Text messaging is a vital communication tool salespeople use with their contacts and leads. The AutoPylot mobile app provides salespeople a separate phone number to use when contacting contacts and leads and then automatically logs details about each activity directly into the User’s Dynamics account, linked to the appropriate Contact/Lead and Opportunity.
To enable the capture, collection and recording of text messages in Dynamics, the User’s company needs to install the AutoPylot D365 Console app into its Dynamics environment.
The Console App provides several important capabilities required for an AutoPylot User or company to send and receive text messages. (note the Console App is not required to make/receive AutoPylot voice calls). {Texting for Sales Reps/App}.
The Console App provides three main functions:
1. Adds a Text Message view into the company’s Dynamics environment.
This provides AutoPylot Users a consolidated view of all their sent and received text messages. As with any Dynamics environment, the AutoPylot view can be used as is, but companies are expected to incorporate text message capture/recording into their sales workflow.
- Users will want to be able to see text exchanges with Contacts and Leads through the Dynamics web interface
- Sales management will want to incorporate text exchanges into their sales activity trackers
- Corporate management will want to add text conversations to their AI analysis
2. Adds Text-specific data table into a company’s Dynamics environment.
- The Console App adds a Text_Message Data Table to the company’s Dynamics environment. It also adds a few AutoPylot-specific fields to existing data tables, such as User, Contact, and Lead.
- For more detail on the fields and tables, please contact support@autopylot.com.
The first release of the Console App is status/view only. Messages can only be sent/received from the AutoPylot mobile app. In the future, AutoPylot intends to add send/receive capability from within Dynamics via the Console App.
3. Manage the Contact or Lead’s Consent to Text
The AutoPylot service is P2P (Person to Person). It cannot be used for A2P (Application to Person) messaging, which is the source of most unwanted text messages.
However, AutoPylot has implemented comprehensive Consent-to-Text controls, and the consent-to-text is stored in the new field (.ap_consentForTexting) in the Lead and Contact data table to store the value.
If a Lead or Contact ever texts STOP, the AutoPylot system will block the User from Texting this person/number again.
How text messages are managed in Dynamics
Each message, sent or received from the AutoPylot user, is captured in a separate Texting data object.
Each message is then added to the User’s activity log.
A string of messaging, or a text conversation, is related to a specific contact or lead.
Users can use the Text Messaging view to see entire conversations, similar to how text messaging conversations are viewed on smartphones.
Note: The initial release of Texting supports 1:1 messaging between one contact or lead and the User. A future release will support multiparty messaging.
When a message is received by the User, AutoPylot will attempt to match the incoming phone number with the Mobile_Phone field in the User’s existing contacts and leads records.
If there is no match, AutoPylot will create a new lead record to store the message. The User can complete the lead record or, in the case of spam, delete the message from the Dynamics web console (The ability to edit/modify contact/lead records from within the mobile app is a future feature).
The AutoPylot texting system supports receiving shortcode text messages. Any received short code messages will appear as a new lead or be appended to an existing shortcode conversation thread.
Attachments will be supported in a future release.
Considerations for adding the AutoPylot Console App into Dynamics
As Dynamics admins know, adding a new app to the environment is just the first step. Next, Users must be given permission to access/use the capabilities of the new app.
AutoPylot strongly recommends permitting a large group of Users to access the AutoPylot Console app – for example, the entire sales team.
This ensures that if/when any person in this group is added to or signs up for the AutoPylot service through the AutoPylot portal, they will have permission to access the requisite Dynamics data tables and views.
This does not initiate a billing event or assign any Users an AutoPylot mobile phone number.
AutoPylot and Text Message Settings
The AutoPylot Admin Portal (https://portal.autopylot.com) is where most AutoPylot-specific settings are managed. The company’s AutoPylot admin can log in to enable/disable capabilities like Texting. All new AutoPylot users need to be enabled from the Portal.
If you have additional questions, please email support@autopylot.com for more details.