have some sticky codes, I guess I'll call that. So stop, it can be capitalized, it could be lowercase. And I think is on there. I can I'm not sure off the top of my head. But I think we have like six or seven other key words other than stop that do our people out. And we can certainly in the follow up, provide provide what those are.
Patrick Hayden 15:41
And I think with the help in terms of people looking to kind of interact, it's not really a channel that's designed for that, you know, the health most likely is, as Jordan mentioned, religion pointing to another channel, to an email to a website to a phone number. You know, the short codes are really designed to be kind of a no reply in the sense that you're not going to communicate with someone via that channel, just for sort of sending information, allowing them to do some service service things like stop the subscription, but not necessarily that communicate.
Zach Malloch 16:11
Okay, so is there a way to customize the help response that would give us that?
Jordan Tipson 16:18
Yes. So that's all. So that's all on the license Profile as well, you can determine your organization name, so that way, when you opt in, it's you know, it says, you know, Vermont systems, Parks and Rec, and then same, same with the help you can determine what information you want in there.
Zach Malloch 16:33
Great. Alright, so I know, you wanted to show us something. So we have a couple other questions coming into once he shows me into this process, I have no idea where these questions are going.
Jordan Tipson 16:44
Yeah. So as soon as I hit continue here, it's going to process through again, I chose to print the report after so I'll just preview that so we can see what it looks like. And then if I continue. So at this point, now, my messages are being sent out. So if I pop this Screen up here, so this was one I sent out a little bit earlier today. But as you can see here, the message that I received is the same exact, well, there's my report behind the scenes, maybe will pop back in a second. But you'll notice here, so here's all my opt outs. So the people that were on this, this RecConnect to these people have all opted out. And then in this case, here, Robert Tipson, doesn't have a phone number on file. So this is a nice way for you, you know, to determine, Okay, maybe we need to email these people, maybe we need to contact them a different way. But obviously, these people would not have received the message. Gotcha.
Zach Malloch 17:38
Okay. So, we did have a question. Can you get to this through the old interface? Yes, you can. Definitely. So you have to be on three 110 or newer, but you can be in either the old interface or the new interface for that. Yeah.
Jordan Tipson 17:55
And I mean, my example. So I went through activities section inquiry. But you know, obviously, some people are used to just going through like the full on RecConnect report process, that process still works as well. The idea with creating that Button on the inquiry screens is that it's going to be a little a little bit quicker. So I know I can go to section inquiry or league inquiry, choose my program or programs hit RecConnect. And I'm right into what I want to do rather than the full on RecConnect Screen where you have a lot more options to pick and choose from. Right.
Zach Malloch 18:26
So do you have another question related to this? So how do you know if a customer has signed up for the customer service or not? So if 10 people sign up for a roster, the fool goes down, you have to send a message to them only some of them have opted in to SMS, maybe the others or email? How does that work?
Jordan Tipson 18:44
Yeah, I mean, I think it would just be the same process that I went through, you know, obviously, I think if you know, as an organization, you're going to use this service, you would have a pretty large campaign at the beginning of the service, again, maybe direct connect email, similar to the email I received, where I could go opt in, and that would be maybe a week or two that you're just you know, it's a big campaign to get people opted in. But then really running your RecConnect, and then running that report is going to be you know, it's going to tell you who hasn't been opted in.
Zach Malloch 19:13
And so part of this opt in, Jerry also asked the question, is this a separate process from the one that they opt in or out of just receiving RecConnect in general?
Jordan Tipson 19:22
Yes, we still separate separate out the SMS side versus just to receive emails. So it is a separate, it is a separate option.
Patrick Hayden 19:31
And that's something that's kind of a requirement that we really have to get people specific ability to opt out of SMS particularly. And part of that comes because potentially there's a cost of these days, most people have an unlimited plan, but some of those rules are sort of rooted in people don't want to be receiving something that's potentially cost associated with it. Maybe wasn't specifically requested.
