When do e-mail / SMS messages start to send?

This article confirms when automated e-mail and SMS messages will start to send, in short they take effect immediately including on existing/active jobs. We also provide a short trouble shooting checklist at the bottom in case your messages are not triggering.

Messages sent via workflow actions:

Messages sent via workflow actions will be triggered when the relevant steps are taken. This will take effect as soon as you have created the workflow actions, it will therefore potentially impact on all jobs including existing jobs. Of course if you are triggering a workflow action on the job creation step then the action will never fire on a job that already exists.

Similarly if you are triggering a workflow action on a progress button that goes from your 2nd stage it will not trigger for jobs that are already on your 3rd or latter stages, unless of course you have a progress button taking you back to/before your 2nd stage or if the recent steps taken are undone or if the current stage of the job is edited via the edit job button.

Messages sent via alerts:

Messages sent via alerts are triggered based upon the the date you have linked to, the offset and any filters applied. This will take effect as soon as you have created the alert. As above these will fully apply to existing jobs at the point at which you create the alert so long as the date you would expect the alert to trigger has not already passed when you create the alert.

Troubleshooting checklist:

If you are expecting a message to send but it is not then please check these areas:

1. Check whether you have a global setting to queue messages. If you do then the messages may be in the message queue.
2. Check whether you have a template specific setting to queue messages.
3. If your delivery target is set to 'Basic search for client e-mail address' then ensure the relevant client has an e-mail address in the appropriate client field (you can decide which field this is, see point 4).
4. Check the field that contains the e-mail address is tagged as E-mail. To do this go to the config menu, edit additional client fields, click on the pencil icon to edit the relevant field and check the value in Data store tag.
5. If you are targeting a contact tag then ensure that the client has a contact that is tagged with this tag. The list of contacts is on the contacts tab of the client card.
6. Click on the appropriate contact and check that they have an e-mail address in the appropriate field (essentially repeat steps 4 and 5 for the contact).
7. Check that the job triggering the message is on the same workflow route that you created the alert or workflow action on.
8. Check the settings on your workflow action or alert are complete.
9. If you are triggering an alert in advance of a key date (i.e. a negative offset) ensure that the job will actually exist when you plan for the alert to fire. For example if you have an alert firing at job date - 10 days but have job creation set to job date - 5 days, this will not fire, the job needs to exist.
10. Contact Glide!