RecChat: SMS Availability and Updates - 01/06/2022
Table of Contents
Episode Summary
In this episode, our host Zach Malloch is joined by David Wirtz and Jordan Tipson to discuss utilizing SMS text messaging from RecTrac to quickly reach your patrons. The group provides an overview of the SMS functionality, how patrons can opt-in to the service, and how to send messages using a RecConnect report.
Recording
Transcript
Zach Malloch 0:09
And that means that it must be 2022 and the first RecChat of 2022. And I missed that song, but it was nice to take some time off the last couple of weeks of 2022. We have a wonderful panel here to talk about one of the hottest topics towards the end of 2020 20 or 2020 2020 22. We had a lot of questions about the SMS module or end of 2021 questions during the virtual user groups, some virtual symposiums when we talked about it, you know, figured it was a good way to start the year. So we're joined by Dave Wirtz, and Jordan Tipson. And we've got Cullen, Julia and Bret manning the questions. So like, always, if I could just direct your questions to the q&a portion down at the bottom, that helps us keep track of it a little bit longer. And I'll go ahead and get out of the way and hand this over to Mr. Wirtz. How's it going, Dave?
Dave Writz 1:00
It's going well, Zach, thank you for that intro. Welcome. Welcome, everybody. Happy New Year, and happy 2022 to everyone. Jordan, I'll let you pull up the PowerPoint really quick in his talk today about SMS texting. So I'm going to do a little bit of an intro on what SMS is all about. And then I'm going to turn the turn the reins over to Jordan, he's going to take you guys through the rest of it. So hopefully everybody can see the Screen. No, I can see it. So thanks for that. So SMS texting, what is it at the highest level, it is the most secure, fastest and reliable method of text messaging available for RecTrac. So as it says their priority text messaging optimized for high volume notifications. SMS texting, allows for your organization to communicate with your clients using standard RecTrac tools, I'm sure you're all familiar with the wreck connect capability to target a specific demographic set in your database. And from that set, communicate with them by email, or if you're really old school and you want to print a letter or something like that, or mail label, create a mailing label, but one of the most convenient and, quote unquote modern ways of doing that is to send a text message. And before a mass SMS texting existed, we were doing that with email via texting via email, basically. And what this is, is another avenue that offers enhanced capabilities uses a shortcode, which reduces the risk of that text messaging being sent to spam provides greater throughput. So faster sending of the text messages, email, the text message has a very slow throughput, it's only handling a couple of emails every second, whereas we're looking at 100 Plus messages being sent every second with an SMS text message. And there are really no time limits are no restraints on an SMS text process. So all that rolled up into one sentence, it is the fastest, most reliable, most secure method for communicating with your patrons via text messaging. So that's my overview. Jordan, did I miss anything critical?
Jordan Tipson 3:22
No, I think it's just important to kind of quickly educate people on what a shortcode is. So I'm sure most of you out there have at one point gotten some maybe like two factor authentication or something a message to your phone where you get it from the like, you know, 12345 number or in this case here off this slide like 55555. So what that shortcode that's That right there is actually a shortcode. And what we've done every month systems is we've kind of gone through the process of registering a shortcode. So we have a provision shortcode for Vermont systems that we can then pass to all of our clients. It's a pretty rigorous process, it took, I want to say maybe like two and a half, three months for all of the carriers. And that kind of hits to the point here of messages, you know, ensuring zero risk of messages not being flagged as spam, is because we went through that kind of two to three month process of explaining what our shortcode is for kind of essentially saying it's not for spam, it's to send notifications, our application is recreation management application. And these are the types of messages that we'll be sending out through it. And then literally every carrier went through and essentially approved it. So Verizon AT&T all the different major carriers went through and actually had to approve it. And then like I said, that process took about three months to do so. So when you do see this when we go through some of the Demo today, that's kind of the key piece here is that shortcode that's being used rather than As Dave said, you know, a Parks and Rec at Verizon wireless.com or something like that, where it's kind of Sending really an email just to your phone as a text. One thing to note is we do utilize the shortcode, probably 99.9% of the time, but we do have two fall back long codes. And that would not necessarily use like the email address, as David was saying, it would use a full on number. So a 10 digit number, it'll 212-345-6789, whatever it may be. But we do use those just as a fallback. There are some very, very small carriers that I've never even heard of, that don't accept shortcodes. So we just wanted to make sure that anybody that use SMS text messaging through RecTrac, we kind of covered all of our bases. So like I said, the majority of the time, really all the time, it's going to use that shortcode. But we do have some a fallbacks to those long codes, as we call them, which is just kind of the full number, not an email address, that picks those up just in case if you have those. And like I said, I can't even off the top of my head, remember any of them, there are things that I've never even heard of, in terms of carriers. So that's just important to know, kind of what a shortcode is, and why why we're utilizing it.
