With this tool you will be able to pull contacts with a specific Label or upload a spreadsheet of contacts to allow for mass SMS in our Admin portal.
HOW TO MASS TEXT WITH VINECONNECT
Create Jobs
When you navigate to this section you will have the choice to pull contacts from your Filevine Org by specific Contact Card Label or upload a CSV spreadsheet of contacts.
Fetch Contacts From Filevine
Using the dropdown under Choose a Person Type Label you can determine which one you'll use to pull a list of contacts for your mass SMS:
These Labels are pulled from the Contact Card in Filevine, so be sure you are labeling these appropriately:
NOTE: At this time the API will fetch Filevine's default Person Type selections, customized Labels will not work. This however will be a future improvement.
Once you've selected the Label you would like to use, you will click the Fetch button to pull in those contacts found with that Label:
You will be given a default message to use, which you can customize to your needs with the variables available:
Upload your CSV File
If you are instead using a spreadsheet of contacts to import into VineConnect you will start by downloading the CSV template and leave the column headers named as they are:
Transpose your data file into the correct headers following the correct format for each column: Name (eg. "Sally Jones"), phone_number (eg. "5615555555").
Our tool will strip any special characters from the phone field to leave a 9-digit numerical value.
Don't have a data file? Run a Filevine Report for "Marketing List" which needs to include the full name and phone number columns (filtered as you wish). Export it as a CSV file to Upload into VineConnect:
Once inserted you'll select Upload which will confirm your Mass Message or alert you of any errors in your document, this same message is present when you select Review Job on fetched contacts:
When a Job is created you will find its progress in the Logs area which will reflect the following information:
If it was a CSV file that was uploaded or if it was Fetched from Filevine.
Total contacts the message was sent to.
The progress percentage of that mass message.
The date and time the mass message was created.
Action, which you can click to pull up the list of specific contacts.
Export option to pull the information into a CSV file.
The last area is All Logs which will provide you an exportable list that can be filtered by date range which contains the following:
Client Name that the message was sent to.
Client Number which was pulled from the Filevine Contact Card.
Message Body which you customized in the Create Jobs area.
Created date and time of the Mass Message.
Sent date and time of the Mass Message.
Job Scheduler
When sending a Mass Communication you can decide to delay the sending of it by using the checkbox to indicate a date:
When selecting a date you can also specify a time by clicking in the box to edit the timeframe, it will automatically default to the time you're setting it up when you select a date:
After a page refresh you'll see this job scheduled in the Job Logs, with the option to delete the Mass Communication, or to send now instead:
HOW TO MASS EMAIL WITH VINECONNECT
This tool works in much the same way as SMS by allowing you to fetch contacts with a label from Filevine or to utilize a .csv format to determine who you're sending the communication to.
When you open the email window to format your mass communication you'll see a place to put the subject of the email in the 'Email Campaign Name' and the body of your email below with tools to structure as you wish.
Just like with Mass Text you'll review your job, have a 10 min delay to delete the job in 'Job Logs' and have Job History to review previously sent information.
Be sure to enter an email address in your 'Admin Settings' to determine where an email reply will be received:
Saving Message Templates
With the release of v3.11.2 (March 2024), you can now save any Mass SMS or Mass Email message you create in a job as a template! Simply find the Save a Template optional checkbox to start this workflow before you save a job:
Then go ahead and launch your job as you normally would. The next time you go to create a new job, you can simply select the saved template you wish to use. Choosing a template will pre-populate the message body with your saved content.
Now, you can launch the job through the job creation tool!
Template Management
With v3.12, you can now create intricate Mass SMS/Email templates natively inside the tool! Simply click on the Template Management tab and begin building new templates, or edit/delete any existing templates.
SMS/Text Templates are plain text only. However, like all SMS message, our system supports links, media, and variables. Media can be uploaded or inserted via the Media Locker and <media>[shortcode]</media> shortcodes. Variables supported include standard and custom variable data.
Email Templates can be designed with our standard Rich Text Editor. This means you can insert styled headings, text, links, buttons, media (images and video), bullet lists, and so much more! Of course we support media and data variables as well.
Once a Template is created, it is automatically available via the Select Message Templates dropdown on the message creation step.
