Slack? What is it?
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What is Postcard? I thought SMS postcards was SMS mass marketing?
Anyway, appointment reminders are just transactional SMS.
There are plenty of SMS services that can send whatever SMS you want and have their own APIs. We use Clickatell for instance.
You can also trigger SMS services from apps like Zapier, Zoho Flow and many other integration apps without having to code anything. Basically connecting calendar events with the SMS API.
For example have Zapier send SMS reminders for google calendar events:
https://zapier.com/apps/sms/integrations/google-calendar -
@travisdh1 said in Slack? What is it?:
@JasGot said in Slack? What is it?:
I am looking at Slack for a customer. I've never used or seen it. I hear about it all the time, and I know many people here use it regularly.
The sole purpose for looking at Slack for this customer is to send appointment reminder vis SMS using Skyetel's "Postcards for Slack" feature.
Has anyone done this? Is it a good option, or should I be looking at other options?
Do they want to start using a dedicated chat app?
If yes, have they evaluated options besides Slack? (RocketChat, etc.)
Slack IS NOT SMS. If they want to send reminders via SMS, just use Postcards. No reason to introduce more complexity than needed.
Edit: That all assumes you have input instead of being told to just do it.
Chat is not the goal. SMS Reminders is. We're looking at Slack because it is already integrated into Skyetel (the customer's carrier).
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@flaxking said in Slack? What is it?:
At it's core Slack is a chat app. Think Teams without video calls or SharePoint integration.
It's also kind of treated like a shared mailbox. I.e. a channel will get sent alerts, and that's how people get notified and can talk about it right at the alert.
"ChatOps" is kind of the next step here where with integrations and bots, you can trigger actions from right within Slack. A benefit of this is that the log of the action and the conversation surrounding it is all logged in the same place. Someone looking back at what was done could see the whole history of events (alert raised, talk that something should be done about it, and the action being done triggered and recorded right there)
I have never heard of Slack being the only interface for something except for internal tools. It makes the most sense to use it for integrations when you're already having conversations there, but maybe the benefits of having the action log and the ability for different people using the integration to leave notes in the chat could mean it could be worth it to use if there are not other tools that does the same thing.
Thank you. This answer is exactly the info I was hoping to hear. It looks like Slack will work great if we choose NOT to use another full service sms reminder provider.
For example, we are comparing what Slack can do for us with ClickSend, TextBetterInc, Text-Em-All, and SimpleTexting.
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@JasGot said in Slack? What is it?:
@flaxking said in Slack? What is it?:
At it's core Slack is a chat app. Think Teams without video calls or SharePoint integration.
It's also kind of treated like a shared mailbox. I.e. a channel will get sent alerts, and that's how people get notified and can talk about it right at the alert.
"ChatOps" is kind of the next step here where with integrations and bots, you can trigger actions from right within Slack. A benefit of this is that the log of the action and the conversation surrounding it is all logged in the same place. Someone looking back at what was done could see the whole history of events (alert raised, talk that something should be done about it, and the action being done triggered and recorded right there)
I have never heard of Slack being the only interface for something except for internal tools. It makes the most sense to use it for integrations when you're already having conversations there, but maybe the benefits of having the action log and the ability for different people using the integration to leave notes in the chat could mean it could be worth it to use if there are not other tools that does the same thing.
Thank you. This answer is exactly the info I was hoping to hear. It looks like Slack will work great if we choose NOT to use another full service sms reminder provider.
For example, we are comparing what Slack can do for us with ClickSend, TextBetterInc, Text-Em-All, and SimpleTexting.
What @flaxking is trying to say is that you DON'T want Slack. Normally calendar reminders over SMS is something that is fully automatic once it's in operation.
Skyetel's Postcards for Slack is the ability to chat (send and receive) SMS and MMS from your Skyetel phone numbers, using Slack as the UI.
https://support.skyetel.com/hc/en-us/articles/4402279765911-Postcards-for-Slack
If your customers wants to chat over SMS that might be the right thing. If you want automatic calendar reminders to go out then it's not what you're looking for. Then you want something that can integrate with Skyetel's SMS API directly.
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I do not use postcards, but making a direct to slack SMS connection is flaky at best.
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@JaredBusch said in Slack? What is it?:
I do not use postcards, but making a direct to slack SMS connection is flaky at best.
This is exactly what I am planning to do. They make it so easy. No need to build a postcards server (we did that, terrible to setup and terrible to maintain).
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@Pete-S said in Slack? What is it?:
If you want automatic calendar reminders to go out then it's not what you're looking for. Then you want something that can integrate with Skyetel's SMS API directly.
This doesn't exist and I am not building one.
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@Pete-S said in Slack? What is it?:
What @flaxking is trying to say is that you DON'T want Slack. Normally calendar reminders over SMS is something that is fully automatic once it's in operation.
How can you say that when you don't know what the requirements are?
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@JasGot said in Slack? What is it?:
@Pete-S said in Slack? What is it?:
What @flaxking is trying to say is that you DON'T want Slack. Normally calendar reminders over SMS is something that is fully automatic once it's in operation.
How can you say that when you don't know what the requirements are?
Because you said: "The sole purpose for looking at Slack for this customer is to send appointment reminder vis SMS using Skyetel's "Postcards for Slack" feature."
I just assumed those were the requirements and if there were other requirements that were relevant, you would have mentioned them.
Appointment reminders are very common, almost SOP in some businesses.
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@JasGot said in Slack? What is it?:
@Pete-S said in Slack? What is it?:
If you want automatic calendar reminders to go out then it's not what you're looking for. Then you want something that can integrate with Skyetel's SMS API directly.
This doesn't exist and I am not building one.
Why does it have to be Skyetel? If it's just a reminder, like "don't forget your dentist appointment tomorrow" the number used doesn't matter.
All the automation apps (like zapier, microsoft flow etc) doesn't require you to program a single line of code. You just set up the trigger and what action to take and you're done.
Some booking apps also have direct support for SMS reminders and in that case you don't need any external automation. Microsoft Bookings for example if your customer is Microsoft-centric. I have no experience with Bookings myself.
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@flaxking said in Slack? What is it?:
At it's core Slack is a chat app. Think Teams without video calls or SharePoint integration.
Slack has had video/audio calls for a while now.
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@stacksofplates said in Slack? What is it?:
@flaxking said in Slack? What is it?:
At it's core Slack is a chat app. Think Teams without video calls or SharePoint integration.
Slack has had video/audio calls for a while now.
Interesting, I've only noticed the "Huddle" option, and have never used it.
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@JasGot said in Slack? What is it?:
I am looking at Slack for a customer. I've never used or seen it. I hear about it all the time, and I know many people here use it regularly.
It's the "new" industry standard messaging platform. Think XMPP for the modern era. It's what replaced that.
All the major messaging players today are clones of Slack: Mattermost, RocketChat, MS Teams, Zoho Cliq, and on and on.
Slack isn't bad, it's actually quite usable. I like it a lot. I no longer have any customers on it and we don't use it internally (we use Cliq and Rocket) but I've always had good experiences with it. It's fully hosted and I think offers some decent free levels.
It's biggest competitor is that ANY business class messaging platform (MS 365, Zoho WorkSpace, etc.) has something that matches Slack built in already and automatically integrated with other things. So who needs Slack today?
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@JasGot said in Slack? What is it?:
The sole purpose for looking at Slack for this customer is to send appointment reminder vis SMS using Skyetel's "Postcards for Slack" feature.
That feels like a super weird use case. Just use the API and send through something else.
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@flaxking said in Slack? What is it?:
I have never heard of Slack being the only interface for something except for internal tools.
Skyetel used it as an API implementation example. It's not unique for that purpose. NTG has HumaniSMS that does that too using the same API, for example.
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@Pete-S said in Slack? What is it?:
What is Postcard? I thought SMS postcards was SMS mass marketing?
It's a weird SMS example interface that Skyetel open sourced to use as a code example.
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@JasGot said in Slack? What is it?:
@Pete-S said in Slack? What is it?:
If you want automatic calendar reminders to go out then it's not what you're looking for. Then you want something that can integrate with Skyetel's SMS API directly.
This doesn't exist and I am not building one.
Yes it does and you already work with the phone company that makes it, lol. The text messaging component of NTG's telephony platform does EXACTLY that.
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@Pete-S said in Slack? What is it?:
Why does it have to be Skyetel? If it's just a reminder, like "don't forget your dentist appointment tomorrow" the number used doesn't matter.
We have this requirement too, hence why we built the matching solution. It's so that the main phone number can double as the texting number in most cases.
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@JasGot said in Slack? What is it?:
@JaredBusch said in Slack? What is it?:
I do not use postcards, but making a direct to slack SMS connection is flaky at best.
This is exactly what I am planning to do. They make it so easy.
Except that it does not consistently work.
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@Pete-S said in Slack? What is it?:
Because you said: "The sole purpose for looking at Slack for this customer is to send appointment reminder vis SMS using Skyetel's "Postcards for Slack" feature."
I just assumed those were the requirements and if there were other requirements that were relevant, you would have mentioned them.
Appointment reminders are very common, almost SOP in some businesses.I appreciate your trying to help, but as I said in my query, my desire is to use Skyetel's "Postcards for Slack".