Zach Malloch 19:52
Okay, so use the word twice. Just now cost. Yeah, that's a question that's starting to come out and also available. So we He said you have to be on three 110 or newer, what else does somebody need to take advantage of SMS Patrick.
Patrick Hayden 20:06
So today, they have to be hosted. And that's something that we're, we're looking at how we're going to open up this this on prem customers as well, technically, we don't have a limitation that prevents us from doing that. But it's kind of a new thing, new technology is being used. So we want to go with hosted first, sort of wrap our arms around that, and then that's exposed to on premise customers as well.
Zach Malloch 20:26
Is there any rough timeline or roadmap for that?
Patrick Hayden 20:29
Um, I say, we don't have a specific timeline for that yet. But that's something we'll communicate, you know, we're not fully live with it yet, even for hosting customers. So get that under our belts, and then we can circle back and look at what's on prem. But I don't think it's the sort of thing where we'd need an extended period of time of hosted necessarily, before we make that decision.
Zach Malloch 20:46
So this is kind of more our decision to say, we're going to roll it out a little bit more.
Patrick Hayden 20:50
Yeah, exactly. Yep, yep, where we can really make sure that we have control over the sort of full cycle of all the technology and architecture involved, make sure we're 100% comfortable with it, and then then release it more broadly.
Zach Malloch 21:03
Okay. So for somebody that is interested in this, and they are hosted, what sort of costs are we talking about,
Patrick Hayden 21:10
so the text messages, it's based on usage kind of needs to be because that's what the actual cost of the send and receive is based on them. It's a nickel a text message. So it's pretty simple. Something for people to understand with that is that it is kind of both ways, there shouldn't be a lot of receiving of messages here. But things like for instance, as Jordan mentioned, when someone opts in, the act of opting in, is sending a text message. Okay, it has to, that's not us trying to send more messages. That's a requirement that when someone subscribes and they opt in on that Screen that Jordan showed, they're going to be sending a message stating that you have been opted in, you can reply stop to stop. And that's really a requirement that we do that. So that's, you know, when you first onboard, and you send out that mass email to all 30,000 people in your database, saying, Hey, this is a new service, we're gonna get you seamless, you know, timely notifications, relevant information, that's great. Hopefully, you get a lot of people opting in, there might be an uptick in the kind of cost that first month. But for good reason, we obviously have demand you have interest, and then a better chance to communicate with people. So there might be a little a little cost upfront as people opt in. But again, at a nickel apiece, pretty, pretty minimal, even if you have a large, large customer database.
Zach Malloch 22:29
So going towards that. So now we're talking about the small amount, but it's going to cost money when you sell the message. So Jordan, your previous stream that said, you're about sin nine messages, if we open that up to all coordinators, and everybody's just sending all the time constantly, what Type of controls do we have for that?
Jordan Tipson 22:46
Yeah, so we have, just like everything else, really, in RecTrac, we have full on permissions for SMS messaging. So not necessarily, I mean, you could obviously remove RecConnect as a complete as an option. But we still want people to be able to get in and process labels and letters, and maybe emails as well. But what we can do is we have a permission setting now in the permissions Profile that specifies the maximum number of messages a user can send in a specific instance. So in this case, here, this is a specific instance, I have nine results, and I hit process RecConnect, well, that's looking back at my permissions Profile. And essentially, you can put the number in that you want a user or a group, it can be whatever it can be the default value, so that at a certain point, if I'm sending in this case, let's say I set mine to five, well, in this case, if I'm sending nine, now I would get a message saying that you're not able to send that many messages. And then just like with RecTrac, a manager or someone with those permissions can override those settings. So definitely some restrictions that you can set up on your users, that maybe they can't do it at all, or there's a certain number that you know, anything under this amount is okay, but after a certain, you know, over a certain number, then somebody needs to override that for that instance.
Zach Malloch 24:07
So we'll have a couple of more questions coming in, I think he can hit three of them pretty quickly, can you process SMS messages and email at the same time from RecConnect?
Jordan Tipson 24:16
You can. So that process is still the same. One thing to keep in mind is so if you are set up to process SMS messages under the email option, with this enabled, there were some send email and text option here that's obviously been removed because we wouldn't want you to try to do both through here. So with SMS enabled, some fields that you might used to be you know, seeing here in the past that are specific to SMS are no longer there because obviously you would now use the SMS tab to do that stuff. But yeah, you can send you can do all four options at once if you wanted,
Zach Malloch 24:53
okay, and then to opt in opt out questions. So one is when somebody replies stop, that actually opts out from RecTrac. Correct? That is correct. Because they would have to log back into WebTrac opt back in to get back into it.
Jordan Tipson 25:09
Technically, if they still had that shortcode, that message that they opted out to, they could do reply start back to that, and that would opt them in, or they could go back to WebTrac and opt themselves in.
Zach Malloch 25:20
Okay. And then a follow up to that from Joel here, if someone calls the front desk and says, we want to do this, can the front desk have access to anywhere too often, and it does have to be a customer, the customer has to log into WebTrac and off themselves, and it has to be their control?
Jordan Tipson 25:35
Yeah, at this point, there's not a reason. And again, it kind of ties back to what we mentioned before, it's kind of a restriction that the customer themselves have to be the one that's opting them in again, it kind of goes back to the spam, topic and everything. But at this point, again, based off the have to get our shortcode approved, we have to specify that the customer themselves are the one opting in.
Patrick Hayden 25:57
And that's really just like Jonathan said, compliance thing is the best practice thing. And you can probably people might have used something before that they got auto opted in or, but you really letter of the law and kind of shouldn't be doing that.
Zach Malloch 26:13
Gotcha. Okay. All right. So I have a few more coming up here. That is when we just answered just answered that one, will there be a subscription price for large clients? Or the large will they remain a per message fee?
Patrick Hayden 26:30
Just for Massachusetts, so there is a $15 monthly fee to kind of get on boarded and have that as a minimum, basically. But now it's just based on usage. So whether you do 100 messages a month, or 10,000 a month, its a nickel a message, okay, $15 per month and a nickel per message. All right.
Zach Malloch 26:51
Jordan, could you show us real quick how you would show up or customize the health message or somebody replies to SMS with help?
Jordan Tipson 26:58
Sure. So it's just in the licensed Profile. So when VSI when you start your onboarding process, there's a few configuration settings, it's just done directly within the license Profile.
Zach Malloch 27:10
Okay. And is it 160 characters as far as that goes?
Jordan Tipson 27:16
Yep, yep. So we've, we've hard coded some of those fields. So just like on the opt in, like the message saying, You've been opted in, or the message, you've been opting out, we did hard code those to 160. Because he wouldn't really want you would try to want to keep whatever your messages within that 160 characters, so you're not opting out. And now getting two messages with you know, the first one saying you've been opted out, and then a bunch of information now on a second message. So those, we definitely want to try to restrict to just one message where as an actual, you know, alert or something that is cancelled, if you need to go to messages, then it's probably important that you do get it all in two messages.
Zach Malloch 27:53
Okay. This has come up a couple of times, but the the reply, stop or reply with help, do we do you have to manually Type that in is that just part of the template we'd recommend, do we legally are we required to add that to the message that gets sent
Jordan Tipson 28:07
so on the actual message that you send, so like, in this example, here, with that my activity has been canceled due to severe weather, it is not a requirement on this message that you put that in there, it's obviously nice to have on there, especially the help piece, but on the opt in message, so when I do in WebTrac, and I choose to opt in, it is required. So we have hard that hard coded in there that you need to give them away to something there has to be a you know, in plain text that they can opt out whenever they want. So reply, stop or help. So those are hard coded in the opt in messages. And then same with if you opt out, you get a message saying you've been opted out. We also says reply, start to restart the service or help if you need help.
