Using the Messaging Center

The Messaging Center provides management of all messages originating from PetLinx, including booking confirmations and reminders that are scheduled to send automatically. It also contains a log of sent messages which can be filtered by date, customer, and message type.

Status

Shows if email and SMS capabilities have been setup in PetLinx. The settings are managed by choosing Email/SMS Settings, which opens the System Options – Email and SMS form.

Message Setup

This area lists all message types and allows you to set whether each message is to be used or not, and choose the content of your message. Messages can be either:

“Scheduled” – automatically sent a given number of business days before the event relating to the message. This event could be something like a booking due to start, or a pet’s birthday. Scheduled messages are sent between the hours of 8am and 8pm, and only when PetLinx is open. PetLinx will take consideration any holidays or closed days when calculating when to send a message. So for example for a grooming business closed on Saturdays and Sundays with the setting to send booking reminders 2 business days ahead, it would send reminders for Monday’s bookings on the previous Thursday.

“Immediate” – sent as a result of a user’s actions in PetLinx, such as creating a new booking or declining an online booking request.

The types of messages available are:

 

• Customer Transaction Email: an email only message used when you choose the Email option on a transaction.
• Groom/Board/Daycare Booking Reminders: a scheduled message sent automatically a given number of days before a booking is due to start.
• Groom/Board/Daycare Booking Confirmations: sent immediately after a booking has been created. Also can be sent using the Resend Confirmation menu and ribbon option when a booking is selected in the Calendars.
• Groom Booking Completion: sent when the status of a grooming booking is set to “Checked Out and Completed”. Would normally be used as a SMS to the customer to advise their pet is ready for pickup.
• Pet Birthday: a scheduled message sent automatically a given number of days before a pet’s birthday.
• Vaccination Expiring: a scheduled message sent automatically a given number of days before a vaccination’s expiry date.  Only vaccination types with ‘Issue reminder when expiring’ will be included.
• Online Portal Groom/Board/Daycare Accept: sent when you accept a booking request from the Online Portal.
• Online Portal Groom/Board/Daycare Decline: sent when you decline a booking request from the Online Portal.

 

Configuring Messages

To turn a message on and configure it, follow these steps

 

1. Locate the message in the list and select it.
2. If the message toggle is “off”, click it to turn it on.
3. If “Send using customer’s Preferred Contact Method” is selected, the contact method setting on the customer record will decide what the customer receives; those choosing to be contacted by email will receive an email, those using text messages will be sent an SMS. Otherwise you can force an email and/or SMS to be sent by choosing “Send By” and ticking the relevant option you wish. Note you will only be able to select the email and SMS tickboxes if you have configured their settings as described under the “Status” section.
4. Depending on the format you have chosen to send the message in, choose Select to select a SMS and/or email template that has previously been created in the Email and SMS Template Editors. For “immediate” type messages, you can leave the template fields blank and you will instead be prompted to choose the termplate at the time the message is being sent. Note you will only be able to choose from templates relevant to the message, for example for the Grooming Booking Reminder mesage you will only be able to choose “Grooming Booking” type templates.
5. If chosen to send by email, enter the email subject and optionally select an attachment.
6. Choose Save when finished to save the message settings.

 

Message Logs

Details of messages sent from PetLinx are shown in the Message Logs grid. When opening the Messaging Center, it will default to showing messages sent today. You can change the date range of the logs, or filter it down to a specific customer or message type – choose Apply to refresh the grid with your filter. To make the grid bigger you can hide the Status and Message Setup areas by clicking the arrow next to “Setup” in the bottom left corner of the Messaging Center.