Jordan Tipson 3:29
So what I'm going to do is hop us into a little bit of a live Demo here. So if I close out of this, I'm going to drag this over, and can you guys still see my WebTrac? Now we can perfect. So when we talk about SMS messaging, one of the kind of key components to it and one of the key components that got our shortcode approved, is that really your customer, so I'm kind of speaking to all of our customers out there. So really, your patrons are the ones that need to actually opt in, that's kind of one of the Golden kind of rules that you can't break with with SMS messaging is you can't just automatically sign someone up for it, they themselves have to be the ones to say, yes, I would like to sign up for, you know, to receive alerts from you guys. And that's kind of the key piece with the spam and everything so that they don't get blocked. So to do that, we have a couple methods to do it. The easiest is for our customers in WebTrac, is to just do it themselves. So I'm logged into my account in WebTrac here and under my update menu, and you could kind of customize this however you wanted. We have this new new program called SMS update. So when I pop into this Screen here, again, this is my household, I just have a single person in my household, but I could have multiple people in here. This messaging here on the top here is completely customized by you. So this is just our default language. And here, it's three different language codes within RecTrac. So each of them can be configured to however you want it to be configured.
Jordan Tipson 7:37
So what they can do is they can happen to hear and determine if they want to opt this number into messaging or not. So it's very straightforward here literally just a drop down of opt in and opt out. Again, if I had maybe my wife's number in here, my kids numbers, each one would have its own instance to be opted into or not. So in this case, I'm opted in, I will say that once you kind of go back and forth between these two things, like I could literally sit here, opt out, hit submit, opt in, hit submit, and every time I do that, I'm actually going to receive a message. So I'm going to get a confirmation message that I'm either a opted in or be opted out. And I went ahead a little bit and just kind of did this just so you can see what it looks like. And I'll kind of show a little bit of how we got to this as well. So within my RecTrac database, I kind of set the preface here that I wanted it to say Jordan recreation, but you could have it say whatever you want here. And then this is kind of just generic text here. So this is pretty common to what you see out there. The key piece here is that this message and data rates may apply. That's kind of another kind of golden rule for for SMS messaging with shortcodes is that you have to say that, the other piece is you always have to say, to reply, I mean, I'm sorry to stop, reply, stop and for help to textil. So again, this here, literally, if I went from my opt in, opt out and changed it from opt in to opted out and hit submit, then I would get this text message here it came through this was from earlier today. And if I switched it back, then now I would get this one here. And I literally could just keep doing that. Until um, you know, for testing purposes to kind of get those messages so you can see what it looks like. And again, this kind of Jordan recreation piece is completely customized to however you want to do that.
Zach Malloch 9:23
We had a quick question come in, that are kind of related to this, Jordan. So you're showing the interface through WebTrac is SMS dependent upon WebTrac.
Jordan Tipson 9:32
It is dependent on WebTrac That is one thing that you need to have is WebTrac. Because technically those messages that are being sent out kind of funneled through your web server, they get uploaded and then that's how they get fired out. And then as of today, again, because the customer themselves have to opt in, this is kind of the key piece that the customer needs to opt in themselveshere
Zach Malloch 9:56
and does that so as long as you have any WebTrac they should be able to get into your and do it doesn't matter which modules you own for WebTrac.
Jordan Tipson 10:03
That's correct. Yeah, this has nothing to do with what modules I could own a single module, I could own all the modules for WebTrac. As long as I have WebTrac, then then yes, I get basically prompted, I have the ability to do this year.
Zach Malloch 10:16
All right. And Lindsey had an interesting question. So who answers the help when it gets texted?
Jordan Tipson 10:20
Sure. So that's another piece that that I'm going to go through in a second here. Basically, you can determine if I actually bring that over here, you can determine we'll jump ahead to that one. So you can determine what that help message says. So in this case, here, I've updated mine, you know, obviously, I replied, help here. Again, kind of my preface that I have here, because I wanted to say that first, just so that I know that it's coming from me rather than just for more information. But then I could, again, this is all just in, I'll show you, once we get into it, these are all just comment codes within RecTrac. So you could completely update these. And then you could have a phone number here, you could have an email address here that's really dependent on however your organization wants to set it up.
Zach Malloch 11:06
All right. So I know you're going to get to this part in a moment. But Scott is curious, both messages go to all customers, or it can just be to certain activities. So as far as choosing who you send the messages to will be a part of the later demonstration.
Jordan Tipson 11:20
Yeah, we're gonna hop into that.
Zach Malloch 11:22
And Lauren was curious if you're able to see if the text was actually opened and viewed or not, once it's sent out.
Jordan Tipson 11:28
Not at this moment, it's definitely something that we've got kind of on our radar is to be able to see that but we don't have kind of a way today to see any sort of open rates or anything like that. It's not where it's like an email that you can, you know, you can add some things to it to check kind of those those open rates. So today, there's not, but it's certainly something we've, we've thought about in the in the in the past,
Zach Malloch 11:51
then two questions come up about is there any method? Or will there ever be any method even just one at a time to authorize people to opt them in through RecTrac? Or is it always going to be WebTrac?
