How to Configure REDCap Direct to Send SMS Text Messages Through Mosio
FollowNeed to set up text messaging in REDCap? This step-by-step video guide walks you through configuring Mosio’s REDCap Direct integration so your research team can send SMS messages — including survey invitations, alerts, and notifications — directly from within REDCap. Because REDCap versions and settings vary across institutions, we recommend checking with your REDCap admin for site-specific configuration details.
Video: Configuring Mosio from Inside the REDCap Dashboard
Setting up REDCap Projects with Mosio.
Because REDCap versions and settings are different at every organization, it is best to check with your admins to see how to best manage it for your use case.
How to Configure REDCap to Send Text Messages (SMS):
Transcript: Setting up REDCap Projects with Mosio
Hi, this is Jay from Mosio and this is Noel from Mosio. Jay, thanks so much for your time today. Can you quickly walk us through some some of the settings and how you set up your REDCap products and connect them to Mosio? Yeah, definitely.
So what we're looking at here is the Direct dashboard. You would have gotten here from a welcome email that gives you a link. Click on the link to reset your password and then log in. Once you're logged in you can see there's over on the left side, some other tools, message counter usage history.
But the main thing you're looking at here is the API key. So click the button to display it. Click again to copy it and then head over to your REDCap project. Under the project setup tab, take a look down below for the Enable button next to most of the SMS services.
If this isn't here, you need to ask your cap admin to enable it. But if it is click enable, switch it over to enabled, paste in your API key and hit save. At this point REDCap is going to make an API call out to Mosio, and the two are going to talk exchange settings and connect the two projects together. Now and I head back to the direct dashboard inside Mosio if I hit refresh.
You'll see you have a message here that you're connected and it gives you your project ID and red cap. So you can see that the two are now talking to each other. REDCap knows how to send messages through Mosio and there has been successful communication. And so that's the gist of getting it set up.
Again, we have some other tools. But let's look at how to actually send the new message in our next video.
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Transcript: How to Configure REDCap to Send Text Messages (SMS)
Hi. This is Jay from Mosio. We're gonna do a quick walk through on how to connect Mosio and REDCap and how to make sure that REDCap is set up to enable SMS messages going out. So the first place to start is when you log in to Mosio, you should see a screen like this.
It's possible you don't. It's possible you see the, older version of our basic dashboard.
If that's the case, just click on quick links, and you'll see the REDCap dashboard link in there. When you open that up, you'll be taken over to your project's, alternate dashboard, which you could find your API key.
And so this is what we're looking for.
You would just wanna click the button to show it and then copy it, and now head over into your REDCap project. So I'm in our test project under project setup.
Under enable ops optional modules, there's the Mosio SMS services.
Click on enable.
If this doesn't show up, then you do need to contact your REDCap admin to enable it.
So the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna enable it. I'm gonna paste in that API key I just copied.
At this point, REDCap reaches out to Mosio in the background, confirms that API key is okay, and then, connects the two accounts.
And so you see this new module pops up with a configure settings button. Click on that next.
And so there's two or three settings in here that are important. The first one is where are you going to enable SMS. So you can either do it in survey invites only or alerts and notifications only or both.
I'm going to choose both.
The next question is how do you want this to send how do you want that survey invite to send?
The most frequently used option is the first one, send survey invite with the survey link via SMS.
What that means is that it sends the link to the survey to the participant. So the participant gets a text message with that link, taps the link on their phone, click, and then in the phone browser, it will open up a REDCap, survey for them. And so this this gets the the info that the participant is filling out directly back into your REDCap account.
The other option, though, initiate survey as SMS conversation.
What that means is that, REDCap will send the first question out as a text message, wait for the reply, then send the second question out as a text message, wait for the reply, and so on.
That's that's usually not what you're trying to do, but it's definitely an option if it if it is what you want.
So I'm gonna leave it survey as a web page.
⚠️ Important: SMS Conversations and Mosio Two-Way Features
If you enable "Initiate survey as SMS conversation" in your REDCap SMS settings, all incoming text messages from participants will be routed from Mosio to REDCap. This effectively disables Mosio's two-way features for that project, including:
- TextChat (live two-way messaging)
- Mosio Surveys
- Auto-responders
If your project relies on any of these Mosio modules, do not enable SMS conversations in REDCap. Instead, use the default option ("Send survey invite with the survey link via SMS") which sends a clickable link and keeps Mosio's incoming message routing intact.
The others, there's just some invite preferences, including the invitation field that's gonna define whether the participant wants an email or an SMS preference.
These, you can read through and set them up. But the the last remaining, option that needs to be set up in order for this to work properly so you have to designate a phone number field inside. So you're picking from within your study which field which instrument and field contains the actual phone number for that subject that's gonna receive the message.
So I've got under my subject enrollment instrument. I've got my phone number field. That's the one I'm selecting. So from from here, I'm gonna hit save.
Now at this point, if I head over to alerts and notifications, for example, and I add a new alert, as I scroll to the bottom, this SMS text message option is enabled.
And so I can click on that. And then recipient phone numbers, again, that phone number field is now here, and I can select that. And I can send this alert out. The alerts at this point work like exactly like email alerts, so you can define your own trigger logic at the top and then the timing in step two.
The last caveat, though, is that the interface for creating the message of the text hasn't changed between email and SMS.
And so just remember that SMS does not support things like bold, italics, underlined, you know, bullet points.
It's text only.
If you do put a link in there, the phone will automatically highlight that text.
So keep your messages short so they're they're readable. And definitely enter yourself as a participant and send yourself a test so you can see what it looks like on your phone.
Thank you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How do I connect REDCap to Mosio for text messaging?
A: Log into your Mosio dashboard, copy your API key, then go to Project Setup in REDCap. Enable the Mosio SMS Services module and paste in your API key. REDCap will automatically connect with Mosio.
Q: Do I need my REDCap admin to enable SMS?
A: In some cases, yes. If the Mosio SMS Services module doesn’t appear in your REDCap Project Setup, your REDCap admin will need to enable it for your institution.
Q: Can I send both survey invitations and alerts via SMS from REDCap?
A: Yes. Once configured, you can enable SMS for survey invitations (ASIs), alerts and notifications, or both — all from within REDCap’s existing interface.
Ready to enable text messaging in your REDCap project? Visit our plans page to get started or join our virtual office hours for a live walkthrough.