How do you send quick simple messages?

The messages feature in the communications module is a great option when you just need to send a quick reminder or update to your organization. You can send a message by going to Communications, selecting Messages, and then clicking the New Message button. Fill in the form and click Send Message.

Messages are different from Newsletters in a few important ways.

  • You can adjust your site settings to allow anyone to send messages.
  • Sent messages will only be visible in messaging by those who sent/received them, whereas the most recent newsletter will be viewable to anyone from the dashboard, even if they did not receive it.
  • Lastly, messages will appear in the recipients' inboxes as having come from whoever is logged in and sending the message. If you want the message to say it is from your organization instead, log in with a generic organization email address.

Sending a message

1. From the toolbar go to Communications and click Messages. You will see a record of messages that you have sent and received.  

Note: You will receive a copy of all messages that you send regardless of whether you are explicitly in the recipient list. 

2. Click the New Message button.

3. Fill in the Message Details.

  • Select your Recipients. Depending on your site privileges and roles, you may be able to filter on Hubs, Roles, or Contacts. Use these available filters to create your list of recipients. See more details about Selecting Recipients here. 

  • Enter the Subject of your message.
  • Compose your message. Standard text editing tools are available. You can insert images and attach files easily.

4. Click Save Draft, Schedule this message to send later, and select a future date and time, or Send to send the message immediately.

Note: To cancel or edit a scheduled message, view the saved draft and click Cancel Send or Delete Message.

5. After sending the message, you have the option to also send your message as a text message at the same time. You can edit the text as needed and click Send Text. If you do not want to send a text message, click Don't Send Text. If you have a scheduled message, the text will be sent at the same time as the scheduled message.

Note: Recipients must opt-in to receive text messages. To receive text messages, the recipient must include their mobile number and cell provider in their profile. Selecting the cell provider is the mechanism by which the recipient permits Givebacks to send text messages to them.

Other ways you may access Messages

  • Administrators with access to Contacts can select a list of contacts and click the envelope icon to begin creating messages for the selected recipients. 


  • Hub Administrators can select people from Hub Contacts and click the envelope icon to email all contacts or only selected contacts within their hubs.

 

Questions? Contact Givebacks Support.

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Comments

4 comments

  • This is a great starting point, but it would be great to see how to actually insert images/videos and make the newsletter visually appealing. When I go in now, it looks to be very text heavy and to insert images, it asks for source location, dimensions, etc. But how do I drag and drop or pull pics off my computer? Also when I upload images can everyone see what I upload, or should I create a Newsletter hub only that admins can use to create everything but then send to everyone? Thanks!

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  • I second Trish's sentiment - I want to make announcements as newsletters, but they are visually very boring. Also, there's no way to attach a regular doc or file to the announcement. Annoying to have to upload it to MH as a file, and then get the really ugly-looking link to that file to put within the announcement.

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  • I'd like to know how to flow text around a picture. Right now, it looks like pictures can only be inserted in-line with text. I'd like to wrap text around the image, so that the text can start at the top-level of the photo and wrap around the image.

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  • HI Sonya. When you add the image to the text box you can put it directly after your text. Then click on your right arrow and you can start text again there. You can also update the Source Code by clicking on Tools and use instructions like these to update the HTML to wrap the text around the image. https://www.uvm.edu/~bnelson/computer/html/wrappingtextaroundimages.html

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