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How-to guides

A how-to is a recipe. You arrive with a specific problem (How do I import contacts from a CSV?), you find the page, you do the steps, you leave. Each guide is short, numbered, and assumes you've already used the product at least once.

If you're new, start with Tutorials instead.

Authentication, devices, and contacts ✅ shipped (Batch 3)​

Recipes for getting your account set up, linking phones, and getting recipient data into the system.

  1. Sign in with Google — OAuth flow, multi-account pitfall, popup blockers, unauthorised-domain error
  2. Register your Android device — install, sign-in matching, confirm on dashboard, re-register
  3. Manage volunteer pool participation — opt in/out, rate cap, authorised accounts list, sync between dashboard and app
  4. Import contacts from a CSV file — column requirements, personalisation tokens, validator output
  5. Grant SMS and Contacts permissions — runtime prompt, recovery from decline, manual Settings path, battery optimisation
  6. Switch SIM on a dual-SIM phone — per-device default, per-job override, OS-level fallback

Sending SMS ✅ shipped (Batch 4)​

Single sends, silent batch sends, templates, drafts, scheduling, retries.

  1. Send a single UI-prompted SMS — when to use UI-prompted vs silent, the system-composer flow, lock-screen behaviour
  2. Send a silent batch SMS — the Android foreground service, why it's mandatory, rate caps, offline queueing, pause/resume/cancel
  3. Use templates — save reusable bodies with {{token}} substitution, apply to single sends or batches, edit/version/delete
  4. Save and reuse drafts — auto-save, manual save with names, cross-device sync, draft-vs-template distinction
  5. Schedule a recurring SMS — Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Custom cron, end-conditions, timezone behaviour, DST handling
  6. Retry failed messages — transient-vs-permanent classification, exponential backoff, manual retry, when retry is the wrong fix

Admin (jobs, batches, rate control) ✅ shipped (Batch 5)​

Create jobs, assign batches, monitor live progress, configure the three-layer rate-limit system, handle partial-send failures, work within the 10-device cap.

  1. Create a job from the admin dashboard — 5 job types unified in one composer, Create on behalf of for admin-role accounts, immutable audit trail
  2. Assign a batch to volunteer devices — auto-assignment weighted by rate cap + freshness, manual override per device, reassign-pending mid-flight
  3. Monitor job + batch progress — four monitoring views (Jobs list, Batch detail, Device detail, Audit log), live per-recipient table, aggregate metrics, filters + CSV export
  4. Configure rate limits — per-batch / per-device / per-account three-layer system + auto-backoff under carrier throttling, fair-use review for raising the per-account ceiling
  5. Handle failures and partial sends — four failure-cluster patterns (per-device, per-region, per-time, per-recipient), decision tree per pattern, Salvage workflow
  6. Enforce the 10-device cap — the hard ceiling on devices per batch, why it exists, what fits inside, Campaign chunking for larger workloads, fair-use review for higher caps

Voice and tone​

How-to guides on this site follow three rules consistently:

  • Numbered steps for the doing. Every recipe has a numbered procedure you can follow without reading the surrounding prose.
  • Honest framing on limits. Each page is candid about what doesn't work — Google Play SMS-permission policy, iOS API limits, ROM-specific battery management, carrier anti-spam thresholds.
  • No fabricated UI. When a label or path is uncertain, the recipe says so explicitly rather than inventing a confident-sounding name.