Send email & SMS after a call
With an email action or SMS action, your office gets a tidy summary after every call, the on-call engineer is alerted to emergencies, or the caller receives a confirmation by text. This article walks through both actions step by step and ends with a few ready-made recipes.
Both always run After the conversation, so there is no timing to choose. On a call they run once the line drops and the summary is ready; on SMS, WhatsApp and webchat they run once the conversation has ended. For how actions work in general (timings, conditions, variables), see Actions. Creating and changing actions takes the Editor or Admin role.
Email action
- Open the assistant, go to the Tasks tab, open the Actions card and click Add new.
- Choose Email. The Send email side panel opens.
- Give the action a Name. Without a name the action is not saved.
- Fill in the Subject and set the Recipients: Fixed or Chosen by the assistant (see the table).
- Write the Content as a Template, or choose Written by the assistant.
- Optionally fill in the Sender name, and turn off Add the transcript below the email if you don't want the transcript in the email.
- Optionally add a condition.
There is no save button: the panel saves automatically as soon as the action has a name and all recipients are valid.
| Setting | Meaning | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Name | The name in the list of actions, e.g. "Email to support team". Required. | — |
| Subject | Template with variables, e.g. New call: {{outcome}} – {{personNumber}}. Empty = "Summary of the call with" plus the phone number. | Empty |
| Recipients | Fixed: the email goes to every address in the Recipient list. Chosen by the assistant: the assistant picks one address from the Recipient list based on the conversation. | Fixed |
| Recipient list | One or more email addresses, up to 100. Without an address the email is skipped. | Empty |
| Recipient rule | Chosen by the assistant only. For example: "Send to the engineer for the region the caller mentions: North → north@example.com, South → south@example.com. If unsure, send to office@example.com." Put these addresses in the Recipient list too. If the assistant does not pick an address from that list, the email goes to the first address. | Empty |
| Content | Template: fixed text with variables. Empty = the summary of the conversation. Written by the assistant: the assistant writes the subject and the text for each conversation. | Template |
| Sender name | The name the recipient sees, e.g. "Reception, Jansen Plumbing" | Your business name |
| Add the transcript below the email | Adds the full transcript as text at the bottom of the email. It is not a file attachment. | On |
| Under what condition should this run after the conversation? | Empty = after every conversation; otherwise e.g. "Only if the caller left a callback request" | Empty |
The subject can be up to 200 characters, the content 10,000 and the sender name 80.
With Written by the assistant, the AI model uses the conversation and the name of the action. It does not see what you enter under Instructions for the assistant. That text only becomes the content of the email itself if the model returns no text, for example after a conversation in which the caller said nothing.
Without a condition, an action also runs after such a conversation; there is no summary then. An action with a condition is skipped then.
An example body template:
We just had a conversation via {{channel}}.
Number: {{personNumber}}
Name: {{contact.name}}
Outcome: {{outcome}}
Duration: {{durationSeconds}} seconds
Summary:
{{summary}}
Open the conversation in the Inbox: {{conversationLink}}{{channel}} and {{outcome}} appear as technical values, for example voice and resolved. {{contact.name}} stays empty if no contact is linked to the conversation.
Where replies go
Emails are sent through Yarla's verified sender address. When a recipient replies, the reply arrives at your business's Notification email, as long as it is filled in. If it is empty, replies do not reach your business. An admin sets that address under Settings → Team, on the Notifications and availability card.
SMS action
- Open the assistant, go to the Tasks tab, open the Actions card and click Add new.
- Choose SMS. The Send SMS side panel opens.
- Give the action a Name. Without a name the action is not saved.
- Choose the Recipients: The customer, Fixed or Chosen by the assistant.
- Write the Text as a Template, or choose Written by the assistant under Content.
- Optionally add a condition.
Here too there is no save button: the panel saves automatically as soon as the action has a name and all numbers are valid.
| Setting | Meaning | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Name | The name in the list of actions, e.g. "Text to the on-call engineer". Required. | — |
| Recipients | The customer: the number the conversation was with ({{personNumber}}). If there is no number, as in a webchat without a phone number, no text goes out. Fixed: every number in the Recipient list. Chosen by the assistant: the assistant picks a number from the Recipient list or the customer's number based on the conversation. There is no recipient rule for this. If the assistant returns no valid number, the text goes to the customer's number. | The customer |
| Recipient list | Fixed and Chosen by the assistant only. Up to 100 numbers, entered via the country picker (stored as +447700900123). If the list is empty under Fixed, no text goes out. | Empty |
| Content | Template: fixed text with variables. Written by the assistant: the assistant writes a short text for each conversation. The AI model is given a maximum of 300 characters for it. | Template |
| Text | The text of the template, up to 1,000 characters. An empty text is skipped. | Empty |
| Under what condition should this run after the conversation? | Empty = after every conversation | Empty |
With Written by the assistant, the AI model uses the conversation and the name of the action, not what is in Text. That text is only sent if the model returns no text.