Jordan Tipson 12:03
There is we just need to make sure that so the problem kind of with that is that for WebTrac, we have it as a way so that we can't default this to be on through Screen design, we have it set so that it has to default to opt out. So as he couldn't make like a custom Screen for this and just make it so that every new household that gets created is automatically opted in. So yes, that is something in RecTrac that we do want to be able to do, we just need to make sure we have kind of follow the same rules is that we can't really have it just automatically be on and then when you sign a customer up, they just automatically get, you know, signed up for this without them actually knowing. So it's definitely something that we do want to do, we just need to make sure that we're kind of still following those guidelines for that shortcode that we have approved.
Zach Malloch 12:49
And then the last question just came in through chat real quick, but it's curious about where we actually go to set this up. And I think the the quick answer to that is that when you decide to purchase SMS or subscribe to it, then you'll get training that goes through the whole configuration process with them.
Jordan Tipson 13:05
Yeah, and we were going to touch on this a little bit at the end, but it's probably about an hour, I would say at most to really get set up with it. There's some things in the license Profile that one of our support reps will be able to help with. And then they'll kind of walk you through all those custom messages that you can set up the help kind of responses, do you want a phone number? Do you want an email address. And then like I said, kind of all of these default, you know, we've kind of show you and walk you through. So this is how it looks here. If you want to change it, we can change it now or at least point out to where that stuff needs to be changed, especially when we get into the second to like the wreck connect where we actually send these messages out how to create templates and how to you know, do a campaign if you want to just send an email to all of your people through RecConnect saying, Hey, we have this new feature of SMS messaging with a link that can kind of do the auto login where they Click the link, they Type in their WebTrac Username and password and then it brings them right to this Screen to make it super easy for them to opt in. So yeah, I mean, we certainly help with that as part of the onboarding process. But there's really just a couple places that that we need to touch within your RecTrac database to set it up. And then again, kind of just some training on how everything works.
Zach Malloch 14:15
Awesome. And then
Dave Writz 14:16
Hey Zach really quick. And Jordan, from the sales side, we do quote two hours when someone is asking for a quote for the SMS subscription option, but that we would rather overestimate and I think in most cases, Jordan is kind of spot on. I think in most cases, it's usually around an hour. But I'll let Cullen enter into the chat if he feels otherwise that two hours is really needed.
Zach Malloch 14:40
And then I've got two other questions that are hopefully real quick answers and we can continue on. So Dennis is curious if the shortcode is always the same. So can we let customers know what numbers messages from the recreation center might be coming from ahead of time?
Jordan Tipson 14:53
It is the shortcode is the shortcode so that is the same shortcode forever unless we To the you know, the ability to maybe have a second shortcode. But we're that's way, way, way out in the future that we would need a secondary shortcode. But yes, the shortcode would always be the same. And then I believe, like I said, I can't remember if it's two or three, we have two or three long codes set up. And I believe and those would be the same as well to those two or three, whatever they are, if it if it has to revert back to those. So yes, it would always be the same.
Zach Malloch 15:23
All right. And then Nicolette is curious if the customer replies stop, is that going to stop? Like, would they have to re opt in? Or is that just a temporary stop?
Jordan Tipson 15:32
That is a stop for good. Will I say for good until they either one, they could text them back to the message and say start and that would reactivate them or they could come back to WebTrac and opt back in. Like, for example, I'm opted in now if I went to my phone and hit from my messages and hit stop, and if I refresh my WebTrac page here, I would be opted out. So at that point, I can either a go back to WebTrac and opt in or be from my phone, I could just reply start and that would activate me back up.
Zach Malloch 16:04
All right, great. One last one jumped in from Jut. So after your setup just a quick yes or no? Is it easy for people to change? Like the name and the email in the SMS settings? Or do we have to have assistance from VSI for that?
Jordan Tipson 16:16
Nope, nope, that is very easy. And I'll kind of show some of that stuff, too, here. But it is very easy.
Zach Malloch 16:22
Well, I know you want to show some stuff. So let's, let's do that before we get more questions.
Jordan Tipson 16:26
All right, perfect. So that's kind of again, just the WebTrac side of the house. So now if I pop into RecTrac. So again, I kind of, you know, set some stuff up ahead of time just for the sake of time here. But basically, what I did is I registered kind of the the biggest use case here is, you know, let's just say you have an activity that's canceled, it's, you know, it's thunder and lightning out. And it's 12 o'clock today, and you guys just made the decision that you know, all outdoor events or a specific maybe T ball or soccer, whatever it may be is going to be canceled today.
Zach Malloch 16:58
And I just want to point out that this is the answer to Scott's question that he had asked. So okay,
Jordan Tipson 17:03
great. Yeah. So and again, this is just a single use case, there's obviously many use cases, we could probably spend the whole afternoon going through different reasons why you might want to send some messages out. But that's kind of the one I'm gonna just follow up follow here today. So I've registered a bunch of people in my database for this basketball showcase. And, you know, let's just say today, the weather's bad, or whatever. And we need to cancel that. I know, that's probably indoors, but let's just pretend it's outside. So as part of this, what we did is we kind of updated some of our existing screens, so our paths inquiry Screen, our activity inquiry Screen, our league inquiry Screen, to try to make it really easy for you guys to kind of get direct connect. So I know, some people have difficulties with Direct Connect, you know, where is it? Where does it you know, what report is it under. But like I said, What we tried to do now is really on all of our inquiry screens, and this doesn't, whether you use SMS or not, this is their kind of for everybody is in this has been for a while.
