SMS templates can be used within a flow to determine the contents of an outbound SMS sent from Pendula.
While optional, creating an SMS template allows you to easily reuse the same contents in multiple flows, rather than having to type it out each time you create a new flow or add a new outbound SMS node to the flow builder canvas.
Quick links:
Before you start
Before you can create an SMS template, you'll firstly need to connect Pendula to your data source, and have created the related object your new template is regarding.
The related object of a template will determine what information you can provide within your messaging as merge fields, so you'll want to set this up first!
See Related objects for more information.
How to create an SMS template
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Click on the Templates tab in the top navigation bar
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Click on the SMS template icon to navigate to the new template screen
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Enter your template details and content (see table below)
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Click Save
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You can continue to edit and save your template, or alternatively click on View all templates to navigate back to the templates screen
Template details
| Field | Purpose |
| Description | Provides you with the ability to specify further detail, if necessary |
| Template name | Name of the template which will be used as the reference from within the flow builder and the templates list view. It's always best practice to ensure template names are unique |
| Data source |
Defines the data source a template relates to. The selected data source controls which related objects are available for use. |
| Related object |
Defines the object (or table) in which a template relates to. The selected related object controls which merge fields are available for use. |
| Status |
The status field determines how templates are used and whether they can be applied to a flow from within the flow builder.
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SMS character limits
SMS stands for 'Short Messaging Service'. It's designed for sending short messages which are rapidly delivered, with a high read and response rate.
Using only standard or GSM-7 characters, you can send up to 160 characters in one SMS.
The GSM character set includes:
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English alphabet (upper case and lowercase)
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ -
Numbers
0123456789 -
Punctuation and common symbols
?!,.-'":&;@%$=/()<>+_#
It also includes extended alphabet characters such as {}[]\|^€, however these take up two characters rather than one.
Messages with over 160 characters are sent as separate segments, which are stitched together by a recipient's phone into what appears as one message. This is called concatenation.
Once you send over 160 characters, the character limit of each segment is reduced to 153 (this is because SMS uses 7 character 'headers' to signify these segments are part of the same message).
Most smartphones and mobile networks support concatenation and will rebuild messages up to a certain number of characters, however this is dependent on the mobile carrier. If a message has too many characters then it will fail to be delivered. We recommend limiting your messages to under 750 characters (or less than 6 segments) to ensure successful message delivery to all recipients.
Consider keeping your message concise with a clear call to action!
See SMS best practice for more information
Non-GSM characters
Some characters, such as emojis or eastern language scripts are encoded differently to the standard character set for SMS. While this doesn't mean you shouldn't ever use them, it does have implications for your character limit.
Once a non-GSM character is introduced to an SMS, the initial character limit drops from 160 characters to 70 as the message has to be sent with a different encoding. Most emojis take up two characters, however newer ones can take up to 4.
Messages sent with non-GSM characters can also be concatenated, once you send more than one non-GSM segment, your character limit reduces to 64 characters per segment.
To further complicate things, many popular text editors don't support GSM encoding and so use a different encoding instead.
For this reason, we recommend always typing your template content directly into Pendula rather than copying and pasting from other sources as this will prevent inadvertently introducing non-GSM characters to your SMS.
Does Pendula detect non-GSM characters in a template?
If a non-GSM character is inadvertently introduced to a template, it will alert you beneath the text box.
If you click on click here to replace them, Pendula will try to replace this with the GSM character equivalent, or failing that, with a ? to indicate where it resided within your content.
In summary, keep in mind how long your template content is and the impact using non-GSM characters might have. While it's still okay to use emojis, they will increase your message segments so keep your content short and use them wisely!