SMS Senders

The SMS Senders settings control which sender an SMS campaign sends from. A sender is either a phone number or an alpha sender ID from your Twilio messaging service. An Org Admin picks a sender strategy for the organisation and, when relevant, curates the list of senders Campaigners are allowed to use.

Org Admin only

SMS Senders is part of Outreach Settings and is only available to Org Admins. No other role can view or change the sender strategy or the available sender list. A Campaigner only chooses from the senders an Org Admin has approved, and only when the Sender Selection strategy is active.

Prerequisites

SMS Senders builds on top of your Twilio connection. Before you can choose a strategy or pick senders:

• A valid Twilio Account SID and Auth Token must be saved (see SMS Configuration).
• A Messaging Service SID must be configured.

Until both are in place, the SMS Senders panel shows a prompt to add and verify your Twilio authentication credentials before choosing senders, and the Edit button is disabled. If no Messaging Service is set, the panel explains that one is required before senders can be managed.

Choosing a Strategy

1. Log in to the NeonNow Admin app as an Org Admin.
2. Navigate to Outreach → Settings → SMS.
3. Find the SMS Senders panel and click Edit.
4. Choose a strategy, then click Save.

There are two strategies:

Strategy	Who picks the sender	Description
Sender Pool	Twilio (automatic)	Twilio automatically selects a sender from your messaging service pool for each run. Campaigners do not choose a sender.
Sender Selection	Campaigner	Every message in a campaign is sent from a single sender chosen by the Campaigner. Org Admins control which senders are selectable.

Sender Pool is the simplest option and suits most organisations: Twilio spreads sending across the pool and manages sender selection for you. Sender Selection is for organisations that need every message in a campaign to come from a known, consistent sender (for example, a number recipients recognise or an alpha ID registered for a specific use).

Managing Available Senders (Sender Selection)

When Sender Selection is active, an Available Senders list appears. This is the set of senders Campaigners can choose from when creating or editing a campaign.

• The list is drawn from the phone numbers and alpha sender IDs in your Twilio messaging service pool.
• Toggle individual senders on or off to add or remove them from the Campaigner-selectable list.
• Only senders you add to this list can be chosen on a campaign.

Senders No Longer in the Pool

If a sender on your Available Senders list is no longer present in the Twilio messaging service pool (for example, it was released or moved in Twilio), it is highlighted with a warning icon. This is a prompt to review your selection and remove or replace the sender, because runs using a missing sender cannot start (see Sender validation).

Changing Strategy

Changing the sender strategy affects the whole organisation, so a blocking confirmation modal is always shown before the change is saved. The modal content and behaviour differ depending on the direction of the change.

Sender Pool → Sender Selection

Under Sender Selection a sender has to be in place everywhere one is used, so the confirmation covers three tabs: Campaigns, Templates and Brands.

Each tab lists only the items that have no sender, or a sender that is no longer available, so what needs attention is all that is listed. Anything that already holds an available sender is left out. For every listed item, select a sender from the dropdown. The change cannot be saved until each listed item, on each of the three tabs, has an available sender.

When you confirm:

• The selected sender is saved on each item.
• Any of a campaign's runs in a Scheduled or Ready to Run state have the campaign's sender applied to them, so pending runs become valid without a Campaigner editing each one.
• Complete or In Progress runs are not affected. They keep the sender they already sent, or are sending, with.

Sender Selection → Sender Pool

Switching to Sender Pool means new campaigns no longer require a sender to be chosen, because Twilio allocates one from the pool for each run. A blocking modal warns that existing campaigns and runs already have a sender assigned, and that campaigns created from now on will not require one. It confirms:

• Existing campaigns and runs are not disrupted. No campaigns are flagged, no runs are blocked, and runs that already exist continue unchanged.
• The sender saved on a campaign, template or brand is kept but unused while Sender Pool is in effect. It is not shown in the campaign edit wizard or the run creation flow, so a Campaigner is never offered a sender choice that does not apply.
• If you later switch back to Sender Selection, those saved senders are restored.

Sender Validation

When Sender Selection is active, the chosen sender is validated against both Twilio and your Outreach Available Senders list. Validation happens when a run is started, not when it is created, so a temporary sender problem never blocks a Campaigner from preparing work.

The check runs twice:

1. When start is clicked. The sender is validated immediately and, if it is unavailable, an error is shown there and then. The run is left unstarted in Ready to Run and no email is sent, so the problem can be fixed while still in context.
2. When sending is due to begin. The sender is checked again, at the end of the warming-up window for a run started now, or at the scheduled time for a run started later or created automatically. If the sender has been removed in the meantime, the run moves to Setup Failed and an email is sent to the campaign owner.

The second check covers automatically created runs, which have no one watching at the point they start. See Unavailable senders for the run-side behaviour.

Throughput and Rate Limiting

The sender strategy also affects how throughput is calculated:

• With Sender Pool, throughput is based on the senders available in the pool. Adding a sender to the Twilio messaging service increases capacity straight away, with no further configuration in Outreach.
• With Sender Selection, throughput and rate limiting are calculated per sender. A run on a sender with no other active runs starts sending immediately and is not queued behind runs on other senders. Multiple runs sharing the same sender share that sender's throughput between them.

See Campaigns Overview for how this shapes the order in which runs and messages send.

Next Steps

• SMS Configuration. Connect Twilio before managing senders.
• Creating a Campaign. Where Campaigners choose a sender under Sender Selection.
• Campaign Runs. How runs send messages and where sender validation applies.