We're smiling this week as we launch our SMS team alerting service to all our team accounts in the United States and Canada. The service, which has already been live in the United Kingdom and Ireland for 12 months enables teams to contact their membership through bulk text messaging.

Here's a quick overview video.



Send From Web
Our service works by updating your phonebook lists dynamically based on your groups allocations. Just add members to a group, and then select the group to target your messages whether you need just your Medics, or your Technical team. You can even target just those on-call right now.



Send from your mobile by SMS
We've built an inbound system to, allowing you or your members to SMS the D4H system to interact with it. All replies get prefixed with a personal PIN code so we can verify the sender, and while general replies get sent to a team Inbox, specific keywords take action on D4H.

You can SMS XXXX OFF 3h to mark yourself off-call for 3 hours. XXXX ON when you return!

If you've got credits and the correct permission level, try sending XXXX TO ON your message here to distribute a message to your members who are on-call now! Or set up custom keywords XXXX TO ATV your message here to get just your ATV drivers. Impressive? We think so!



Known Limitations: SMS messaging should not be the only method you have to contact your team. Always have a back-up method. While we generally see very good delivery rates, SMS is an unreliable protocol which can suffer from delays or complete loss of service in the event of cellular network problems. At present, our US & Canada service provider is not supporting delivery receipts when they arrive on the handset, but we are working with them on this issue.