Jordan Tipson 18:03
So if it's new to some people, I'm glad that you're here today to learn about this. But all of our increase screens now we've added the rec connect Button right from the Screen. So before you kind of had to go to like find your activity reports. And then Erec connect, same with paths. But any any inquiry Screen based off the module, so section inquiry, passing inquiry league inquiry, I have my RecConnect Button. So that should kind of speed things up and get you where you need to be. So in this case, here I have my basketball showcase that I that I registered some people for. And what I can do here is I've already ran this to try to again, speed things up. But I have six people registered here, I can choose it hit RecConnect, it is very important to kind of be mindful of your match option here. Just in terms of how you're running this, if you're running this for a variety or range of programs, and maybe your message is very generic saying all you know, Jordan, recreation programs are canceled today, you might want to be mindful of that and say just unique households. So that way, if I have seven kids registered in a variety of programs tonight, well maybe I don't want to send seven different messages out, I just want to let kind of everybody that's registered into a program singular to the household know that their their canceled today. All matches is obviously going to give you everything. And then unique family members if I'm registered and maybe soccer at two o'clock and then swimming at seven o'clock. Well in that case, I would only be picked up once. So these match options. There's some really good help on here as to what each one of them are. None of that's changed. But with messaging, it's just really important to kind of be mindful of what that is.
Jordan Tipson 19:41
So again, I would just hit continue here. Like I said, I've already done it just to try to speed some things up today. So if we go ahead and look at my rec connect here, so if I show my results so again, here's my basketball showcase my single program that I wanted to run this for So here's all the people that are registered for this program, we've kind of kept some of the same options here, you'll notice process SMS, we have this new kind of Field within here, as well as some different things that you can do. So within here, we do kind of give you some, just some kind of SMS 101. So this Field here will accept 800 characters, you know, the goal behind an SMS message, obviously, is not to send an email, it's to kind of give a quick, maybe one line, maybe two lines or two messages. But just be mindful that a single text message consists of 160 characters. So if you do over that, you're gonna get kind of, you know, message one of one, one of two and then two of two. And we do kind of keep the count in the bottom here for you. So you kind of know where you're at. So definitely just be mindful of that, we do have a spot for templates here. And this kind of goes back to Jeff's question here. So again, these messages here, your opt out message, your OPT in message, your help message, all can be controlled here through a comment code. So you can again, it's very easy to switch those, if you kind of start with one thing and say, maybe we need some more information, or maybe it's too much information. This is where you can, you can obviously change those. But the other nice thing here too, is for your actual messages that you're sending out to your patrons, you have the ability to kind of set some up ahead of time if you want.
Jordan Tipson 21:19
So for example, I have this kind of template that I set up for weather, if I just go into change, you can see I kind of, you know, use some of the database fields here. So I wanted to say the activity description, the first name of the patron, and then today's date has been canceled. And then you know, kind of my info here. But it's up to you, you could create a bunch of these ahead of time. And then that way, it's a lot easier for you down the road to select them. In this case, when I do that, you'll notice it updates this information here. One thing to keep in mind is it doesn't do both. I know some of our spots, like what is it maybe the brochure code, if you have both of them in there tries to do them both, when you're doing some stuff like that. So you can kind of add this here. And then if you want to make some changes within here, you can do that on the fly. And it's not going to update the existing template, it's just this is a good starting point maybe for you. But it's pretty straightforward, you can come in here, you don't need to use templates, I could just manually Type that out. And then I have all the different kinds of database fields within here that I can also use. So if I wanted to put in, you know, instead of activity description, if I wanted to say pass, or if I wanted to, say a league or something like that, instead of today's date, maybe it's tomorrow. So I want to put a different date in there. But we're getting it you know, today in advance, because you know the fields underwater, so there's gonna be no games tomorrow. So you can kind of do quite a bit within here with with what you want to send.
Jordan Tipson 22:42
So once I have my kind of body setup, and I'm kind of ready to go, there's a couple other things down here just to be mindful of is you can print a report for invalid or no phone number. So that would be like if some of these people, you know, just just looking at this and I set this up purposely, these kind of three people don't have phone numbers. So obviously, they're not going to get a text because they don't have a phone number. So that's going to show on our report, or I have some of these in here that have opted out. So that way you can send this message out and then know, okay, it's only going to you know, these people are not going to be included because they've either a opted out or be we don't have a phone number for them. So that's kind of it here pretty straightforward. Your process option, obviously, you can individually select people, or all records. So I'm just going to do all records for right now. One thing that we do kind of have as a little bit of a safeguard here is if you kind of run this for a huge, huge list, and you didn't mean to do it. So what we do is, we have some permissions set up within here as to what you can actually do, we have a max number per kind of send. And that can be overridden based off permissions. But we just wanted, we didn't want it to just you hit, you know, process Direct Connect, and then Click OK. And now it's sent out, you know, you did everybody in the database by mistake, and it's sending out 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of messages that are relevant to some people. Or maybe you forgot your match option. And you did all matches versus, you know, unique household. So we do have permissions set up behind the scenes that you can say, you know, the max is 200. And then that way, if you need to override it, you certainly can with permissions, but we just wanted to make it so that you know, we really had some safeguards in place.
