CommCare Messaging lets you send scheduled or immediate messages to a group of recipients (either a set of Mobile Worker Groups or Case Groups).
What makes Broadcast messages different than conditional alerts or keywords?
Broadcast messages are simple reminders, and do not use case properties as triggers.
To send messages in bulk, click on Messaging > Broadcasts
When are Broadcast messages useful?
To set-up and schedule simple messages.
To contact all users in a one group with one time feedback after a day of supervision.
To send a meeting reminder, that is copied on an irregular basis.
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Creating a New Broadcast
Click on the + Add Broadcast button
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If sending an SMS message to a case group, you can specify case properties using {case.case_property}. For example, you may send the message "Thank you participating in this survey. Please contact {case.correspondent} if you have any questions."
If sending an SMS survey to a mobile worker group, the selected survey cannot update or close cases. The broadcast will fail to send if this is selected.
Review Scheduled Broadcast Messages
After you create a Broadcast Message, go to the Scheduled Broadcasts section on the Broadcasts page to view or edit all upcoming scheduled messages.
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To either active or deactivate, click on the relevant button under the "Action" column.
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Grouping Cases
CommCare Messaging allows you to group cases (contacts) to allow broadcast surveys or messages, similar to a mobile worker group.
When to Use a Case Group
Case groups are most useful in combination with Broadcast messages.
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A case manager wants to easily communicate with the 20 participant cases under their supervision.
Notify all participants in a study of a particular side effect.
Alert all HIV+ participants that a new service is available.
Creating a Case Group
Go to Messaging > Case Groups
Type in the name of your group (ex. Patients and click the "+ Create Group" button.
Click on the Group Name link to edit the cases within the group.
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Add cases to the Case Group manually with an identifier
This approach allows you to add individual cases to a case group.
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Note: To link back to the case data page, select the case name.
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Bulk upload cases to a case group
Select the link and download the excel template, named "cases_bulk_example.xlsx" file.
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Note: All cases in a Messaging Case Group must have a valid contact_phone_number, including the country code.
Editing a Case Group
Use the Manage Cases button to open the Case Group.
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If you want to remove all cases from the group, its easiest to delete the group and create it again.
Broadcasts
Broadcasts are the simplest way to schedule one-time or recurring messages to your contacts. Creating a broadcast is a matter of defining the sending schedule, the recipients, and the content to send. Below each section of the page is described in greater detail.
Active
At the top of the page you can choose whether your broadcast is active or not. Activating / deactivating it here or on the broadcast list page has the same effect.
Scheduling
First, choose a Schedule Name so that you can pick this broadcast out in the broadcast list in case you need to make changes to it later. Next, choose a schedule frequency next to the Send label. The different frequencies and their options are described below.
Immediately
Immediate schedules will send the content one time to the recipients and stop. These types of broadcasts can't be modified later because of their one-time nature and must always be created as Active.
Daily
Choosing a daily schedule allows you to send the content one or more days at specific times. Below are the options for configuring a daily schedule:
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For the month of April 2018, send every other day at a random time between 12:00pm and 1:00pm
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Weekly
Many of the options for the weekly schedule are the same as the daily scheduling options, only that now you must select the days of the week on which to send.
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Send on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12:00pm for the first week of April 2018 and the third week of April 2018
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Monthly
Many of the options for the monthly schedule are the same as the daily scheduling options, only that now you must select the days of the month on which to send. In addition to choosing a specific day of the month, you can choose the last day of the month, the second to last day of the month, or the third to last day of the month.
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Send annually on the first of January, at 9:00am
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Custom
If your use case is more complex than the default scheduling options, you also have the option of sending a Custom Daily Schedule. See Custom Schedules for more information.
Recipients
When choosing recipient(s) for the broadcast, first choose the recipient type(s). After choosing a type you can choose recipient(s) of that type. Below each recipient type is described in greater detail.
Users
This recipient type allows you to select Mobile Worker(s) to be the recipients of the broadcast.
User Groups
This recipient type allows you to select Mobile Worker Group(s) to be the recipients of the broadcast. All mobile workers assigned to the group(s) you specify will be recipients.
User Organizations
This recipient type allows you to select Organizations and send to all Mobile Workers and Web Users assigned to those Organizations as their primary organization assignment. This recipient type does not send to Cases.
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Send to all users assigned to City Organizations below Organization USA, but do not send to users assigned to the USA Organization or any State Organizations below it
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Case Groups
This recipient type allows you to send to Case Groups, a type of grouping of cases that only applies to Messaging use cases. Case Groups are defined on the Messaging > Case Groups page.
Note: Support for Case Groups as recipients might not be available forever. Consider using a Conditional Alert to reach Case contacts, which is a more efficient way of expressing that use case.
Content
In this section you choose what will be sent to the recipient(s) when the schedule's events come due.
SMS
When sending SMS, type the message to send to the recipient(s).
You may also choose to specify translations for the message by checking the "Translate this message" box, in which case the translation to send will be chosen based on each recipient's preferred language. The languages available for use with messaging for your project are defined on the Messaging > Languages page. If the recipient's preferred language does not appear in the list of translations, then the translation associated with Default Language specified in the Advanced section will be used.
When sending Email, type the subject and message of the email to send to the recipient(s). See the SMS section above for more information about specifying message content.
SMS Survey
If your project has access to Inbound SMS, then you will see an option which allows sending SMS Surveys to your recipient(s). An SMS Survey is a Form (defined in the App Builder) which gets filled out over SMS by your recipient(s). At the scheduled time, the SMS Survey session will start and the first question in the Form will be sent to the recipient(s), allowing them to answer the Form one question at a time. Upon completing the survey, the Form will be submitted and any case actions will be applied, just as if the form were submitted over Web Apps or through CommCare Mobile. The following additional options apply when sending SMS Surveys:
Option | Description |
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Form | The Form (configured in the App Builder) to use for the survey |
Expire After | The survey session will remain open for this many hours. After the session expires, answers will no longer be accepted for any of the survey's questions. |
Reminder Intervals | If enabled, reminder intervals help remind the recipient that a survey is open if they have not yet completed it. Reminder intervals are specified as comma-separated numbers of minutes to wait. For example, specifying reminder intervals of "60, 60" would mean "send one reminder 60 minutes after the session starts, and send another reminder 60 minutes after the first reminder". At each reminder interval, for each recipient's survey session, if the survey session is still open the system will resend the last question asked to that recipient. If the survey session is closed, nothing happens. |
Advanced Survey Options
When sending SMS Surveys, these two advanced options are available:
Option | Description |
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When the survey session expires, submit a partially completed form if the survey is not completed | If this option is enabled, when the session expires, the form tied to the session will be submitted in its current state, ignoring any unanswered questions. This can be helpful to collect survey answers as form submissions even for surveys that are not completed in their entirety. Without this option, only surveys which are completed in their entirety will create a form submission. Partial form submissions are marked in form exports with the partial_submission property set to True. |
Include case updates in partially completed submissions | This option only applies when the above option is enabled. By default, when the above option is enabled and the system submits a partially completed form, it will not perform any actions which update or close cases since many questions could be missing answers. If you wish to still perform all case updates, then enable this option as well. |
Advanced
The following advanced options are available:
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