Group SMS Notifications allow you to easily contact a large number of staff, vendors, visitors and residents who have signed in during a specified time period with an informative message.
The Group SMS feature can be used to invite staff to a meeting, provide information related to parking or events for visitors, or inform the staff and outside guests of a positive Covid-19 case in the community, for example.
Enable the Group SMS Notifications Feature & Text Message Policy
Log into your dashboard.accushield.com account, hover over "Settings" and select the "Sign-In Features" option.
Once under "Sign in Features", select the "Enable Group SMS Notification" option and then choose which visitor types you'd like the ability to reach via text message. Click "Save"
Text Message Consent Policy
Before being able to send SMS messages to any of those visitor types, the receiver has to first give consent to receive your text messages.
Upon enabling this feature, our dashboard automatically activates a Text Message Consent policy for those specific visitor types. Your visitors will see and agree to this policy upon their next sign-in. Once a visitor has agreed to it, they will be added to the pool of recipients you can contact via SMS Messaging. Read more about that Text Message Consent Policy here.
Send a Group SMS Notification
After the Group SMS feature has been enabled & your visitors have started providing consent, you can start sending group text messages.
To send a message, hover over the "Settings" tab and select "Group SMS Notifications"
First you will need to determine who you'd like to send this message to via the "Deliver To" box.
You can send messages to your residents and all opted-in staff by checking the boxes next to those options.
If you're wanting to send messages to Family & Guests, Service Providers or Volunteers - you will need to choose a date range first. Any Family & Guest, Service Provider or Volunteer that has signed into your community during the date range you've chosen will be available for messaging (if they have consented to opting-in)
Once you have made your choices, choose "Apply" and you should see that list appear in the Recipient List.
Once a list has been created, you can click the checkbox next to "Visitor Name", if you are wanting to message every person on that list. If not, you can check the boxes next to the names you DO want to message and uncheck the boxes for those you DON'T want to message.
Type your message in the "Message Details" box & hit "Send" when you're ready for your message to go out. We'd recommend making it clear to include the sender's name and facilities's name in the message so that there is no confusion where this message is coming from.
Removing Staff Members from getting Group SMS Notifications
Should a staff member want to opt out of Group SMS notifications, you can remove staff from the by opting them out via the Group SMS list. To do so, hover over the "Staff" tab and select "Staff Group SMS List"
Your full staff list will appear on that page. By using the search bar at the top of your staff list, you can easily identify specific staff members that you need to remove from the notifications list. Under the "Receive Message" column, click the green Opted-in button associated to the staff that you need to Opt-out from future SMS Messages. Once done, a pop up window will appear and you will want to select "Yes"
Should your staff or other visitors ever reply "Stop" to your SMS Notifications, they will be opted-out of all future notifications from the Accushield system, including health screening alerts.
Group SMS Log (Reporting)
The Group SMS Log allows you to see any SMS Notifications that have been sent out over any specified period of time. To access the Group SMS Log, hover over the "Reports" tab and select the "Group SMS Log"
Select the date range and visitor type that you'd like to view. Once you click submit, you will get a list of all notifications that have been sent during the selected time period and specific visitor type is applicable.
The fields visible are start date, end date, message, Sent By, Timestamp, Name, Phone Number and Visitor Type.
Once the notifications sent during the selected time period populate, you can export the SMS log to a CSV file.
If you have any questions, please reach out to communitysupport@accushield.com.