Jordan Tipson 24:26
One other thing to keep in mind too here, when I do hit my Process Button, is you'll notice I have six people in my results. And I do have the process options set to All records. So we obviously haven't sent the messages out yet. But when I hit this process RecConnect It's going to calculate essentially the max that I could be sending in this instance. And again, this is kind of where the permissions piece keyed in. I know just looking at this that I have three numbers missing, so I know it's not going to send six, but the max that it possibly could send would be six here, and that's why I'd like to Toggle this on to just get To report for who it didn't get sent to. So again, if my Max was set to five, if I hit continue, it wouldn't let me in, it would ask for override permissions to allow this single instance, to send the six people instead of the five that I have set up. So obviously, I don't have that in place. So I'm gonna go ahead and just hit continue. And then obviously, how I want my report handled, so just hit continue. And so that's now processing my messages.
Jordan Tipson 25:25
So again, to save some time, you'll notice I had activity description first name, we'll come back to this report in a second. If we bring this up, so here's the message that I just got. So again, based off my database basketball showcase was my activity description for Hudson who's my enrolling into this program. And then on and I just did today's date has been canceled tonight due to severe weather, reply, stop to stop help for help. So again, if I had stopped, then I would not get any more messages, I'm sorry, I would get one more message that says I've opted out, if I were to have him help, then obviously, I'm not gonna get like specific help to this program as to what I should do, or am I going to get a refund, I'm going to get kind of the generic For more information, either contact this number, or email us at this address. So that's kind of one key piece is that the help is very generic. It's not, you know, a like a live chat now to like help someone with this cancellation or wanting a refund or anything like that, it's really just okay, if you have questions or want more information, call us or email us at this number. So that's the messages. And then as I said before, here's my report. So here's my kind of five people, I knew these people, obviously, I set this up. So these two people opted out. So they did not get a message. And then in this case, here, these people don't have a phone number on file. So obviously, we couldn't, they obviously haven't been opted in because we don't have a phone number.
Jordan Tipson 26:51
So I know, that's kind of a lot in a short period of time. But it's really simple. And I think the kind of the key takeaway with SMS is that, you know, RecTrac is kind of the, the storage for all of your data. So you know, obviously, there's other services out there that you can utilize. But that requires kind of either a dump of your RecTrac data to something, or running a RecConnect to get all the data and then sending it somewhere uploading it somewhere to then send the message out. You know, that's kind of the key advantage to having this directly within RecTrac is that it's the main source of data for all of your registrations, all of your leagues, all of your passes, you know, whatever, whatever it may be. So we try to try to make it as easy as possible from the system to just utilize the data that you obviously currently have. I think that's it. There's some obviously some reporting out there. So I could, you know, we have some usage reporting that we have here, I ran this in detail. So I could literally get every single message that was sent out to what phone number, the date and the time. My total inbounds, my total outbound obviously the inbounds or when somebody responds back, you know, help or something like that, which generates another message outbound is going to be obviously all my message that I send out, you know, so certainly can keep track of this here, to kind of go through and just see your usage throughout throughout the timeframe. But I think in terms of a Demo, I think I kind of hit everything I wanted to hit.
Zach Malloch 28:23
Appreciate that. We definitely have some questions coming up as a result of some of that. So this comes has come up a couple of times. But besides stop and help, what happens if somebody replies to that text that they get?
Jordan Tipson 28:37
So there is some smart things in there, I believe, like, stop. I'm sorry, if like start I think Go is I'd have to look through the list. It's been a little a little while. But there are some keywords, I guess we'll call it that are out there that are similar. So if you say like start, go. I can't remember off the top of my head. But like I said, I can we can certainly in the follow up, list those out. But if I were to just say Jordan to a response, then I'm not gonna get any sort of response or anything like that.
Zach Malloch 29:08
So basically, there's no way that this would ever come back to something that people could reply to people in the organization,
Jordan Tipson 29:14
correct. Yeah, they're really the
Dave Writz 29:16
Zack you could embed into the comment of the RecConnect itself, a specific email address. So if I'm league coordinator x at City of y, and I'm sending this message to people in that rec connect body text, I could embed my email there as a link and say, Hey, contact me, David Writz for questions on this and put my email address in there like Jordan is on now. And that would be part and parcel of that communication that's embedded in the text and allow for that person to communicate directly with the employee.
