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Question

SMS automation connecting with calendar

  • 10 April 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 14 views
Y

I represent a leasing company utilizing EliseAI to manage leasing prospects, including scheduling self-guided tours through email and SMS communications. EliseAI effectively handles all steps in our process except for customizing the final confirmation message post-tour booking. Our portfolio includes multiple properties with various units, necessitating tailored confirmation messages for each, detailing available units and specific viewing instructions.

Unfortunately, EliseAI’s current capabilities do not extend to customizing this confirmation message. However, it does schedule tours and add them to our Outlook calendar. Post-booking, we're advised to manually send customized viewing instructions (confirmation messages) via SMS, which we can do directly through EliseAI’s SMS backend.

We are exploring the possibility of automating this manual step using Zapier. Specifically, we aim to create a Zap trigger for every event scheduled on our Outlook calendar, differentiated by property to ensure relevant instructions are sent. The automation would ideally send an SMS (and possibly an email) with our custom instructions immediately after a prospect receives the initial booking confirmation from EliseAI.

Key points for clarification:

  1. Integration with EliseAI: Since EliseAI might not directly integrate with Zapier, can Zapier automate actions based on calendar events (e.g., in our Outlook calendar) labeled by property?
  2. Custom SMS Automation: Can Zapier support sending these automated SMS messages with content we specify, immediately following the initial confirmation from EliseAI?
  3. Consistency in Communication: It’s crucial that the automated SMS appears in the same thread as the initial EliseAI messages to maintain continuity. Is this feasible through Zapier’s automation, particularly regarding sender ID consistency?

Given these specifics, we seek your advice on the best approach to achieve this automation, ensuring a seamless experience for our prospects while minimizing manual intervention on our end.

Thank you for considering our request. We look forward to any solutions or suggestions you might offer.

1 reply

SamB
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi there @Yentlben, welcome to the Community! 👋

How are the events labelled? Am I correct in assuming that it’s done using custom categories in Outlook? 

If so, it looks like we’re able to see the categories for an event with the New Calendar Event (Microsoft Outlook) trigger:
eff9f4ec9b63bd20663c2358906e971b.png

So you could use a filter in the Zap to check whether the event contained a certain category and send out a message relating to that specific category. That said, using a filter would mean that you’d need to create separate Zaps for each property which might not be ideal depending on how many properties you have. Instead, you might prefer to look at using paths for this as it would allow you to add multiple paths to send different messages within a single Zap.

You can learn more about how to set up this kind of branching logic in Zaps using filters or paths in the following guides: 


In terms of sending the SMS in the same message thread as the messages being sent via EliseAI, I don’t think that would be possible as they’d likely be seen as being sent from a different person. So you’d likely need to send the messages via EliseAI’s API instead - assuming it would allow an SMS to be sent via it’s API?

If it does have a publicly accessible API with that capability, and it supports basic authentication then you could potentially use a Webhooks action to send the SMS. If it requires more advanced authentication methods then you’d need to build a private integration on the Zapier Developer Platform. If you’d rather have someone build it for you though, you can reach out to one of our certified Zapier Experts here: https://zapier.com/experts

Hope that helps to get you pointed in the right direction. Let us know if you run into any issues or have further questions at all. 🙂

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