You don't set the sender per action. The text goes out from your business's first number with SMS support; see Connect a phone number. If you want customers to see your name instead of a number, turn on Use your name as the sender under Settings → Phone numbers, in SMS sender. A sender name has at most 11 characters (letters, digits and spaces, with at least one letter) and also works without a number with SMS. Customers can't text back to a name. Numbers in the United States and Canada don't show a name: they get the text from your number with SMS, or none if you don't have one. A business in the United States or Canada doesn't get this option.
Keep it short: a text message is made up of segments of about 160 characters, and below the Text field you can see how many characters you have used. A longer message is sent as several segments and arrives as one message. After the variables are filled in, the message is cut off at 1,000 characters. Variables such as {{summary}} can be long; use them in a text to an engineer, not in a confirmation to a customer.
Example: a confirmation to the caller with the callback promise:
Thank you for calling {{company.name}}. We will call you back today on {{personNumber}}. Kind regards, {{assistant.name}}Example: an alert to the on-call engineer:
Emergency via {{assistant.name}}
Caller: {{personNumber}}
{{summary}}
Conversation: {{conversationLink}}SMS needs a suitable number
If your business has no number with SMS support and no sender name, the SMS action is skipped. You can see the result on the conversation in the Inbox: expand Technical details and look under What the actions did. A failed action is shown in red and a skipped action in green, with the reason next to it. If there is no number that can receive a text (no customer number, or the Recipient list is empty under Fixed), nothing goes out and it reads skipped: no number that can receive texts. Buy a number with Voice + SMS, or check under Settings → Phone numbers that the Features column shows SMS.
SMS actions send at most 60 texts an hour per account. Past that, the action is skipped and What the actions did says the hourly text limit was reached.
The email editor
Emails are edited in a side panel that opens when you click an action in the list, or when you choose Email under Add new. It has everything in one place:
- Recipient list with chips: type an address and confirm with Enter, or paste several separated by commas. Invalid addresses are highlighted instead of silently dropped. As long as there is an invalid address, the action is not saved and you can't send a test.
- Recipients: Fixed or Chosen by the assistant, where the assistant picks one of your addresses based on the conversation.
- Content: Template (your own text) or Written by the assistant. If the template is empty, Insert the standard summary template puts a ready-made text in the field.
- Formatting toolbar on the content, for bold, italic, underline, bullet lists and links. The email is sent as HTML with a plain-text version for clients that prefer it. Phone numbers in the message become tap-to-call links.
- Add variable inserts a
{{variable}}at the cursor, in the subject too: built-in variables such as{{personNumber}},{{summary}}and{{conversationLink}}, plus this action's own variables from Custom variables to extract. Preview shows the formatting with the variables highlighted; they are not filled in yet. - Send test mail delivers the current draft, filled with sample conversation data, to your account's email address, with
[Test]in front of the subject. Nothing goes to the configured recipients, and you do not need to save first; the action does need a name. With Written by the assistant, the AI model writes nothing in the test: you see the text from the Instructions for the assistant field.
The same panel exists for SMS, without the Subject, formatting toolbar, Recipient rule, standard template, Sender name and Add the transcript below the email, and with the extra recipient The customer. Send test SMS sends the text with [Test] in front of it to the phone number on your account (My account → Profile) or, if there is none, to the business's Notification phone. Your business needs a number for this. You can send 10 test texts an hour.
Recipes
Email to the office after every call
- Timing: After the conversation, type Email
- Recipients: Fixed,
office@example.com - Subject:
Call {{outcome}} – {{contact.name}} {{personNumber}} - Content: the template above, with Add the transcript below the email on
- Condition: empty
SMS to the on-call engineer for emergencies
- Timing: After the conversation, type SMS
- Recipients: Fixed, the number of the on-call phone
- Custom variable:
urgency, typestring, description "How urgent the complaint is: low, normal or high. High for a leak, no hot water in winter or a smell of gas." - Condition: "Only if the caller left a callback request and the urgency is high"
- Content: the emergency template above, plus the line
Urgency: {{urgency}}
SMS with a booking link to the caller
- Timing: After the conversation, type SMS
- Recipients: The customer
- Condition: "Only if the caller wanted to book an appointment but no appointment was booked"
- Content:
You can pick a time yourself at https://<dashboard-domain>/en/book/<business-slug>/<service-slug>Copy the right link from Booking link in the service under Appointments → Services. How to set up the booking page is covered in Appointments.