Jordan Tipson 29:53
That was correct.
Zach Malloch 29:55
All right. Yeah. So we're basically at time Uh, so I wanted to thank everybody for attending today. Jordan, are you okay? Hanging out for a couple of minutes? Alright, so we'll keep going through some of these, but that'll be posted with the recording. So if anybody does need to drop off, we understand that and thank you for it. But we'll keep going here. So, John, is this is maybe more of a request for an enhancement or curious if this is if there's another setting. His first question there, Jordan, when a patron has more than one phone number on their personal account, primary and second?
Jordan Tipson 30:37
We did I think I kind of caught some of the question if they have more than one. So you can determine in for WebTrac. So if I bring up my WebTrac Screen again, you can still see my Screen right, Dave?
Dave Writz 30:52
Yep.
Jordan Tipson 30:53
Gotcha, well, if I bring up my WebTrac Screen as part of the onboarding. So as part of the onboarding is you can determine which numbers show in this list here. So obviously, you know, a lot of people don't have a home phone anymore, but you might in the home phone Field, put in their actual cell phone. So you can determine what numbers display in here. So if I did have a cell phone number, which I do, and then let's say I also had a home phone number in here, I would show twice now with my cell phone and my home phone in here. And then I could determine which one I wanted to opt into, or which one I want to opt into. That's a really good kind of reason, maybe why you might want to update this message and be kind of more detailed, like, you know, it might show your home phone, but if that is your cell phone, you know, just keep in mind that landlines obviously are not going to receive a message. So so definitely just kind of keep that in mind. Maybe Bret can?
Bret Alarcon 31:58
Yeah I'll fill in for Zach. All right. John wants to know, just the reply stop to help go against the 160 character limit per message.
Jordan Tipson 32:11
It does that is that is included as part of it. For sure. I did just want to show just off Dave's Dave's kind of thing that he had just mentioned before. Kind of that targeted response, which just have to bring it up real quick.
Dave Writz 32:34
While he's doing that, I don't know if the question has been asked yet, Bret. But I'll offer it up
Jordan Tipson 32:39
here. Real quick, Dave. So here's here's kind of what Dave was mentioning, is there a way to kind of target the response. So I just changed that RecConnect that I have here to include within the message to contact JT at 123 dot com. So that way, you know, maybe I'm the coordinator for basketball showcase. And you know that tons of people are going to ask when is it going to be rescheduled? Or when is it going to be, you know, whatever, you could obviously put an email address, phone number really whatever you want within here, and then that way, specific to this message that's going out to these people that are enrolled into basketball showcase, they know they can contact someone. Sorry,
Dave Writz 33:22
oh, no problem, I was just gonna, while you were doing your work, I was just gonna mention that we've kind of referenced it a little bit. The SMS is an add on feature, there is an additional subscription in licensing for it. There's a base monthly rate, subscription rate for SMS texting, which is $15. And that's for the entirety of the organization. It's not per user or anything like that. It's a one time $15 month fee. And then each text is five cents. And that five cents applies to both inbound and outbound kind of using the terms that Jordan just referenced. So texts, when people opt in, that's going to be five cents, if they were opt out, that's going to be five cents if we sent two messages, or the five messages, or I realized Jordan's only sent one but if he was sending six messages, there would be six times five cents, so 30 cents to communicate with your patrons at that point.
Bret Alarcon 34:19
Awesome. That just
Dave Writz 34:20
Sorry Jordan, just want to get that out there
Bret Alarcon 34:21
two questions. Thank you for that. Let's see. Is this pulling from the primary phone Field Type of the household or does it pull from where it says cell phone Type?
Jordan Tipson 34:36
So that's kind of what I mentioned before, is when we set you up and I can just show it real quick.
Jordan Tipson 34:50
So when we set you up. so you determine kind have what you want to display on that opt in Screen here. So again, I could choose beeper. I don't know if people still have beepers. But I can choose really any of these, these options within here. And then this is kind of just as an example, that's why all of mine get a prefix of Jordan recreation, because that's what I put in there. And then this is kind of the global one. But again, these these could certainly be updated. These two are a little bit harder to update, obviously, because it's within the license Profile. But nothing that a quick two minute support call couldn't couldn't take care of.
Bret Alarcon 35:36
See, we have several departments in our county that use RecTrac, can you select and send to all households in your department rather than the entire RecTrac households,
Jordan Tipson 35:46
you can. So again, my use case was specific to an activity. And then because I just wanted to target these six people within this activity, but I could run a household RecConnect or a person RecConnect really kind of any RecConnect that is offered in the system. And then that would,
Dave Writz 36:05
I think the key to that, though, Jordan is if and I don't mean to overstep you here, but if in your specific user use case environment, if in your database, you have taken some Field or opportunity in the household database set the at the household category be at the customer Type, be it a feature code, to signify that that specific client is part of X group, correct. Because the RecConnect allows then, and that's where Jordan was going, you can go to the household RecConnect tool, and approach that filter with that category, or that customer Type or that feature code to target that specific marketing demographic group, whatever you want to call it.
