Overview

Scheduling text messages is a handy way to alert recipients. You can send out messages hourly, daily, weekly or at other time intervals. A typical scheduled message is the heartbeat SMS that VMR sends out daily to report proper operations.

View scheduled messages

From menu, access Messages > Scheduled Messages to view the scheduled messages.

The fields are:

• Scheduled Date Time: Original time when the message is scheduled
• Recipient (Mobile/Email): The receiver of the message
• Body Message: Message text
• Sender: Sender of message
• Scheduled Rules: Information on when and how many messages to send
• Number Activated: Number of times the message is sent
• Output Type: Whether message is SMS, Email, Syslog, SNMP or HTTP
• Message Type: Message type is Schedule
• Next Activation: Next activation time

New scheduled message

From menu, access Client tools > Send SMS to create a new SMS message.

Select the contact groups or fill in the recipients followed by the SMS Message.

Click “No Schedule Set” to set the schedule.

Scheduled message options

The following screen appears.

The fields are:

• Start Date Time: Original time when the message is scheduled
• Frequency: Interval between messages
  When the dropdown list selection is chosen, the textbox value will be ignored.
  The first message is sent on “start date time” + frequency.
• End Conditions: The schedule will end when any conditions are met
  – “Stops if number of message sent equals”: The schedule will stop after this number of messages sent. Set to 0 to ignore.
  – “Stops if exceeds date time”: The schedule will stop after this time.

Click “OK” button to save the schedule.

Example: How to set Heartbeat SMS

Set a heartbeat SMS to alert recipients at a specific time daily eg. 9am to report that the device is alive.

Set the following fields:

• Start date time: Select tomorrow’s date and specific time you want the SMS to be sent.
• Frequency: Daily
• End Conditions:
  Stops if number of message sent equals: 0
  Stops if exceeds date time: Select a date such as one that is three years in the future.
• Click “OK” button.

Send message

The schedule appears in the Send SMS page.

Click “Send” to send the message.

The schedule message will appear in the list of scheduled messages.