Creating a Shortcut: Mass message

[@deansy]

you're a god damn legend.

[@connortuckrealtor]

Happy to help!

[@michaelfreund]

thank you so much. so appreciated.

[@BlakeRindlisbacher]

how do I increase the limit of contacts that I can send an automated message to. It points me to settings, but I can't find anything there.

[@alicebrown6344]

Hey Conner, Is it possible to send a photograph in a mass text individually

[@connortuckrealtor]

Hey there, as far as a photograph to be sent - There is a 'Find Photos' action you can add to the shortcut. However, adding that into the actual text itself would be slightly outside of my scope!

[@atmasinghsidhu4680]

Thank you Connor Tuck. Great explanation. However it cannot send text messages via WhatsApp. I reckon need some tweaking.

[@connortuckrealtor]

Unfortunately, this is an apple messages only solution. There may be a separate workaround with Whatsapp using a different program but underneath All Actions in Shortcuts there is nothing that specifically links to Whatsapp. Sorry about that!

[@brujah88]

If you have multiple numbers for people, is there a way to isolate just the numbers the have the label “mobile” and “iPhone”, so that you are not trying to send a text to a landline, fax, etc?

[@connortuckrealtor]

Great question. The best way that I could think of organizing that would be on the icloud contacts page. If you create a custom group, you can sort only those people who are iPhone into the group you want to use to avoid any of that accidental landline sending in the future. As far as having the Shortcuts app make that selection for you, inside of the first Find Feature of the shortcut, there is a 'Filter' option, however the only ways to Filter are: First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, Phone Numbers, Email Addresses, Street Addresses, URLs, Birthday, Has Photo, Has No Photo, Prefix, Suffix, Nickname, Phonetic First Name, Phonetic Last Name, Phonetic Middle Name, Company, Job Title, Department, Notes, File Extension, Creation Date, File path, Last Modified Date, Name. One of the ways people use this shortcut is to load a list of phone numbers they want to prospect too. It's possible that when you get those lists there are landlines associated so unless you could vet the list on the way in that problem will be a common issue. **Reminder to always scrub your lists if using for that purposes against the Do Not Call List and make sure all soliciting is TCPA compliant.**

[@1krystal2]

Hi Connor thanks for the video. I'm running into an issue where I have contacts saved to my phone, however when I am on icloud to create the group, the contact names of who I want to assign to the group in icloud don't appear. But they appear on my phone. do u know why this could be happening ?

[@brung3]

Can you add photos?

[@connortuckrealtor]

Hey there, yes. It's a slightly different process, however, as part of the process of building your shortcutyou are able to use actions like, 'Find Photo' & 'Select Photo' as actions in your overall Shortcut. I'll be honest, I don't have an immediate example of X,Y, Z in how to complete it but if you figure it out, tag me and I'll promo your video as an add on : )

[@Alison6783]

I need to do this with multiple people who are not in my contacts and the group members change daily. How do I do this? I don’t want to add them I just sent the same message to like 50 people

[@connortuckrealtor]

This method is really geared towards having a true Group set up in your iCloud. You might want to take a look at another database option that would allow for more active tagging/untagging or applicable recipients.

[@jeffgraham88m]

Can you do one for emails

[@connortuckrealtor]

Hey there - you might be looking for something like an Auto Email sender. If so, check out Constant Contact. That's a company that you can create templates internally and send to an automated list. I don't have any affiliation with them but I know they do that service. From my knowledge, not a great way to utilize the shortcuts app for apple mail, although, I could be proved wrong!

[@NozanderMusic]

what happens if my shortcut suddenly doesnt send messages to android users. How can I get it to work when sending to an android user because after selecting a group of around 190 contacts, It sends to all people on imessage but for the android users it says "message send failure"

[@connortuckrealtor]

Hey there - it sounds like you are trying to send an imessage to android users. You are correct, that will result in an error. See if it allows you the option to 'send as text message' instead. That should work!

[@NozanderMusic]

@@connortuckrealtor Alright sounds good, thanks for your help. I feel dumb now because I noticed within the actual settings for the messages application, I had SMS disabled which when enabled, means it will send it as a text message when iMessage is unavailable (which is the scenario where you try to send to an android user). So, to anybody creating the shortcut, be sure to have SMS enabled for allowing the ability to be sending to android users as well as as Apple users.

[@210nitrous]

How can I do this with WhatsApp?

[@connortuckrealtor]

At minute market 7:30, there is an app selection in which to send something. If Whatsapp appears there, you should be able to simply select Whatsapp instead of iMessages. ** I have not attempted this myself, however, that would be the most logical spot inside of the existing flow to achieve that result. If it works for you, let us know how you managed it so others can learn! Great question.