Twilio SMS Automation Action to multiple numbers?

[Jason_Barrow]

’d like to use the automation action to send the same text to multiple recipients. So, on Friday at 9:00am, send the “Can you volunteer this weekend?” text to everyone in the volunteer table. I’m having trouble formatting the “To” line for multiple numbers. I’m using the “find records” action, and pulling a list into the “To” field and I get the same error message if:1)the field is text and includes +1 2)the field is text and only has 10 digits 3) the field is a phone number.
Can I send SMS to multiple numbers using this action? If so, anyone have any ideas about how the data should put in the “To” field?

[Mohamed_Swella1]

Hi @Jason_Barrow ,

The Twilio action won’t send multiple texts this way, you have to trigger this for each number separately.

That being said, you need to do the following:

1. Create a formula field in the table that has the phone numbers you are trying to send text to. The formula would be what triggers the text. If its every Friday at 9:00 AM then the formula would be

IF(AND(WEEKDAY(TODAY())=5,DATETIME_FORMAT(NOW(),"HH")=9),"trigger",BLANK())

This formula is checking 9 AM GMT, you can adopt it to your timezone.

2. Change the trigger to Record Matches Condition and make the condition this new field is Not Empty
3. Now you will trigger for every phone number and it should work :slightly_smiling_face:

[ScottWorld]

@Jason_Barrow

The Twilio API only supports one phone number per text message.

After you find records in an Airtable automation, Airtable doesn’t loop through the records, so you would need to figure out a way to trigger each record individually.

There are lots of workarounds, such as:

• writing a JavaScript to loop through your found records

• creating a formula field that results in the number 1 when a certain time of day has passed & then trigger the automation based on that formula field.

• copying and pasting all of the found records into a linked record field in a utility table that triggers the original records individually, as I discuss in this episode of the BuiltOnAir video podcast:

• Using an automation tool like Make.com, which always loops through the found records. A scenario in Make.com would be as easy as this:

[Jason_Barrow]

Thank you so much Scott! I’m NO code and LOW budget :grinning: so I’ll shoot for the formula field. That’s brilliant. Thinking through how to reset those weekly, instead of a formula, could I have a text field, automate its value (which triggers the sms) using day/time trigger, and then reset its value using a day/time trigger? See any holes in that?

[ScottWorld]

If you want to use the “At A Scheduled Time” trigger, I would check out my video above for how to do that.

[Jason_Barrow]

Great advice. Very, very helpful. Thank you! Also, I was unaware of that podcast and appreciate you steering me in that direction.