Jordan Tipson 36:52
Yeah, like in this case here, like so I have my just kind of global RecConnect. This is literally every household in my database. If I were to run this, and I didn't have anything like Dave said, you know, as mentioning, whether it's a feature, or a fee code, or a category, if I were to just hit process here, I really haven't differentiated any sort of like this is, you know, department aquatics department one versus Department two, this is just going to bring back everybody. So in that case, it might be better to key off, like, if they have a specific pest Type, maybe department one is all aquatic. So that would be a good one to say, Okay, I'm gonna do pass RecConnect. These are my past types that I want to isolate. And maybe you know, the history within the last year or last two years, or whatever it may be. And then that'll give you a smaller subset. Because, yeah, this if I were to do this, and it processed, this is going to bring back everybody in my database. And then this kind of ties back to why we have that little message of what your max can be because we don't, you know, you probably don't want to send, you know, 100,000 messages by mistake that five sends a message, you know, that adds up pretty quick.
Bret Alarcon 37:59
All right. Does this work with golf track? For example, if a course is closed due to snow cover? Could we send out a text to golfers with tee times for certain day?
Jordan Tipson 38:09
You could! Yep. Yep, definitely.
Dave Writz 38:12
Yeah, there's a tee time rec connect capability that allows you to filter based on tee times reserved for tomorrow, day tomorrow, Oregon as Jordan reference divisions, you want to inform all your members that, hey, we're given a member special this weekend on Saturday and just want to tell your members in a text that you would use the membership piece to hit your golf passholders.
Bret Alarcon 38:35
Can you customize the help message so that multiple or contacts can be use for different programs.
Jordan Tipson 38:44
So I mean, that would be kind of what we were just mentioning here is that when you actually do send the message out, and that's why the templates are really, really, really good to use. So you could again, kind of set up your database, and I'm just going to use like sports versus aquatics, you can have a template setup for aquatics cancellations, and you could have a template set up for sports cancellations. So that way, when you send these messages out, you might have like, what I did is or I'm sorry, I changed that already. But I had you know, JT at 123. That could be, you know, I could create a template for that. that's specific to all aquatics, so then when I run this, and I choose aquatics, and it's kind of got all my info in there, and then it potentially could have the correct person. But the help response that is kind of system wide, that is not going to be you know, if I send this message out, because it's for this activity, if I were to reply help, that's going to be just the kind of the generic help, versus if I put something directly in here, I at least know if I, again, if I do reply help, I'm still gonna get the generic one. But I might not need to hit help if I put in kind of a more targeted contact number or phone number in this message.
Dave Writz 39:55
Yeah, I think the way you need to think of it is that the generic help is more SMS texting help, it's helped around the process of the texting versus the message that the text is conveying. Correct. So the message that the text is conveying is the Screen that Jordan is on now. And that's where you could add supplement. Now there, because Jordan referenced this there is a common code for the generic SMS text help. And we can't stop you from listening out for aquatics questions it ABC email on 1234, sports questions at abc email 567. But remember, 160 characters don't want to have a goal, the goal is not to go beyond 160.
Jordan Tipson 40:38
Yeah, the golfer had text messages, obviously, kind of short and sweet, get to the point, you know, you don't want someone to get message one saying half the details, and then they get in a dead zone and don't receive the second half of the details. You know, we you know, the key, you know, obviously, you can do what you want for sure. But the key, you know, at least myself, when I receive messages from updates and alerts, I'm looking for the minimum amount of detail that tells me what's going on, rather than multiple messages.
Bret Alarcon 41:07
Is there any kind of report to report if a number of bounce back
Jordan Tipson 41:12
so there isn't today. And that's just kind of tough, because we would have to then query kind of all of the carriers out there. So obviously, you know, we know when you've opted out and when you when you don't have a phone number on file. But if I've opted in, and I have a valid phone number out there, it's kind of tough for us today, it's certainly something we're still trying to work through and figure out how we can do it. But today, it's not like a you know, an email or I get a bounce back email saying, you know, this was an invalid email or whatever. So certainly something we're looking into to enhance this, for sure.
Bret Alarcon 41:49
Dave, could you repeat the pricing again, please?
Dave Writz 41:51
I can't. So the there's two components. The first component is the flat. I'll call it organizational monthly subscription fee, and that is $15, 1 5 15. That's per month. And then the second element is the per text rate. And that is five cents. So a nickel per text. And it applies to both inbound and outbound. So if someone opts out, it's going to cost you five cents for them opting out, they opt in five cents for that you send a message, five cents for that.
Bret Alarcon 42:34
Is there a RecConnect that you can use SMS for to your staff, and not necessarily households?
Dave Writz 42:42
There is for instructors, for activities. But if you don't have your staff, as either a instructors or be back to kind of the original question was asked around households and different categories of households. If you have all of your staff entered into RecTrac, just as a household and you flag them with a household category of employee or a feature code of employee, you can quickly get to that specific demographic population of your staff and your employees by utilizing an idea like that. Jordan, if you think that's ill advised, but I definitely have seen people do that before just create households for every one of your employees and put them into a specific Working Group.
