Hi Pauline!

Our firm isn’t the greatest at this, but I’m a huge fan of screenshots. I have a button on my house that activates the screenshot program (I personally like ShareX). 
 

I snap a pic capturing the appropriate time stamps and to/from information and it’s automatically copied to my clipboard.

Then I paste it into the appropriate Karbon task/note/timeline.

Does that help at all?

I’m curious how others handle this situation.

Thanks Max, Yep - we have snip & have done similar things.. trouble is it’s about 5 steps  and so the team just doesn't do it… takes away the ‘instant’ part of instant messaging. 

I have been looking at having my own app written that triggers an email to a generic email that can be triaged - but I’m looking at 20K… 

Anyone else got good ideas! 

Karbon - this is an area what I’d really like to hear your ideas on. 

Interesting idea! Have you looked into Twilio? Looks like you might be able to use Zapier to turn replies into emails (https://zapier.com/apps/twilio/integrations):

SAME!  I am a big fan of the screen snip to capture all types of info to add to a note, task or comment but it is not ideal.  We have stayed away from the lure of the instant message with clients but that is not ideal either and I am sure it will not last.  I will be following this thread to see what other amazing ideas show up.

I’m with you on this one I’m always copying stuff from WhatsApp and posting as a note in Karbon.   We really need Karbon to develop an integration with WhatsApp in the same way as they have with emails.    I have asked this as a feature request and

???can everybody here please ask this as a feature request as well please??

Karbon is working on adding the feature requests to this community so that you can make a request, post comments, and get feedback from the product team. It’s not released yet, but it should be coming out soon.

Hi Pauline!

Our firm, doesn’t use WhatsApp and text messaging system. 

But we highly use NimbusNote snipping tool whenever we want to take a screenshot and add it to any Karbon timelines/work items.

This is a big black box for us and I am glad that it was mentioned!  So far we are not tracking any text message communication in Karbon, and that has long been a concern of mine.  I’m liking the suggestions so far.

@max or anyone else…. Have you tried Twilio? I’m thinking it will update contact information but I’m not sure I see whether or not it could convert an instant message to an email and add to a client timeline.

Check out my post above:

I’m not using Twilio for this, but I think all the pieces are there and I have played around with it on a different project.

So using Twilio ( which we already use for business texting) I created a Zap that sends the SMS as an email to a gmail account for our Tax Director, then of course the email lands in Triage and we can then click to add it to a Work or a Contact

I love this and am looking into it for our firm. Can you give a little more detail about how you setup and use Twilio for business?

Sure, I think the easiest way to explain is over a call, lets schedule some time to chat: https://www.synergyworksbest.com/design-schedule

I did some reading on the Twilio site and think I can accomplish the following:

• Text out to clients from a dedicated sms/mms line
• Receive sms/mms as notes in Karbon assigned to a specific person (possibly also attach it to the client’s timeline)
• Redirect incoming calls to the dedicated sms/mms line to our main phone line

Are there other use-cases that I’m missing? I would love to be able to generate sms/mms from Karbon. Perhaps there’s a way by using outgoing email with a + code (smsemail+15555551234@gmail.com) and some Zapier handling. This email could be added to the client so that it’s a possible recipient when selecting a contact in Karbon.

What do y’all think?

I scheduled a time to chat with you.

We have solved this sort of! Our soft phone system also allows text messaging & all text RECEIVED only are sent via email to one email only… So not perfect by any means but at least I have ½ an audit trail … Really I’d jus love it as a feature in Karbon… Power Diary can do it! Surely there is a way? 

You can use Email to Text functionality. No 3rd party software needed.
 

Note: I only know this specifically works in the US and CAN.
This functionality has been out for years but few people seem to know about it.

@Paul McCarthy I learned about this years ago. The MMS email addresses usually have much larger limits for text length.

The one hang-up for me was finding the correct carrier, because that’s important. I wonder if there’s a carrier discovery api available to automatically add phone number email text messages to contacts when cellphone numbers are added in the business card section.

On the whole, I would love a Twilio or some such integration to Karbon to allow text communication by design, but this is a great first start.

Some interesting information here: SO Post

I haven’t looked into any of the resources listed, but the data247 website is up and still charges 12/mo to look up the carrier of phone numbers via api.

I never had a length problem when using it but I’m also fairly straightforward in my comms.

I use that free service as a manual action so someone has to look it up. I typically recommend not sending an email and texting as I hate when people both text and email me and blow up my phone as it’s annoying as hell. Preference is email because of the threading but if someone wants a text there are options.

 

We’re thinking of using texting as a means of escalation.

• email first
• phone call to follow-up
• text client tasks
• certified letter (lol, some of our clients like to wait to the last minute)

I was always a little bit more ruthless in terms of ‘dormant clients’. Rule was if you hadn’t heard from a client in a month/all the client task reminders ran out it was a phone call from a manager re: are you moving on?