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A Bookerville member recently asked "Could you add a feature that would text my phone(s) when a reservation is made." The answer is "YES!", and I thought this would be a great topic for our forums as I'm sure there are others who would like to do the same thing.

If you have a phone or other device that you can receive text messages on, then you can configure Bookerville to text you for all (or just certain) emails.

Most carriers (mobile phone service providers) offer a feature that allows anyone to send an email to a certain email address, and the email will be sent to your phone as a text.

The email address is usually in the form of your phone # followed by a standard domain for texting. Here are some common examples:

[Your 10-digit phone number]@txt.att.net       (AT&T)
[Your 10-digit phone number]@vtext.com       (Verizon)
[10-digit phone number]@tmomail.net       (T-Mobile)


And there are others for other carriers, see here for more details: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/email-to-sms/

If you can't find your carrier there, then just call them and ask what email address to use to send an SMS text to your phone.

You can test this yourself by simply sending an email to that address manually, and see if you get the text on your phone.

Once you know the email address to use, it's just a matter of adding that email address as a secondary alert in your Dashboard ==> Account Settings, and/or updating certain Email Templates to copy to that address.

As always, let us know if you need any help.

John Amato

 
5 Responses:

dlxhivac, December 8, 2012:

I don't need to know immediately when someone books my vacation home and regular email works fine for that. I use the email address referenced above for my marketing sites such as VRBO, Homeaway, Flipkey, etc because I want to be notified about and respond to rental inquiries ASAP!
Ruth, October 15, 2013:

This text service is important to me to be alerted in real time thanks. I am just trying to ascertain how the calendar syncing works. Which I understand Bookerville integrates with iCal. I dont know yet how much choice I have with sales channels? I am based in Australia and so some of the sales channels I will use are not mentioned. I will wish to add them and yet sync with the Bookerville calendar. Will I need to find out which ones align with iCal please? Is there a workaround those local to me travel portals which dont have iCal?

If you wish me to place this as a new topic I'm happy to do so. And if it is elsewhere I'm ok if you redirect me?

Cheers Ruth
John Amato, October 16, 2013:

Hi Ruth. "Integration" with various sales channels is a large and complex topic. It might be best to start by listing the specific sales channels you are working with. Yes, finding out which ones support reading an iCal format from a URL, like FlipKey and AirBnB both do (among others), and which ones don't, will also be very helpful. And if they don't, then what other options do they provide for integration.

I assume by integration you mean calendar synchronization, is that right?

John
Ruth, October 16, 2013:

Hi John ok I will investigate the iCal friendly options thank you, and anything else I can uncover, the calendar booking syncing software I have viewed is expensive as an SAAS monthly subscription, but it also acts as a channel manager, I understand that in time I might find it is worth it, to incorporate later into your model, there is another reasonable SAAS calendar option without the channel management that I might trial first once I get up and running in this new iteration.

Yes sychronisation (with Aust spelling)

warm regards Ruth




abracasa, April 27, 2015:

Couldnt this be made to work with WhatsApp, as WhatsApp uses our own phone numbers, I believe its the biggest text call service at this present moment AND its free?
Just a thought

 
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