Changes to SMS sending

We’ve just released some changes to sending sms through Lamplight. System administrators will see some new options in global settings:

  • Your 24x account details – this is the company that sends the actual text messages. This means you can access your 24x account directly to top up with credits, view reports, etc. You can log in to the 24x control panel at http://24x.com/ . You no longer need to contact us to buy text message credits – get them directly and you’ll see the credits appear instantly in Lamplight.
  • An option to make sure that text messages sent can only use 1 credit each. With mail merge options, someone with a long name may mean the text message you thought would be less than 160 characters ends up going over and costing you double. Ticking this option will cut off the message at 160 characters so you can be sure that each message only costs 1 credit each.
  • Enable ‘reply to email’ – which lets sms recipients reply to the text message, and the reply is then forwarded to the email address you specify. Please note that each reply costs an extra credit, and recipients will see a different ‘from’ number. If you enable this, when you come to send an sms you have the option of providing an email address – if you do, then that sms will be replyable-to through email. Otherwise, the mobile number you provide will be the reply-to number.

Scheduled text messages

When you come to send your sms messages, you’ll see a new option so that you can specify when to send it – either immediately, or schedule it using the ‘date from’ on the communication record (note system administrators will also need to enable dates and workareas on communication records in global settings)