Bret Alarcon 43:27
Yep. Can you send both an email and SMS text message at the same time? When using RecConnect?
Jordan Tipson 43:34
You can. Yep. So you could Toggle this on as well. And and send both here?
Bret Alarcon 43:42
Can you send images or only text?
Jordan Tipson 43:45
Only text? So it's just SMS versus MMS. So SMS is the key.
Dave Writz 43:53
And I think key to that if you Toggle on the email, you can send images, but because yeah, for sure, but the SMS is strictly text. Correct.
Bret Alarcon 44:03
Let's see what let's say if they didn't opt in yet, but does have a phone number connected to the account.
Jordan Tipson 44:11
So they just won't get a message at all. I mean, you know, basically,
Dave Writz 44:16
it's gonna ignore him.
Jordan Tipson 44:17
Yeah, it's Well, yeah. So like, this would be a good example. So like, Scott Tipson here has a phone number on file, and you saw the report that came back. I don't know if I have it up anymore. But it just said opt it out. Because again, by default, everybody has opted out. So they're never going to receive a message. But when I run this, I can just do it right now again, just to show you again, I have valid phone a valid phone number for Scott Tipson. But he he's never opted in or at least he's opted out right now. So he's never gonna get a message that says whatever, you know, this is here because I'm opted out. So even though I have a valid phone number like today if I were to set up with Customer with this today, obviously, every single person would be opted out. So if you were to run this for a program of 100 people, and you had phone numbers for everybody, you would have every single person on here with their phone number, their email, if you have it, and they would all say opted out. And they never obviously would have received a message.
Bret Alarcon 45:18
I see another question in the chat. Will you be charged when customers reply to a text message, even though it doesn't come back to them? So for example, they text like some text that is not a valid replied that, like if they Hello, or something like that, you know,
Jordan Tipson 45:36
valid search, as long as it doesn't. Yeah, as long as it's not one of those key trigger, like, again, stop start help. I mean, I couldn't just sit here and just start, you know, like, Hi, yes, no, no, no. So no, is one of the ones for stop. Stuff like that. But yeah, I'll double check. And we'll make sure we get it in the response. But I don't believe anything invalid. That just never makes it back is going to charge.
Bret Alarcon 46:02
And one more, it's not really a question more of a enhancement request. Like can there be a dynamic Field for the program coordinator email address, that way we can create a template that is applicable to multiple departments or programs?
Jordan Tipson 46:16
Yeah, that's certainly something we could take a look at.
Bret Alarcon 46:19
I think that pretty much wraps it up. I'm not sure if there's anything you want to add.
Jordan Tipson 46:27
I certainly don't on our side. Certainly something excited. We you know, I think one thing to keep in mind, I think Dave said at the beginning, but this is available for hosted and non hosted customers.
Dave Writz 46:39
I think that was the exact one I was going to reference that previous communication from us. Yeah, had been if you go back, for example, there was a RecTrac on this many moons ago when it was first introduced. The messaging then was that SMS texting was for hosted only clients. It is no longer the case. SMS texting is available for all clients, whether you're hosted by Vermont's systems, or you're hosted on premise, locally. So it is a standard application feature set now that's available to every client on this call. And I would say if you have more interest in getting a price quote or more details, you can reach out to my sales team sales@Vermontsystems.com. I did see in the chat that popped up, we will be sending out the PowerPoint and a link to this video with any additional follow ups that Jordan and Zack and and Brett feel are applicable. So you will see some additional communication.
Bret Alarcon 47:41
I apologize that that Juts question was answered. But I guess that's when Zach got cut off. So when a patron has more than one number on the person's account, primary and secondary, when running RecConnect, it only pulls the primary number into the list even though there's a secondary Oh, even though the secondary number is the one that should be opted into SMS. Is there a filter or setting that I'm missing that allow us to only pull those who have opted into the list?
Jordan Tipson 48:12
There is how I'll get that in the response, I might have the wrong just Build applied at the moment. But I believe there is a filter in here. Whether there is like a yes, no like opted interrupted out. So that way you could quickly filter within here as to, you know, maybe get a better idea rather than running it and getting the report. I do recall that somewhere. I just for some reason. It's I'm missing it at the moment. But I believe Yeah, I believe there is a column that we can add in here for opt in and opt out.
Bret Alarcon 48:55
Right, well, thank you very much, everyone. Any final words before we head out? And welcome back back by the way?
Zach Malloch 49:03
Yeah, sorry, I lost internet connection there had to recycle my Wi Fi. But yeah, thank you all for joining us getting some things in the chat. So thanks, Jordan, Dave, for all the information. Thanks, Bret and Julia for responding and thanks, everybody for attending and participating. Hopefully that's some good information for kicking off 2022 I look forward to seeing everybody soon and we'll talk to everybody later.
Jordan Tipson 49:26
All right. Happy New Year, everybody.