Communications
How the Communications page combines outbound email, outbound SMS, and inbound SMS replies in one history view.
Open Work > Communications when you want one place to review recent outbound email, outbound SMS, and inbound SMS replies. This page is the shared communications history rather than a single customer or job view.
Who Can Open It
- SMS or email permission: users can open the page when they have either SMS or email access in the currently selected businesses.
- Channel visibility: the page only shows the channels the current user is allowed to use. Someone with SMS only will not see email actions, and someone with email only will not see SMS actions.
- No access warning: if neither permission is available across the current business selection, the page shows a warning instead of the table.
New Message
- New Message: in the page header, opens Who do you want to message? so you can search for and tick the customers.
- Then: the Message Customers Popup opens for them, where you choose whether to email, text or both, write or pick the messages, and preview each one before sending.
Filters And Search
- Business: appears when business filtering is available and lets you narrow the history to one or more businesses.
- Search communications: searches the table for matching communication details.
- Channel, direction, and status: useful when you only want SMS, only email, only inbound replies, or a specific delivery state. Opened (email) and Clicked a link (email) show the emails customers have opened, or clicked a link in.
- Unread Replies: narrows the list to inbound SMS replies that are still unread for you.
- Date range: keeps the list focused on a period without changing the wider app date filters.
How The Table Works
- Rows: each row shows the channel, contact, linked customer or job, summary, status, and time.
- Opened and Clicked: once a customer opens an email, its status says Opened instead of Delivered, and Clicked once they click a link in it. The message's Timeline shows when each first happened. Some email apps load emails automatically, which can count as opened, and emails sent through your own email server under Settings › Email don't report opens at all, so they stay at Sent or Delivered.
- Unread state: unread inbound replies are highlighted in the table and in the unread badge in the app header.
- Live updates: while the page is open, each message’s status moves on by itself as it’s sent, delivered, opened or fails, and new messages and replies appear, without reloading. So does a message you have open.
- Row click: opens the communication detail popup on its Details tab so you can read the full message, then switch to the Conversation tab for related messages and linked customer or job tabs when they exist.
- Open from a notification: when you land here from the unread replies popup, the matching row detail opens automatically.
Replying To A Text
Open a text message and switch to the Conversation tab to reply. The reply box sits under the conversation, and your reply is sent from the same Work Planner number the customer already has, so it continues the thread they are looking at rather than starting a new one.
- Credit cost: the box shows how many characters you have typed and how many SMS credits the reply will use before you send it. Long replies and special characters use more than one credit.
- Send reply: queues the text and adds it to the conversation straight away. Its delivery status updates in the thread as the network confirms it.
- Marked as read: replying counts as reading the message, so the unread badge clears without you also pressing Mark read.
- Plan and credits: if SMS is not on your plan, or you have run out of credits, the reply is refused and the box explains which of the two applies.
- Texts sent from your own phone: messages sent through your handset show a short note instead of a reply box, because the customer replies to your phone rather than to Work Planner.
- Email: email threads have no reply box. Use New Message to send a fresh email instead.
Sending A Message Again
Open an email or text you sent and press Resend email or Resend text at the bottom of the popup. Work Planner asks first, then sends the same message to the same address or number as a new message, so the first one keeps its own history. Its Timeline shows when it was last Sent again.
- Texts: a text sent again uses SMS credits, as it did the first time, and the question says how many.
- Texts sent from your own phone: these are sent from your phone again, so the button is only in the Work Planner app on your phone. Your phone’s messages app, or WhatsApp, opens with the message ready to send.
- Attachments: an invoice, or a document attached in Message Customers, is printed again as it is now. An email with anything else attached isn’t sent without it, so send that one again from Message Customers.
- Invoices: only admins and owners can send an invoice email again, as when it was first sent.
- Customers who have opted out: a customer who has since asked not to be emailed, or not to be texted, isn’t sent it again.
- Payment and Direct Debit links: the message goes exactly as it did, links included. If the customer has used the link since, send a new message from Message Customers instead.
What Appears Here
Outgoing email is shown here from this rollout onward. SMS history includes outbound texts and inbound customer replies. Email is outbound-only in this first version, while SMS can show the full reply-first conversation where Work Planner has been able to match the reply back to a customer or job.
This page is the best place to review mixed-channel history. If you only care about one customer or one job, the dedicated Communications tab on those detail views can be quicker.
Related articles
- Unread Replies Badge: the header popup that brings you into this page when new inbound SMS replies arrive.
- Message Customers Popup: where emails and texts are written and sent from New Message.
- Customer Detail View: the customer-level place to review linked text-message history.
- Job Detail View: the job-level place to review linked text-message history.