What’s in a Message?

There really is a lot more to a message than what one might typically think.

The typical everyday messaging we think about might include basics like phone calls, SMS text messages and emails. The common denominators of channels such as these include just a few basic aspects: sender, recipient, message, and perhaps subjects and/or attachments.

But what if, for example, you wanted to send a message to a team member about a task that needs to be done by 1pm? After 1pm, the message, as originally conceived, either becomes irrelevant or another totally different message needs to be sent. In this example, another aspect — say, expiration — comes into play.

Now, as another example, what if you are sending a message to multiple people — some of which may have hearing or visual challenges? Obviously emails or phones, alone, may not get your message across to all of your recipients. So, let’s add another aspect: media type (e.g. flashing lights, beeps, or text-to-speech).

Here’s a simple self-explanatory one, that no other solution has really seemed to address, but we all want: scheduled message sending! We even want to simply schedule a text-message on our phones from time to time, right? (at least, I know I do)

Within Connections’ message definition editor, a message can be defined in all of these ways, and more. In fact, this one single screen arguably has the most options of any other screen in our product… and for good reason.

I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg, here; but suffice it to say, truly effective messaging needs to consider many more things than we are used to thinking about.

If you want to learn more, please take a look, particularly, at some of our case-study videos, in which existing customers explain the unique ways they use their Connections system, in real life.

Our features page also provides some insightful examples.