Staff SMS Contact Sync Case Study

The Business Problem

Otsuka already used FireText, a UK text messaging service, to send messages to groups of staff. But its staff list lived in its Microsoft work directory, where people join, leave and change teams all the time. Keeping FireText's contact lists in step by hand would mean someone retyping names and numbers, and it would never be quite up to date. In a real emergency, such as a cyber attack that took email offline, an out-of-date list would leave people without the updates they needed.

The Solution

wildesoft.net built a small cloud service that copies Otsuka's chosen staff groups from its Microsoft directory into FireText automatically.

Every Sunday morning the service reads each group and its members, creates the matching group in FireText if it doesn't exist yet, and refreshes it. It adds new staff as contacts, updates anyone whose details have changed, and puts each person into every group they belong to. Someone who sits in two teams appears once, in both groups.

Phone numbers are tidied into a standard UK mobile format first. Where someone has a work mobile listed as their business phone, that number is used before any other. Mint can also run the sync on demand, for example straight after a reorganisation.

The Result

Otsuka's text messaging lists now follow its staff directory without anyone touching them. New starters are included, leavers drop out and team changes carry across each week, so the list is ready whenever an urgent message has to go out.

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