Frequently Asked Questions

What is the character limit for an SMS?

By default, each SMS is limited to 160 characters. Twilio can send messages up to 1600 characters long, but it will charge you multiple times, e.g. a 1600 character message will be charged the same as 10 messages.

The character limit can be increased on the Site Configuration page (Menu --> Site Configuration).

How do I “mail merge” my messages?

Any occurrence of %name% in outgoing messages or keyword replies will be replaced by the first name of the contact. For example, Hi %name%! becomes Hi John!

How do I cancel scheduled messages?

Go to Menu --> Scheduled Messages, and click the cancel button for any scheduled messages you wish to cancel.

How do I setup the slack integration?

Create a new Slack incoming webhook. Then open the Site Configuration page (Menu --> Site Configuration) and paste the hook URL you were given by Slack. Click save and all your incoming messages should show up in the Slack channel you picked when creating the webhook.

How do I prepopulate the send SMS form?

The send SMS form will read url parameters. So an URL apostello-demo.herokuapp.com/send/adhoc/?content=test&recipients=[1,2] will prepopulate the SMS form with test in the content box and the recipients 1 and 2 (you can get these numbers from the api or the url when editing a contact) in the send field.

The URLs in my emails are incorrect

You may need to let apostello know what your domain is. You can do this by opening <your domain>/admin/sites/site/, click on the first entry and update the domain name field, then click save.

How can I get rid of old messages?

Open the Site Configuration page (Menu --> Site Configuration), scroll down to find the SMS Expiration section. You can set a hard cut off date: any messages before this date will be purged from the system. Or you can choose the number of days to hold on to messages: any messages older than this number of days will be purged. The purge is run daily. You can use this to hide old messages you no longer care about or to make sure you stay within the limits of the Heroku hobby database.