Messaging Best Practices and Use Cases

Owned by Jeremy W.
Last updated: Apr 22, 2024 by Gillian Javetski
2 min read

Below are some suggestions for how to effectively use CommCare Messaging / SMS in different use cases

To learn more about SMS Messaging Vocabulary. 

Sending an SMS to the Case

  • Send a welcome/confirmation message upon enrollment/registration

    • Why? Sending a message immediately upon registration is helpful because you can confirm that the phone number is correct and that the user is able to receive messages. It can also help in explaining how they are going to get messages.

    • How? Set up an offset-based reminder in which the reminder is triggered when a universal case property like name exists. Configure the offset to be 0 days, 00:01 time so that the message will be set 1 minute after registration the system, and set the repeat to 1 so that it only repeats one time.

      • Trigger: (For each case with:) case type ____; case property name (exists)

      • Start: Start date (as soon as it triggers); Start Offset 0

      • Send: Send (SMS); To (The Case); Frequency (Advanced); Schedule-type (Offset Based); Default Language __; Schedule- Days to Wait 0; Time to Wait 00:01; Language/Message __|Welcome! You are successfully registered!

      • Stop: Repeat the schedule (the following number of times:) 1

  • Keep your messages short (<160 characters)! If you send long messages (greater than 160 characters) your message will be broken up into multiple SMS that your phone will have to join together. This can make the message appear disjointed or even in the wrong order! Unfortunately Dimagi/CommCare cannot guarantee that long messages will be sent in the right order, or even the that they will get sent at all.  Also keep in mind that if you are doing a survey and have a label followed by a question, these will be combined into a single text message.

  • Allow your case to opt out if they want to. No one wants to be stuck receiving text messages you don't want. While hopefully you can do lots of testing and use SMS messaging best practices, some people may want to be able to remove themselves, or may need to be able to do so in accordance with IRB or other requirements. You can set up a simple keyword to do this. To do this, create a form that is a simple SMS survey and has an empty question/simple message and configure the form to deactivate any trigger or to close the case, whatever is appropriate for your project. Then set a keyword reminder like "stop" so that your clients can just text in "stop" in order to opt out.

  • Avoid Required Questions. In some cases users will not complete a survey.  Required questions in a survey will not allow that survey to be saved in a partial state. Make sure that questions are not marked as required.  For non-text questions, it is not possible to skip them through SMS anyway.