Contact Manager and Study Alerts

• Enables you to send a message to a single participant or groups with new information about an upcoming or existing study.
• With Contacts you can choose a group of people you’d like to send a message to. They can respond back and engage in a two-way TextChat conversation.
• Study Alerts are used primarily for recruitment to alert your database of new studies you have that may be of interest to them.
• Study Alerts can also be used to send messages to participants (or even study staff) of new updates or changes.
  
  

How to Add Contacts and Send Study Alerts

Select Contacts on the top menu.

The contact list is populated by adding details individually or by uploading a CSV file exported from your existing participant database.

Select Add New Contact from the Contact Manager.

• The mobile phone number is the minimum information required to send a text.
• The tags and notes field can be used to identify participants within a particular group.
• Additional columns can be created upon request.
• Edit contact details by clicking in the field. Phone number cannot be edited.

Enter details and Add Contact, the information will appear in the contacts list in real-time.

 

CSV Upload

To upload a batch of contacts, the CSV headers must match the columns on the sample file below. The order of the columns does not have to be an exact match. It may be helpful to include an identifying tag in the notes to distinguish uploads. This is done by adding the study or group to the tags. All fields should have the same tags i.e. “Study 14”.

Choose File and then upload CSV. If uploading a large file, it may take a few minutes to populate the contacts list.

 Send Group Message

Click the filter icon to filter your group as needed by notes, or tags or predefined (like Study)

Select All, a checked box will appear next to the selected contact, then send group message.

This will take you to Group Send, where you can create the message. Select All is the normal use case, but you can deselect or select the specific ones if needed.

Create an Alert for Group Send

Enter message content into the text box provided:

• Each message is limited to 160 characters, longer messages will be split into 2 texts.
• Text messages can be personalized by using data markers such as %first_name%, %tags%, etc, the marker is replaced with user-specific data pulled from the contacts manager.

 Messages can either be sent out immediately or scheduled for a later date. If you select Now, there is a 1 minute delay before the message is sent, leaving a small window to delete if necessary. Deleting is done by selecting Alerts in the top nav (see page 6).

Select Send Message to Contacts and the alert will go out to the list of contacts shown in the table.

 

Send Group Message with CSV Uploader

To get to the CSV uploader, click on Alerts in the top nav.

From this page, you can enter the message you want to send and select a time to send.
Next select your CSV.

The CSV may be formatted just like the CSV for contact uploads. The system handles the CSV in the same way;

• New contacts are imported and added to the contact list
• Old contacts are updated if the update checkbox is selected.
• Updating only updates columns specified in the CSV. For example, if you do not provide a “city” column in the CSV, current participants’ “city” data will not be affected.
• Only “phone” is required.

The fields available for import via CSV are listed just below the prompt for the CSV file, showing the proper naming and formatting.

Next click Add Alert at the very bottom.

All contacts on this CSV will be added to this alert, and you’ll be returned to the main Alerts page. 

You’ll now see this alert under Upcoming Posts on the page, where you can delete the alert if you need to.

Once the alert sends, it will move to Post History, where you can click the link to see delivery details.

 To view or delete scheduled messages, select Alerts on the menu bar.

Upcoming Posts provides a list of alerts scheduled to go out. The message content is visible and gives the option to delete [del].

Post History lists all sent and deleted alerts and their associated send times. A delivery report is available by selecting subscribers.

TextChat/Microboard

Participant responses to the study alert will appear in the microboard.  

The default setting is Viewing Unanswered First, meaning any messages that are unanswered or require follow up will float to the top.

To change the order in which messages are viewed on the microboard click Change and View Chronologically.

Responding to Messages on the Microboard

When responding to a message you are able view the full conversation and participant contact details. Click the answer button within the message you are responding to.

Enter the response in the text box provided (160 characters) or select one of your answer templates then Send.

Now go back to the microboard and you can view the two-way conversation.

Admin users will receive email notifications when a participant responds to the text.  The link provided will take you directly to the micro board conversation, where you can engage in a two-way conversation with participants. 

 

Contact Manager and Study Alerts -