A Worker Bee can message the person an event is about: a thank-you when a payment arrives, or a reminder when a membership is due for renewal. Every message is sent under a consent purpose you choose, and ThirdSectorBee checks the contact’s recorded consent each time before sending.

Before you start

  • Relationships must be enabled for your beehive.
  • You need workerbees:admin:automations and relationships:read:contacts. Without the second, Email a contact and Text a contact aren’t offered.
  • Your consent purposes are set up under Relationships → Configuration → Consent. See Relationships settings.
  • The trigger must supply a contact. Contact created, Contact updated, Payment created and Membership renewal due all carry the contact’s ID as contactId.

Set up the message

  1. In the Worker Bee wizard, on the Actions step, choose Relationships · Email a contact or Relationships · Text a contact.
  2. In Contact, enter the field in the triggering event that holds the contact’s ID. For the events above, enter contactId.
  3. In Consent purpose, choose the purpose this message is sent under (see below).
  4. For an email, fill in Subject and Body. For a text, fill in Message. Use Insert data to personalise them. On a contact event, for example, Dear {{ payload.firstName }} adds their first name.
  5. Finish the wizard and choose Create worker bee.

Emails are sent as plain text. Texts go to the contact’s Phone number, which must be in international format, such as +447700900123.

The purpose list shows your beehive’s active purposes, plus Transactional — no consent check (receipts and confirmations).

  • A consent purpose, such as “Fundraising”, sends only if the contact’s recorded consent for that purpose, on that channel (email or SMS), is ok. A purpose the contact has never been asked about counts as not given, so the message isn’t sent.
  • Transactional skips the consent check. Use it only for messages a person needs whether or not they’ve opted in to marketing, such as a receipt or a booking confirmation. Choosing it is a recorded decision, so pick it deliberately.

You can’t leave the purpose blank, and a bee without one won’t send.

Who will never be messaged

Some people must not receive automated messages, whatever purpose you choose. ThirdSectorBee always refuses to email or text a contact who is recorded as:

  • a child; or
  • deceased, so that a grieving household isn’t sent a message meant for someone they’ve lost.

Transactional doesn’t override either of these. If a message to someone in these circumstances is genuinely needed, a member of your team should handle it personally.

What you’ll see

Each send appears in the bee’s flight history:

  • Succeeded means the message was handed over for delivery.
  • Failed means nothing was sent. Common reasons are that the contact hasn’t consented for that purpose and channel, is recorded as a child or deceased, has no email address or phone number, or has a phone number not in international format. These aren’t retried, because trying again wouldn’t change the answer.

If a contact you expected to hear from wasn’t messaged, check their consent on their record before changing the purpose. Don’t switch a marketing message to Transactional to get it through.