Sending SMS alerts to clients

[Sam_Gray]

Hi,

I’ve set up my base to support my dog grooming salon. I can set up a field that will alert me of appointments for the following day (along the lines of If next appointment = -1 days, Then …),

but I would like an automated setup so that the client will receive a text message (sms) reminding them of their appointment.

“Just to remind you that {{dog’s name}} has an appointment at the groomers tomorrow {{appointment date and time}}.”

To make it a little more complicated, the appointment dates and times are on the ‘Dogs’ sheet, which is then linked to the ‘Clients’ sheet which has the telephone number on. Has anyone managed to do this?

Thank you for any advice or suggestions.

[Sam_Gray]

OK, so I’ve used ‘look up’ to get the client telephone number on the same record as the appointment dates - one step closer

[Julian_Kirkness]

Hi @Sam_Gray

The answer to this question isn’t actually as simple as all that - and I would recommend the first step is probably to add table for appointments (linked to Dogs) - this will enable you to display appointments in a calendar for example as well as giving you the basis for sending reminders.

To automate sending reminders, you’ll need two additional apps - Zapier to do the automation and an SMS service like Twillio to send the messages (or other service with a Zapier connection). The basis of the process could then be similar to that described in my recent blog post:

Sending Notifications from Airtable

I hope this is helpful?

[Sam_Gray]

Hi @Julian_Kirkness,

Thank you for your reply and the link to your blog post.