Text Messages are Not Sending

Overview

By design, when a text message fails to send, the text message recipient will automatically be sent an email message to their primary (edu) email address instead.

• In most cases, the reason that SMS messages do not send via text message is that the text message recipients do not show any phone numbers that are either SMS Enabled or SMS Default phone numbers associated with the SMS Default Phone Type on their Proflie tab.

Troubleshooting Steps

The following steps help troubleshoot why text messages are not sending and suggest ways to fix this.

1. Are there any Errors displayed on the Message Report in Messaging Administration?
   • Filter by sender (From user) and today's date. https://yourInstitution.avisoapp.com/aviso/app/admin/messageReport/index
   • To verify the expected results, filter by the sender/date and look for phone numbers (used for text messaging) displayed in the Destinations column on the Message Report.
   • Select the message ID to view the message subject/body and verify additional message details.
   • By design, if a text message fails to send, an email message is sent to the message recipient's primary (.edu) email address instead.
   • For information about message report error code, click here.
   • For more information about message delivery statuses, click here.
2. Check SMS Configuration in Messaging Administration.
   • View the SMS text messaging settings defined by your organization during implementation. 
   • For more information about SMS Configuration, click here.
3. Verify the Message Recipient settings.
   • Search for the message recipient(s) from the Everyone filter/Global Search.
   • Verify if the message recipient(s) have any phone number associated with their person record that is either SMS Enabled or matching the Default SMS PhoneType defined in step 2.
     • • If the recipient does not have any phone number that is marked as SMS Enabled, is there a SMS Default phone number associsted with the Default SMS Phone Type?
       • If there is no SMS Enabled phone number and no Default SMS Phone Type phone number displayed on the recipient's Profile tab, that is why text messages are not sending and why text messages are automatically being sent by email instead.
4. The first thing we recommend verifying is that the Default SMS Phone Type set in Messaging Administration is set to the "correct" phone type.
   • Since there can only be one default phone type set in SMS Configuration settings, it is recommended to set the phone type that is associated with the most student phone numbers capable of receiving text messages.
   • The students phone numbers and their phone types are imported from the SIS system on the Person Phone data feed. When configuring the data definitions, you will want to make sure that student phone numbers capable of receiving text messages are imported with a phone type that is also set as the Default SMS Phone Type. For example, some organizations import Cell as the Default SMS Phone Type, while others use Home, depending on what is used at the organization or configured in the SIS data extract definitions (Informer/SQL/Accelerate).
   • As long as the student has at least one texting capable phone number that is imported with the Default SMS Phone Type, they should receive text messages.
5. If the Default SMS Phone Type set in SMS Configuration is "correct" and the student does not have a phone number that matches the Default SMS Phone Type, this can be fixed by:
   1. Manually setting one of the student's phone numbers to SMS Enabled from the student's Profile tab.
   2. Or by updating the data extract definitions to import the Default SMS Phone Type that appears in SMS Configuration on the student's texting capable Person Phone record.
6. In most cases, both solutions are executed upon so that once a student's Person Phone record has imported with the "correct" Default SMS Phone Type. either SMS Enabled is left as is or this is manually updated to the "SMS Default" setting from the student's Profile tab; as both "SMS Enabled" and "SMS Default" will now allow text messaging to this phone number. For more information about SMS Statuses displayed on the Profile tab., click here.

SMS Configuration - Default SMS Phone Type

The screenshot below displays where Default SMS Phone Type is defined within SMS Configuration.

From the UI, the Default SMS Phone Type help text is as follows:

• If the recipient of an SMS message does not have any SMS Enabled phone numbers, the message will be sent to a SMS Default phone number whose type matches the Default SMS Phone Type. If none are found, the message will fallback to being sent as an email