Send bulk messages using the Bulk Wizard

The Bulk Wizard is built into the Auron Omni Manager but also has its own icon in the Start menu. Use the Bulk Wizard to create fully customized SMS or email bulk messaging campaigns from almost any data source.

You can use campaigns to save different campaigns and run them whenever you need.

These data sources are supported:

• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft Access
• SQL Server
• Any other ODBC compatible database such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Oracle
• LDAP servers or LDAP enabled Active Directory servers
• CSV text files

You can send a bulk mailing to a specific SMS or email channel, or Auron Omni can automatically route messages according to the routing rules you have configured.

Selecting a channel and a data source

A walkthrough of the Bulk Wizard starts with selecting a target channel and a data source.

Bulk Wizard – Select channel

After selecting the channel, you can specify the details of the data source.

Bulk Wizard – Select data source

If you select the MS Excel option, the wizard asks you to specify which Excel sheet to use and which filter to apply.

Bulk Wizard – Excel sheet filter

Sending SMS messages

Bulk Wizard – Format SMS

The next page is different depending on whether you choose SMS or email. For SMS messages, this is what the formatting page looks like.

You can select which column from your data source should be used as the recipient address.

You can format the body text using a combination of static text and fields from your data source. The next screen shows the final message content before sending. It also gives you the option to schedule the SMS messages for a later time.

Sending email messages

Bulk Wizard – Format e-mail

The format page for email looks slightly different from the SMS format page. It also includes extra functionality specific to email messages.

You can provide HTML formatted text only. The Bulk Wizard automatically generates a matching plain text version of the email by removing the HTML formatting.

This is important because spam filters such as SpamAssassin require that the email contains a plain text body that closely matches the HTML content.

Finish

The next step asks you to review the generated messages. Once you complete this step, all messages are created in Auron Omni and are sent at the time they are scheduled.