Campaigns

One message by an approved template to many: SchoolOS's own audience where it has one, the staff, or a list from a file, now or at a time you choose, with a report of what happened to each.

What it is for

When there is something to write to many at once: an offer or a new service announced, each person's appointment reminder from an Excel file, or a message to the staff. A campaign is built on one page in four steps with a phone preview beside them, and then its report shows line by line.

Who uses it

The page opens for whoever holds “View WhatsApp campaigns”, to look only, or “Send WhatsApp campaigns”, to work in it. In the built-in roles: Owner, Manager. They are granted to any role under Settings → Roles and permissions.

Step by step

1. Press “+ New campaign”: the campaign builder opens.
2. Choose the template by your name for it, then the recipients, and press “Prepare the recipients”: the counters show, and who is left out and why.
3. Choose each placeholder's source, from the recipient's data or a text you write, and upload the header file if the template has a picture or a file. A variable whose meaning was chosen when it was added to the template (the recipient's name, the group's name, the sending date, a column of the list) is filled by itself; only a text typed at sending is asked.
4. Send now or at a set time after the confirmation, or save it as a draft to come back to from the list.
5. Follow the report on the campaign's page, and export it to Excel with all its recipients.

How it works

The list shows the campaigns by their state, each template by your name for it, and the cancelled ones under “Deleted”, where “Restore” brings one back as a draft. A draft opens in the builder for as long as it is a draft; a sent or scheduled campaign opens on its report. Change the template, the type or the audience in the builder after preparing, and a new draft is prepared; the old one is kept cancelled and does not show under “Deleted”. The Excel export holds all the recipients, not only the report's page; numbers are whole for someone holding “Manage people and staff”, “Reply to WhatsApp chats” or “Send WhatsApp campaigns” and partly masked for anyone else, and every download is recorded. On the list, “Sent” is how many recipients it went to out of all of them, and “Delivered”, “Read” and “Failed” count its messages as the WhatsApp dashboard does: “Delivered” is what reached the recipient's phone or was read, “Read” what the recipient opened, and “Failed” what WhatsApp refused or was never handed to it; the top of a campaign's page has two rows: “Recipients” (sent, failed, skipped, waiting) and “Messages” with the four numbers (sent, delivered, read, failed). Under them, “Failures”: each reason with its count, the biggest first, and under it whoever the message did not reach, by name, the number partly masked and a link to the chat; “Export the failures” downloads them to Excel with the name, the masked number, the reason and the time, and every download is recorded. Meta bills for every campaign message, on the group's own account with it, and marketing ones cost more; they are not part of SchoolOS's price. Only someone holding “Send WhatsApp campaigns” creates or sends campaigns.

On the page

• Narrow the campaigns by status and audience.
• “WhatsApp templates”: the templates campaigns are sent by.
• Scheduled, sent and drafts.
• The campaigns, and the cancelled ones under “Deleted”, which come back as drafts.
• Each campaign's template by your name for it, its audience, kind, status, time, and how many it reached. Open a name for the draft or the report.
• “+ New campaign”: opens the campaign builder.

Part of these flows

• A WhatsApp campaign: one message to many

Questions

My message arrived with “—” instead of the text. Why?

The placeholder was taken from a column of the file that was empty. That can no longer happen: a column empty in every row starts on “Text I write”, and the send is refused if a placeholder is empty for any recipient, naming it and how many rows.

Why were some numbers “skipped”?

Each one's line says why: an invalid number, a repeated one, its owner stopped optional messages (by the stop or by withdrawing consent), or a blocked number.

I sent a campaign with a mistake. Can I withdraw it?

A message cannot be recalled once sent. If it is still sending, cancel it from its page, so those not yet reached are not.

Where did my cancelled campaign go?

Under “Deleted”, where “Restore” brings it back as a draft: those it reached stay as they are, and those it had not reached wait to be sent.