Enrollment Management Admissions Checklist Cell Phone Text Message Notifications

Geoffrey Goodfellow

We've received feedback from parents of candidates that they would prefer to engage with our admissions process using cell phone text messages in addition to email. So many of our admissions checklist steps involve automated email notifications, and this is great, but is there a way that these can go out via SMS text message as well? Has anyone been successful setting this up? For example, if I send an Official Note to an admissions candidate, I would love for them to have the option to signup to receive this via text message and/or email. Likewise, if I push out information about an upcoming open house, is there a way to send this to candidate parents via text message?

Kari Skolik

@Geoffrey Goodfellow
The only way that I know of is to set a due date for each checklist item and then a reminder notification can be sent out via text for EACH step, which, if the family had 5 or 6 items remaining, they would receive 5 or 6 text messages (not ideal). If you have rolling admissions or a long admissions window then that wouldn't be beneficial to you to get items submitted in an expedient manner. The best way would be if there was a way to send text notifications with Official Notes, but I don't believe that's possible right now. I'd love to hear if anyone has any ideas that are working for them.

Geoffrey Goodfellow

Thank you, @Kari Skolik. Agree that you are coming up with the same conclusions as me. The ability for parents to subscribe to official note notifications via SMS text message would honestly solve the problem for us. You could even create a new note type designated for text messaging if you wanted. The options looks to be there, but it is grayed out on my end.

Geoffrey Goodfellow

I created an Idea that SMS text messaging notifications need to be available for Enrollment Management Official Notes: