Follow up on a scheduled SMS

[tabea1]

We want to start a new Workflow where we send an SMS to customers that had their birthday X days ago on a daily basis. We want them to answer on the SMS with a number (1 to 10). Once we receive the SMS, we want to ask them to clarifiy in a freetext (up to 160 characters) that we then receive. The flow we plan to is:

1. We send SMS to customers from Adobe and ask the customer to answer to the SMS with a number from 1 to 10
3. The customer answers
3. We receive the answer and store it in a table.
4. We directly after receiving the SMS send another text, asking for clarification in a freetext format
5. We receive the answer and store it in a table

We do not plan on triggering this through an external API, so transactional messages (with follow up messages) are not possible. Answering directly through "Managing incoming SMS" (https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/campaign-standard/using/communication-channels/sms-messag...) would result in a endless loop where step 3-5 are repeated.
I need support with how this could be possible to do in Adobe Campaign Standard

[ccg1706]

Hi @tabea1,

The initial flow that you have written is correct, do you want help with the configuration activities?

Regards, 

Celia

[tabea1]

Hey Celia,

Yes, I would need some direction on how to set this up, especially the 2-step SMS-flow. I checked around the documentation and other workarounds but currently don't see a way to directly send a followup on the first reply, and not on the second reply, instantly within a minute after receiving the SMS. Scheduling a WKF that listens to incoming SMS only works as low as every 10 minutes, the automatic MO-reply would send a text for all incoming SMS and we do not plan to trigger externally, so a transactional message is also out of scope.

[ccg1706]

Hi @tabea1,

You can perfectly follow @SatheeskannaK approach. Regarding external signal configuration please find the documentation here. 

Regards, 

Celia

[SatheeskannaK]

@tabea1 Consider the following approach and see if that works.

• Setup a workflow to query to pull the response from inSMS resource.
• Use the segmentation activity to create a branch when the customer replies with 1 and send another SMS to provide a clarification in a freetext format.
• Response would be stored in the inSMS resource.
• Same approach use the segmentation activity to create a branch when the customer replies with 2 and send another SMS to provide a clarification in a freetext format.
• Repeat the same step for other responses (3 to 10)
• Consider using external signal to self-trigger the workflow frequently.
• Consider incremental query if the customer attempts to reply with the same response multiple times and how to exclude them.
• Schedule the workflow more frequently rather than 10 minutes. Although it's not a best practice there is no other way to get kick start the workflow.

[tabea1]

Hello Sathees,

Thank you for the answer! When I try to create a scheduler for a frequency more often than every 10min, i get the error "The frequency of a workflow cannot be less than 10min"

Could you elaborate on how the external signal would help to self-trigger the worflow?

[SatheeskannaK]

I forgot to mention that, for the first time when you trigger the workflow, use another simple workflow with start and end activity that would kick start the SMS workflow. The end activity of this workflow will have an external signal pointing to the SMS workflow. After the signal is received from the simple workflow have a wait activity (ex. 30sec) in the SMS workflow and have other activities to process the SMS keywords (1, 2, 3 etc,). Connect with END activity to point the signal to the same (SMS) workflow.