Patrick Hayden 28:53
Yeah, so I think opt in, with 160 character limit, probably best practices, and not necessarily include that with every single one subsequent messages, you don't have to and you know, with activity descriptions and dates, you'll be pushing the 160 You know, potentially depending on how verbose you get with the weather, or whatever it might be.
Zach Malloch 29:12
Absolutely. And then, so just a quick question from Frank who bills, the five cents per text? Is that going to be an invoice from us? Is it through a third party
Patrick Hayden 29:21
from us
Zach Malloch 29:22
Okay, so it's gonna be directly. And so previous months usage, we get billed again?
Patrick Hayden 29:26
Yeah, I think we're still sort of working things out and talking with kind of early adopters about the interval of billing and kind of willing to work with people but on that, you know, monthly is certainly has some appeal, but a lot of folks would rather be billed less frequently and have less kind of deal with municipalities, as we know, that creates paperwork sometimes. So less frequent invoices, or maybe the more you're kind of testing the water with that and seeing what folks
Zach Malloch 29:53
it'll come from us with the frequencies.
Patrick Hayden 29:54
They'll definitely come from us.
Zach Malloch 29:56
Okay, great. All right. So I think we've answered a few These so John had a question just to clarify, will it only charge for the messages sent out and not for those that have opted out? So yeah, just the things that go external. So,
Patrick Hayden 30:14
yeah, and same with like Jordan, as an example, there was a blank phone number, you know, if there's not a message able to be attempted, whether it's because because there was no phone number, obviously, that's a case where the number of matches and RecConnect wouldn't match the actual bill we only charge for those that we send.
Zach Malloch 30:34
Great. Alright. So then Nicole had a question just to kind of clarify, the the first contact for the customer is probably going to be sending an email outward through RecConnect with a link to say opt in, but theoretically, that could be messaged in any way you want to, we could put it on the splash page, you can send a postcard out, you can put it in banners or placards in your building. Anyway, that really gets them aware that they can do this now. And you can
Jordan Tipson 31:04
you just can't send them an SMS message saying Do you want to opt in because you're already you're already beyond it.
Patrick Hayden 31:10
So it could be a placard saying, Hey, start to this, to this could be a number of different number of different things. But I think that's email is going to be the big one, that banner on WebTrac is going to be a big one.
Zach Malloch 31:23
That's an interesting point, you just said though you could text you could have a mess or something that says Text start to this number. And then that would often then so it automatically tie them into their accounts that they already have set up in your organization. That's pretty exciting. Okay, so there's no monthly Unlimited, it's all five cents per text, $15 per month, you get charged for replies back message sent back for help for stop that, does that count as a five cents,
Jordan Tipson 31:52
It does. And also to so there is a internally there's a usage report that you can run directly from RecTrac. So I just ran this in my database. So you can this is detail, but it could be in summary if you wanted, but you can get the level of reporting that you need, you know, by user who sent them out, you know, my web users, etc. And then it does tell you the inbound versus outbound messages from, you know, from what it is, obviously, the inbound messages or replied back. In this case, you know, I was doing some testing. So, in most cases, this would just be www would be the default in down user.
Zach Malloch 32:31
Okay. Okay, well, we're at the end of our time, right now, I think we got through most of the questions, if anybody has anything we haven't gotten to we will collate these and respond to them. And as soon as we have done with everything else, two things real quick about the portal. One is, of course, we're going to post this after we are done with it. The second one is that for anybody that's attended the symposiums or have been curious about the symposium sessions, we have just posted all of the recordings from the November session. So there's about 17 hours of new content on the portal. If you go to the knowledge base, and you Type in symposium videos, you'll see all of those right there. So just wanted to let everybody know about that. And thank you all so much for joining, Patrick. Thank you.
Patrick Hayden 33:14
Thank you,
Zach Malloch 33:14
Jordan. Thank you for joining us from Connecticut's.
Jordan Tipson 33:17
Yeah Thanks for having me.
Zach Malloch 33:18
We're going to go ahead and end this up. We'll get that document to everybody and thank you all for participating, engaging and being interested in all of this. Talk to you soon.