Crewdex

Who this is for: Business owners and administrators
Time to learn: 10 minutes
What you'll master: Understand how SMS notifications work, configure Twilio, and manage customer opt-outs

Overview

Crewdex can send automated SMS messages to your customers for:

Booking confirmations — sent when a customer submits a service request via your booking portal
24-hour job reminders — sent the day before a scheduled appointment
48-hour job reminders — sent two days before a scheduled appointment

SMS notifications keep customers informed without requiring any manual effort from your team.

Setup Requirements

SMS requires a Twilio account. You'll need:

A Twilio account
A purchased Twilio phone number
Set the following environment variables on your server:
- TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID — your Twilio Account SID
- TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN — your Twilio Auth Token
- TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER — your Twilio phone number (e.g. +15551234567)

Once these variables are set, SMS will be active for all tenants who have SMS notifications enabled in their settings.

How It Works

SMS messages are sent from the Twilio phone number configured in your environment
Messages include your business name in the signature (configurable in Settings → Communication & Notifications → SMS Signature)
Do Not Disturb hours are respected — no SMS is sent outside your configured business hours (Settings → Communication & Notifications → Do Not Disturb)
Reminder messages are dispatched automatically by the background job scheduler at appropriate intervals before each appointment

Configuring SMS Preferences

Navigate to Settings → Communication & Notifications to:

Enable or disable each SMS notification type individually (booking confirmations, 24h reminders, 48h reminders)
Set your SMS Signature — the business name that appears at the end of each message
Configure Do Not Disturb start and end times to prevent messages being sent outside business hours

Customer Opt-Out

Customers can reply STOP to any SMS to opt out
Opted-out customers are tracked and will not receive further SMS messages
The smsOptIn status is visible on the customer's profile page in Crewdex

Opt-outs are handled automatically by Twilio and are respected on all future messages.

Development / Testing

When TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID, TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN, or TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER are not set, the system operates in mock mode — SMS messages are logged to the server console but not actually sent. This is safe for local development and staging environments.

You can confirm mock mode is active by checking your server logs; mocked messages appear as:

[SMS MOCK] To: +15551234567 | Message: "Hi Jane, your appointment with Acme HVAC is confirmed..."

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely Cause	Fix
No SMS being sent	Missing env vars	Check `TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID`, `TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN`, `TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER` are set
SMS sent but not received	Wrong phone format	Ensure `TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER` is E.164 format (e.g. `+15551234567`)
Customer not receiving reminders	Do Not Disturb active	Check DND hours in Communication & Notifications settings
Customer stopped receiving SMS	Opt-out triggered	Customer replied STOP; this cannot be overridden
Mock mode in production	Env vars missing	Confirm all three Twilio env vars are present in your deployment

SMS Notifications