REDCap Text Messaging Integration: Connect Mosio SMS with REDCap
FollowLooking for a way to send text messages from REDCap? Mosio’s direct integration with REDCap enables one-way and two-way SMS messaging for research studies — including survey invitations, alerts, notifications, and participant reminders. This guide covers how to connect Mosio to your REDCap project, configure SMS settings, and start sending text messages to study participants.
Mosio now has direct integration into REDCap. Messaging from within REDCap is one-way only, but using Basic and Plus Plans, you can utilize two-way text messaging and all of the other Mosio modules.
NOTE: All Mosio account plans can leverage the direct integration with REDCap. These video guides walk you through the interface to connect the systems together.
REGULAR GUIDES
REDCap Direct User Guide (current or new clients)
REDCap Direct Information Page (not yet a client)
VIDEO GUIDES
(Transcripts from each video can be found at the bottom of this page.)
Setting up REDCap Projects with Mosio
How to Configure REDCap to Send Text Messages (SMS)
Creating REDCap Survey Invitations (ASIs) with Mosio
Schedule REDCap Alerts and Notifications
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TRANSCRIPTS
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.
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.
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.
Creating REDCap Survey Invitations with Mosio
Hey, this is Jay from Mosio. And this is Noel from Mosio. So by now you have connected Mosio to your REDCap project. You can see that you're connected there.
And Jay, take us through creating a survey invitation and how you send it with Mosio. Sure. So if we head over to REDCap, we've got our survey invite dialogue up and running. One of the first things to look out for is invitation type.
You can send an email or you can send only an SMS. Invitation or you can use the participant preferences. Make sure you, you select the one you're going for. This time I'm going to say SMS invitation.
It's okay to leave it. It is for now. I'm going to send these immediately and then down below. Where it's composed your message.
We're actually going to head back into Mosio at this point to compose our message real quick. One of the reasons go ahead. While the reason that we created this message character counters that we started seeing people were just taking their. Email invitations and pacing those and sending them as a text message.
There's it's bad for two reasons. One is it could be confusing or frustrating because you're sending a bunch of text messages. The other thing is that you're getting charged for those messages and for those segments. So the development team.
And you can see exactly how many messages and segments you have before you paste them into REDCap. Yeah, so remember that text messaging doesn't support any character formatting, right? You can't use bold or italics. You can't set up like, links other than URLs.
And so you want to definitely just paste your message into here and check out the message segments section. So you'll see there's a couple things that can affect how many segments you're sending. Primarily it's the length of the message, but also if you have any special characters or emojis. So right now we're at two segments.
If I delete this emoji, we're down to one segment. There's, I think it's 70 characters per segment if you use emojis. And it's 160 if you don't. But the easiest thing is just to paste it in here and check out what the character count says it's going to be.
Once that's done though go ahead, select everything, head back over. Head back over to REDCap and you can paste it in. Again, REDCap is giving you the, the email editor with, you know, all of the, the text formatting options. Those don't really work in text messaging.
Hoping does work so you can put names in. Definitely put the survey link in there. And when you're ready to go, select your participants and hit send invitations. And that's that.
So in the next video we'll talk about alerts and notifications.
Schedule REDCap Alerts and Notifications
Hey, this is Jay from most of you and this is Noel from Mosio. So Jay, what happens if people want to send an alert or notification and not include a red cap survey invitation? Yeah, so that's where we're going to head over to alerts and notifications in REDCap. I've got our message over here in the character counter.
It's one segment nice message I want to send out. So I'm going to head into REDCap under create a new alert. I'm actually going to set up a welcome text message so this way when if I enroll a subject in this project they're going to immediately receive a text message if they happen to be in the clinic then I can see them get it right away in front of me. Otherwise it just lets them know, well, since then the texting phone number that they're receive survey links on and they can see they can basically get an introduction from you as to what that phone number is.
Yeah, this is really helpful in in situations where say having them saved your number, your project number and their contacts that makes it so they have a quick reference when they see additional text messages coming. Yeah, exactly. And so we're getting to how this alert be triggered. I'm going to do it when a record is saved.
I'm picking my subject enrollment instrument. I'm going to do it with any form status, but you can choose complete only. I'm sending it immediately just once and then down at alert type, I'm picking SMS text message. Choosing my phone number field.
There it is. And then I'm pasting in my message from the character counter in Mosio. And then hit save. So that'll come up once that's saved.
Now, when I head over to my test subject, and I save an exit, that message should go out right away, and there it is. Perfect. So, in terms of alerts and notifications that are repeating, so if I want to send, say, text-based interventions or reminders to complete tasks that don't include the links, that's just another setting, right? That's another one under alerts and notifications.
So this one, again, you can choose how to trigger it, but what you're really looking at is how many times. So you can send it multiple times. This one I have the same settings as before. I'm sending it the next day at 9 a.m. Multiple times.
So every seven days after it's sent, it will send up to four times. So that's basically a weekly message from the day after enrollment. And then again, it's SMS message and paste your message in at the bottom. Once you save it, then as you enroll people, these alerts will get set up.
They can get more complex or less complex depending on what you need to do. If you have specific questions, I would head back to your REDCap admin. Every REDCap project is different. You want to make sure you're sending it out correctly.
If you also want to give yourself a bit of time to test it, get a test subject in there with your phone number and try it out just to make sure that you're getting that message when you expect it. But that's it. Awesome. Thanks a lot, Jay.
Yeah. Thank you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can REDCap send text messages to research participants?
A: Yes. With Mosio’s direct integration, REDCap can send SMS survey invitations, alerts, and notifications to participants via text message. All REDCap account plans (Direct, Basic, and Plus) support this integration.
Q: Does Mosio support two-way text messaging with REDCap?
A: The REDCap Direct integration supports one-way messaging. For two-way text messaging — where participants can reply and have interactive SMS conversations — you’ll need a Mosio Basic or Plus plan, which includes surveys, storylines, and other engagement modules.
Q: How do I set up text messaging in REDCap?
A: Copy your Mosio API key from your Mosio dashboard, go to Project Setup in REDCap, enable the Mosio SMS Services module, and paste in your API key. REDCap and Mosio will automatically connect. See the video guides above for a step-by-step walkthrough.
Ready to add text messaging to your REDCap project? Visit our plans page to learn more or join our virtual office hours to see a live demo.