URL shortening for Twilio SMS or MMS support?
Hello, I deployed the Twilio extension and have been trying to include a cancellation link in the text messages, in case customers need to cancel their appointments. However, the cancellation links created by Easy Appointments are very long, so the messages with the cancellation links exceed the character size limit of SMS (160 characters). The message therefore gets chopped into multiple messages by Twilio, which means the cancellation URL gets broken into multiple messages. The result is that, not only do multiple SMS texts get sent to the customer, the broken-up cancellation URL won't work when tapped (because it's no longer a full URL).
I can think of three possible solutions:
- Integrating URL shortening into the Easy Appointment product. This would be useful when including confirmation/cancellation links in the e-mails as well.
- Identifying when text messages exceed the 160 character limit of SMS and sending them as MMS instead. Twilio has built-in messaging shortening support for MMS messages, but not for SMS.
- Adding multiple SMS support in Easy Appointments Twilio plug-in. By this, I mean that a standard Pending/Reservation/Canceled/Confirmed/Reminder text (160 characters and under) can be sent, immediately followed by a second text that can contain the cancellation link (or other additional message). Cancellation and confirmation links are long but not over 160 characters by themselves.