SMS Messaging App & 2-Way Chat

With the Hosted Voice upgrade or the Enhanced Inbound add-on you will also receive an alert message on your turboDial panel when an inbound SMS is intended for you such as when a contact replies to an SMS text message you have sent. No configuration steps are needed to use this feature.

When you send a Text Message and the contact who received that message replies you will be notified in your turboDial panel with the screen pop Alert and hear a chime.

If you do not want to hear that chime, or have your turboDial panel brought front and center when a screen pop Alert arrives, please enable the Users can Mute Alert Sounds Global Option.

Then when you are ready you can click the blue up-arrow inside the Alert and change the focus of the turboDial panel to view the contact that sent the message.

Or, and this is very important – you can leave turboDial focused on the current contact and click the SMS label on the left of the Alert – that will pop up the SMS Send & Receive panel for the contact associated with that SMS and allow you to read the text message history for that contact and send a reply. You can even be on a phone call in turboDial and continue that call while replying to a text message from a different contact.

In the example shown below, turboDial is focused on Juan Dough. If the SMS button next to the SMS Alert is clicked it will open the SMS Messaging App: <current Contact> panel for Juan Dough.

There are two other ways to access the SMS Messaging App:

Unread Counter: Displays how many unread SMS conversations you have. Clicking it pops up the SMS Messaging App:<current Contact> with the SMS History list displayed.
SMS button: When turboDial is focused on a Contact with a phone number, clicking it pops up the SMS Messaging App:<current Contact>.

The SMS Messaging App:<current Contact> contains many features and functions. The below key highlights them, with their respective explanations given below the key:

SMS Messaging App Key

SMS Messaging App:<current Contact> key explanations:

Clicking this takes you to the SMS Messaging App: History and displays how many unread SMS threads you have.
When clicked, your turboDial panel will focus on the Contact record associated to the Contact’s text history you’re viewing.
When clicked, a separate 2-Way SMS window focused on the current Contact is created, allowing you to continue an ongoing conversation while you communicate with other Contacts. You can have multiple 2-Way SMS windows open.
Clicking this closes the SMS Messaging App <current Contact>.
Will send to: contains phone numbers associated with the current Contact.Will send from: contains turboDial-acquired inbound numbers you can choose
SMS history that displays up to 1,000 SMSs if you have Enhanced Inbound or Hosted Voice. It displays up to 10 if you have neither Enhanced Inbound or Hosted Voice.

SMS Messaging App: History

The SMS Messaging App: History section lists all conversations associated with a given Contact. It’s intended to look and function very similarly to the iPhone Messages app.

The SMS History is a filterable list of SMSs—it displays all SMS conversations, and can be filtered by individual user by clicking All Users then choosing yourself.

SMS conversations with empty circles to the left of them were sent by or to you and you read or replied to them.
If the circle is filled, that means you have not read or replied to the conversation.
SMS conversations with em-dashes to the left of them are SMSs that weren’t sent by or to you.

Clicking a conversation moves to the SMS Messaging App: <current Contact> window with the conversation for that Contact displayed in a thread.
Clicking the trash can icon deletes all read conversations owned by the logged-in user.

Important facts about the History section:

Automatically generated SMSs (e.g. Campaign SMS, SMS Automated Conversations) do not affect SMS History.
Only manually-sent outbound SMSs are recorded in the history list.
Only inbound SMSs forwarded to a person will be saved in the History section.
Inbound SMSs that get processed as part of an SMS Automated Conversation do not affect the history.

Summarizing: The History section is for human-to-human SMSs.

Note: If you have Enhanced Inbound or Hosted Voice, you can enable the Users can Mark their SMSs as Read Global Option, which allows users to mark all their unread SMSs for a given Contact as read. Once enabled, a circle icon will appear next to the trashcan icon:

SMS 2-Way Chat Window

Features in the SMS 2-Way Chat are identical to the SMS Messaging App: <current Contact>, excluding 1. and 3. in the SMS Messaging App: <current Contact> key above. With the Hosted Voice upgrade or the Enhanced Inbound add-on the SMS send window will remain open after you send an SMS message and will display replies that are sent back from the contact. With this window you can easily engage in a 2-way chat session with the contact, and you can have 2-way chat windows open for chat sessions with multiple Contacts simultaneously.

The image shows an example message sent to the contact and the reply received back a short time later:

You can have multiple SMS 2-Way Chat windows open, each corresponding to different Contacts. The main benefit of that approach is being able to easily switch between windows with people you’re actively messaging.

In the turboDial SMS Messaging App you will now find a link to allow you to load the full history of SMSs for a Contact, up to a max of 1000. That link is at the bottom of the SMS conversation window if there have been some SMSs cut off:

Video Demonstration

Video’s Slides

Inbound SMS Alerts on your Smart Phone

If your user ID is authorized as a Mobile User in turboDial then you can install the turboDial Mobile App (native) on your smart phone and receive an immediate push notification on your device when an inbound SMS is intended for you.

That push notification also gives you access to send a reply SMS via turboDial right from your smart phone.

See this guide section for more information.