Editing automatic messages

Automated messages send important information to families about different steps in your enrollment process. 

Accessing Automatic messages templates

1. Head to Enrollment Periods to pick the one you want to work with. Some staff members can edit the email and text message content, depending on their role and permissions. If you can’t see automatic messages, ask your organization’s administrator or your Avela success representative for help.

   

2. Click on the pencil icon to edit it, then navigate to Forms and pick the one you want to modify the automated messages for.

   

3. Navigate to the tab called “Automatic messages", and click on the “Edit” button.

   

What do Automatic messages look like, for families?

Avela lets you create automatic messages that are sent via Email and SMS. Each content is fully configurable. 

Types of Automatic messages

General messages

General messages are for the whole organization. They can be sent as soon as a family starts a form. They aren't tied to any single school, but instead tell the family about their progress or what staff has done. All forms have these kinds of messages.

Standard and School specific messages

If your form has a school picker - where families can choose schools they want to attend or transfer to - then you can use school-specific messages. These messages can use either standard content or content written just for that school.

These messages can be sent once an event associated to a school takes place - events such as extending an offer, accepting or declining one, revoking an offer; adding or removing from a waitlist, or widthdrawing from one. Because these events are connected to a school, you can make the message special for that school - or you can use the same standard message for all schools. It's up to you and your staff!

Changing between Standard and School specific messages

1. To change between Standard, use the toggle at the top of the list.
   
   
   
   
2. Once you switch to School specific messages, choose a school from the dropdown.
   
   
   
   
3.  You can then edit it to write a message just for this school. Once you've edited and published your school specific message, activate it so it reaches families. Make it inactive anytime you wish to pause it, without losing your contents! See more about enabling or disabling messages, and editing their contents.
   
   

Understanding who uses Standard vs School specific messages

1. In your list of standard messages, each one shows how many schools are using it

Editing Automatic Messages templates

1. When in edit mode, one can edit the Email message subject line, Email content, and the SMS message content.

   • The message content shows what is currently set for that template.

   • Languages to include: Each message includes English and Spanish by default. We recommend adding at least these two languages when creating your custom content.

2. Click on each text box to make edits. You can type directly into the box or copy and paste content from somewhere else. 

3. Personalizing messages can be tricky, but it can boost your outreach engagement. Avela helps you achieve this by using variables in your automatic messages. See more about using variables.

4. After making changes, you’ll see an option to clear unpublished changes. Use this if you want to undo your edits easily.

   • Character Count: As you type, you’ll see a character count in the bottom-left corner showing how many characters you have left out of the 320-character limit.
   • Segmentation: In the bottom-right corner, you’ll see SMS segments. These are pieces of a message that are sent separately if your text goes over the character limit. Segmentation may vary depending on special characters in the language used.
   

5. Click “Back” if you wish to exit out of edit mode.

6. Click “Preview” to save and see how the recent edit will display to Families.

Enabling or disabling Automatic Messages templates

There may be times when the organization doesn't want certain triggers to fire an automatic message. These automatic communications can easily be turned on or off by using the toggle in the template itself: