Troubleshooting: SMS and email
With an SMS action or email action your assistant sends a message to the caller or to your team after the conversation. When a message doesn't arrive, the cause is usually the sending number, the recipient or the rule that determines the address. Below are the most common problems.
To see what happened to an action, open the conversation in the Inbox, expand Technical details and look under What the actions did. A failed action is shown in red, with the error message next to it. A sent action is shown in green with sent to and the recipient, and a skipped action is also green with skipped: and the reason. These texts are always in English. Green means the message was handed to the provider, not that it was delivered: this screen doesn't show whether an SMS or email actually arrived after that.
Symptoms, causes and fixes
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| SMS is not delivered | Your business has no number that can send SMS | Get a number with SMS and test it with Send test SMS |
| SMS to the United States fails | 10DLC registration missing | Contact us about the 10DLC registration |
| No SMS for anonymous callers | No number is known | No SMS arrives; a condition isn't needed and can backfire |
| SMS is cut short | Message is longer than 1,000 characters after the variables are filled in | Use fewer long variables and keep the message short |
| Emails don't arrive | Spam folder, typo in the address, wrong recipient rule output or a condition that wasn't met | Check spam, whitelist the sender, check the action result |
| Recipient rule picks the wrong address | Rule is ambiguous, or the address isn't in the Recipient list | Write explicit mappings and put every address in the list |
| Assistant-written content is too long | The AI model doesn't see your instructions | Use Template with variables |
| Recipient gets your instructions as the message | The AI model couldn't write a text, and then the text in the field goes out | Give the action a condition, or write a text in the field that also works as a message |
| Reply to an email goes nowhere | Replies go to your business's Notification email | Check that address under Settings → Team |
| Message contains empty variables | Variable isn't defined or had no value | Check the name, define the variable on an action or use a built-in one |
An SMS is not delivered
An SMS is sent from the first number of your business with SMS in the Features column, or with your name if you set a sender name (see Email and SMS). You don't choose the sender per action. With neither, the action is skipped with skipped: business has no SMS-capable number or sender name. With only a sender name, a number in the United States or Canada gets nothing: skipped: a sender name cannot text +1 numbers and the business has no SMS-capable number.
Whether a number can send SMS depends on its type and country. Landline numbers (such as 020 or 0161) often can't, and neither can a number you only forward to your Yarla number.
- Go to Settings → Phone numbers and check whether a number shows
SMSin the Features column. - If not, have an admin buy a number via Add number: under Type choose Mobile, for example, and under Features choose Voice + SMS, click Search numbers and then Order. This requires an active subscription.
- Open the SMS action on the assistant's Tasks tab and click Send test SMS. The test goes to the phone number on your account or, if there is none, to the business's notification phone number.
SMS in the column is no guarantee: a bought number always shows it, even if you searched for Voice only, and a registered number shows it if Supports SMS was on. So register a forwarded number with Supports SMS off. Changing this later means removing the number and registering it again, which only an admin can do.
An SMS to the United States fails
Business SMS to US numbers requires 10DLC registration of your business. Without it, messages are rejected by the US networks, and the action result doesn't always show that. You don't arrange this registration in the dashboard: contact us before using SMS actions for US numbers.
No SMS for anonymous callers
If someone chats on your website without giving a phone number, or calls with a withheld number, there is no number to send an SMS to and nothing goes out. The action then shows in green with skipped: no number that can receive texts.
A condition on the caller's number doesn't help. A condition is judged on the text of the conversation, and the caller's number isn't in that text. Such a condition can even stop callers with a known number from getting the SMS. If your team needs to know about these conversations too, add an email action or an SMS action with Fixed under Recipients.
An SMS is cut short
An SMS is cut off at 1,000 characters, after the variables are filled in. Variables such as {{summary}} and {{plainTranscript}} can be long, so don't use them in a message whose ending matters.
An SMS also consists of segments of about 160 characters (fewer with emoji and some special characters). Longer messages are sent in several segments and most phones show them as one message. Directly under the Text label, above the field, you can see how many characters you've used. That counter counts the text as you type it, so {{summary}} counts as 11 characters, not as the summary that goes in its place. Keep the text short and businesslike.
Emails don't arrive
Emails are sent from Yarla's verified sender address, so the sender is rarely the problem. First check the recipient's spam folder and whitelist our sender address. You can see that address in a test mail: click Send test mail in the action.
Then open the action result on the conversation in the Inbox, as described at the top of this article:
sent towith an address: that's where the email was sent, so a typo or a wrong outcome of the recipient rule is immediately visible.skipped: condition not met: the condition wasn't met or couldn't be judged. After a conversation in which the customer said nothing, an action with a condition is always skipped.skipped: no recipient: the Recipient list is empty.- No line for the action: the action was switched off, or the conversation hasn't finished yet. Actions only run once the conversation is over. On SMS, WhatsApp and webchat, that is only when the assistant ends the conversation or someone clicks End conversation.
The recipient rule picks the wrong address
If you choose Chosen by the assistant under Recipients, the assistant uses your Recipient rule to pick one address from the Recipient list. The rule must then be unambiguous. Write out explicit mappings: "Postcodes starting with M: manchester@example.com; all others: leeds@example.com; if in doubt: info@example.com". Keep the following in mind:
- Put every address from your rule in the Recipient list as well. If the assistant doesn't pick an address from that list, the email goes to the first address. So put your fallback address at the top.
- The choice is based on the text of the conversation. A postcode only counts if it was mentioned in the conversation.
- An SMS action has no recipient rule. With Chosen by the assistant, the assistant picks a number from the Recipient list or the customer's number, based on the conversation.
See Send email & SMS after a call.
Assistant-written content is too long
If you choose Written by the assistant under Content, the AI model writes the text based on the conversation and the action's name. It doesn't see what you enter under Instructions for the assistant (for an SMS: under Text), so a length requirement there has no effect. For an SMS the model is given a maximum of 300 characters, for an email none.
To control what the message contains and how long it gets, choose Template and work with variables such as {{summary}}. Details from the conversation, such as an address, can be collected with Custom variables to extract. If an email is long mainly because of the transcript below it, switch off Add the transcript below the email.
The recipient gets your instructions as the message
If the AI model couldn't write a text, for example because the customer said nothing or the analysis of the conversation failed, the text from Instructions for the assistant (for an SMS: from Text) goes out as the message, with the variables filled in. So a recipient can end up reading "Write a short job sheet".
Give such an action a condition, because without an analysis an action with a condition is skipped. Or write a text in the field that also works as a message. If the field is empty, an SMS is skipped with skipped: empty text and an email contains the summary of the conversation, if there is one.
A reply to an email goes nowhere
Emails are sent from our platform address, but replies from recipients go to your business's Notification email. At first that is the email address of whoever created the business. Change it if needed under Settings → Team, on the Notifications and availability card, and make sure it is a mailbox somebody actually reads. Only an admin can change this; the change saves automatically. If the field is empty, a reply goes to our sender address and doesn't reach you.
The message contains empty variables
If there is a blank where a name or order number should be, the variable had no value. You don't get an error for this: an unknown variable is simply filled in as empty.
- Custom variable: it must be listed under Custom variables to extract on an enabled action, with exactly the same name as in your template. Give it a clear description. The variable only gets a value if that value was mentioned in the conversation.
- Built-in variable: this can be empty too, for example
{{personNumber}}in a chat without a phone number,{{contact.name}}if no contact belongs to the conversation and{{company.address}}if you don't share your address.
Insert variables with Add variable to avoid typos. See Actions.
Still stuck?
Can't find your problem here, or did the fix not help? Let us know via Report a problem and include the link to the conversation, the receiving number or address and the time.