Once field sharing, bulk messaging becomes available from the Message inbox. Sending a bulk message is easy - you simply pick the program that is sending the message, the audience you want to receive the message, compose your message and schedule it to go out.

To start a bulk message, click the New Message button on the top right of the inbox. If the button is not there, contact your administrator to see if they've finished setting up field sharing.

Now you should see the bulk message composer.

Composing your Message

Step 1: Select your program

First, you'll need to pick the program that your message will be sent from. The dropdown will give you the list of available programs. If what you're looking for is not in the dropdown, reach out to your administrator to confirm that field sharing has been configured and that bulk messaging is enabled.

Step 2: Select your audience

Next is selecting your audience. You can pick any combination of people, groups, the results of a report or the members of a campaign. Just start typing and you'll see options for each that match your keyword.

People

You can select any number of individual people to send a message to. The record type available is configured by your administrator, but typically you'll find Contacts, Opportunities or Leads available here.

Groups

Groups are your Message groups or caseloads. The available groups will match the groups you see in your sidebar filters. Like People, the available groups are configured by your administrator.

Reports

You can send also send to the results of a report. As long as the report has been created and the record Id is the first column in your report, you'll find that report in the dropdown. This is the most common way to set your audience.

Campaigns

If you're using Salesforce Campaigns, you can send to the members of any campaign you have running. Just pick the campaign from the dropdown. Note that while Message can target members of a campaign, we cannot yet report those messages back in the Campaign record. We hope to do so in the future.

Step 3: Compose Your Message

You've probably already guessed, but now you can compose the message you want to send. You have up to 1600 characters and can include emoji, images and merge fields if you want to personalize the message. Avoid using shortened links - the carriers largely block them these days.

Step 4: Delivery

You can send the message now or you can schedule it for a later date. To schedule the message, just click the later option and select a date and time.

Step 5: Confirmation

Once you've clicked next, you'll see a confirmation screen that allows you to review your message before it's sent. And that's it - once you confirm, your message will be sent (or scheduled) and you can monitor your inbox for incoming replies!