Introduction:

All MSPs already have a phone number that their customers are familiar with - and some of those customers already text their MSP through that phone number.

While MSP Process offers a custom phone number for text-to-ticketing, there are scenarios where MSPs don't want to have to educate their customers to use a new phone number just for text message purposes.

There is a feature in MSP Process that lets our Partners configure a phone number - that they already have in their own Twilio account - be the phone number that their customers can use for text-to-ticketing.

Linking MSP Process to your Twilio Account

1. Login to the MSP Process UI (https://mspprocess.com) as an Admin-level account
2. Navigate to the Account Settings -> Twilio Account page
3. Click the Add New button
4. Specify a Name for this Twilio account, and the Account SID and Auth Token (these can be found in the Account Dashboard page of your Twilio account) 
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5. Click the Test button; once it's confirmed as successful, click the Submit button

Selecting a Phone Number from your Twilio Account

1. To view the list of phone numbers that are available in your Twilio account, click on the green eyeball icon in the Actions column:
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2. To make a specific phone number available as a text-to-ticket number, just click on the icon in the Actions column

Using Your Phone Number for Text-to-Ticketing

1. Once the phone number has been imported from your Twilio account, navigate to the Messaging -> Configurations page
2. Click the Add button
3. You'll be able to select your Twilio phone number from the Phone Number drop-down menu:
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4. When you're ready, click Submit!

To initiate an SMS Conversation from within MSP Process portal following the instructions below: 

Go to Ticketing -> PSA Ticketing as shown below and click the three dots next to any open ticket at the far right and choose Add SMS Channel. 

Click on the View Icon shown below to see the details about the ticket and SMS chat.

Our SMS Conversation templates allow you to create templates for use when creating a ticket and enabling SMS. 

Click on SMS -> SMS Conversations as shown below.

From templates you can Add, Edit, Clone or delete existing templates. 

Adding an SMS Channel allows you to create a ticket and enable an SMS chat between you and the contact for the company. 

** IMPORTANT NOTE ** The system will use the ticketing defaults that are setup for that SMS Channel so that you don't have to select them each time. This allows you to generate tickets more quickly with less selections. 

To enable an SMS Channel go to Messaging -> SMS Channels

Click Add at the top right

Once you click Add then select the Company, Contact and a template or manually type in your subject and message. You can also create templates and use those for faster ticket creation. 

Our SMS Channel Configuration Options give you control over how you interact with your customers over SMS. For instance you may not want to allow them to send inbound SMS to create a support ticket depending on your workflows. In this case you can initiate the first SMS and allow the user to respond. Most MSPs are going to a two-way approach allowing their customers to send in tickets this way. It improves time to resolution by allowing customers to communicate on a platform they use all day long, SMS. 

How to Configure SMS Channels

Go to Messaging -> Configurations -> Add

CRM - Choose the PSA you intend to use that you've already setup under integrations. If you are an MSP or provider with more than 1 PSA you can utilize multiple ones and setup separate configurations for each. 

CRM Defaults - Choose your PSA Defaults that the system will use when a user sends in a ticket it will route to the board/queue with proper settings you've selected. 

Phone Number - Select one our avaialble phone numbers or request a new number with your own area code to use. This number can be utilized to send outbound SMS and receive inbound SMS to automatically generate tickets. 

Notification Group - Our Notification groups can be setup for On Call Scheduling to notify the technician on call via Email, SMS, Phone Call and Mobile App (coming soon). 

Allow Users to Create Channels - This allows your customers to send an SMS to your phone number above to generate a ticket and SMS channel. 

Confirm Messages to User - This setting means anytime a user sends in a message, they receive a confirmation text that the system received it and the ticket was updated. The system will by default send them back a message with their ticket info and instructions on the first SMS back to the user. 

Put Channels link to ticket - This adds a link to the SMS chat in MSP Process right into the ConnectWise ticket so the technician can easily click right into the SMS chat.