How to send a Texting Campaign using Ocelot

Ocelot Texting

Login and Access

You can access the Ocelot admin portal from sso.imperial.edu if you have the needed permissions assigned. If you do not see the Ocelot Bot Admin icon or the menu items displayed in this article, please submit a TDX ticket to request the appropriate Ocelot access from the Technical Support menu. The appropriate administrator will need to approve the requested access.

Important: Only the PIO office is permitted to send text campaigns to the entire student population. Department access is intended for special population text message campaigns that go to one or more students, but not the entire student population. The intended department use is for targeted marking and information sharing.

Step 1

Step 2

From the Ocelot menu, select Contact Management.

Step 3

Select Contact Lists from the Contact Management sub-menu.

Preparing the Contact List for Import

Step 4

Prepare your contact list for import. It needs to have the fields below but can have additional fields. If you want to customize your message to include the student's first name, you will want the first and last name separated into different columns. Phone numbers should be 10 digits without any symbols, dashes, etc. International numbers are not accepted.

Step 5

Save the file in comma-delimited format (.csv)

Importing the Contact List into Ocelot

Step 6

Once the list is prepared, click the blue plus icon in the bottom-right corner to import.

Step 7

Select to choose the file and locate where you saved your contact list. It must be saved as CSV to appear for selection.

Step 8

Map your file fields to the data fields provided. If your file has a header row (title row), toggle the Header Row on, and it will display those titles for you to match up. You will need at very least the phone number, but highly recommended to also include and map the ID and name fields.

Step 9

Name your file and add any desired tags to easily find later.

Step 10

Hit Create Contact List in the bottom-right corner to complete the import.

Step 11

Ocelot will process the file and inform you how many contacts were successfully identified and imported. If any were rejected, they will be provided for you to download and review. Click DOWNLOAD CSV to download the list. Common rejections include duplicate phone numbers (it will remove them so that a number is not sent a text message multiple times in one campaign).

Step 12

Hit FINISH to complete the import.

Step 13

You now should be able to view the contact list you created. If needed, use the search bar to search for the list name you provided.

Preparing your Texting Campaign

Step 14

From the menu on the left, select Texting and then Active Campaigns.

Step 15

Click the plus sign in the top-right next to your profile image.

Step 16

Select Create Campaign from the pop-up menu.

Step 17

Choose whether you want to create a campaign from a previous campaign, using the Ocelot Library, or from scratch. The Ocelot Library includes several pre-build campaigns with smart fields included geared toward students based on topic. If you have not checked it out, it is encouraged!

Step 18

After you have made your choice, you will be prompted to select the contact list you created.

Step 19

Build your campaign message. Remember to use smart fields if you want to personalize the message. These fields could be first name, college name, department name, or whatever pre-build fields are provided (those are configured by the Ocelot admin).

It is important NOT to make the message too long, or it will send in multiple messages. You can tell based on the bubble display on the right.
Select the appropriate campus & office from the menu
Add tags for easy look-up later
Select what inbox(es) you want text responses to go to when received. This could be an office or individual inbox. This inbox is in the Ocelot Bot Admin application and should be checked frequently during a campaign by the office assigned in this step.
Select SAVE CAMPAIGN

Step 20

Select the appropriate settings for your campaign.

You can select to either launch immediately or at a designated date and time.
You can select whether you want the bot to respond to replies, or if you want to manually respond (which is agent). IT IS IMPORTANT TO SELECT THIS BEFORE YOU LAUNCH. If you change your mind after launch, you have to adjust the setting one contact at a time! It is encouraged to select BOT as the campaign type, to allow the bot to first attempt to respond. If the bot does not know how to answer the question, it will move the message to the agent inbox for response. This will greatly reduce the potential response traffic you will need to reply to.
Select how long you want this campaign to be active and take responses by selecting an Archive Date.
Review the remaining settings and confirm they are as desired.
Select a provisioning phone number (this will be the number the message is sent from).
After reviewing your setup to make sure it is complete, you can select to LAUNCH the campaign.

Step 21

For provisioned phone numbers, if there is one assigned to a department, you can select that department. Otherwise, type in the area code 760 to get a list of options to select from. IVC does not have control over what numbers are provided, this is generated by the vendor. We can only have 10 numbers in use at any one time.