Sending SMS and Email

You can send a text message or email to any customer directly from the messaging inbox. This page walks through both options step by step.

Manual send actions follow the same role permissions as the rest of the admin app. If a teammate does not have the communications send permission, CE Pro blocks the send request even if they try to trigger it outside the normal UI.

Sending a Manual SMS

1. Click Messages in the sidebar.
2. Find the customer in the contact list on the left. Use the search bar if needed.
3. Click on their name to open the conversation.
4. In the compose area at the bottom, make sure the toggle is set to SMS.

1. Type your message in the text area. A character counter to the right of the field shows how many characters remain out of the 160-character limit.

1. Check the phone number. It is auto-filled from the customer's record. Edit it if the number on file is wrong.
2. Click Send.
3. A success toast appears at the top of the screen. Your message shows in the thread right away as an outbound chat bubble on the right side.
4. If the active telecom provider later marks the message as failed or undelivered, that same thread entry updates with the failed status.

If the draft is blank or the request payload is malformed, CE Pro blocks the send before it reaches the telecom provider and shows the validation error immediately in the UI.

If CE Pro cannot hand the message to Esendex or Twilio, the send response surfaces a clear operator-facing reason instead of a generic server error or a raw provider dump. Common examples include:

• The destination number is invalid.
• The recipient has unsubscribed from SMS.
• SMS is not configured for the current workspace.
• The active telecom provider is temporarily unavailable and the send can be retried.

Sending a Manual Email

1. Click Messages in the sidebar.
2. Find and select the customer in the contact list.
3. Open their conversation.
4. In the compose area, switch the toggle to Email.

1. Enter a subject line.
2. Type your message in the body field.
3. Check the email address. It is auto-filled from the customer's record.
4. Click Send.
5. The email is sent from "{Your Business Name}" <notifications@cleanestimate.pro>. The customer sees your business name as the sender.
6. If inbound email routing is configured for your workspace, customer replies route back to the same contact thread automatically.
7. Delivery, open, and failure updates appear on the same thread entry when the email provider reports them back.

CE Pro now validates the recipient, subject, and body before it hands the send to the email provider, so incomplete drafts fail fast instead of making a partial provider call.

Using AI Draft

The AI Draft button helps you write follow-up messages faster. It works for both SMS and email.

1. Open a customer conversation and go to the compose area.
2. Click the AI Draft button (the Sparkles icon next to the Send button).

1. The system analyzes the estimate's age, its current status, and the full conversation history.
2. A suggested message appears in the compose field.
3. Read the suggestion. Edit it to match your voice and add any details the AI missed.
4. Click Send when you are satisfied.

AI Draft works best on estimates that are three or more days old. At that point, the system has enough context to write a relevant follow-up.

AI Draft now runs through the in-app admin route instead of a separate edge-function dependency. If your workspace does not have an active AI provider configured, CE Pro still returns a safe built-in draft template so the action stays usable instead of failing outright.

What Customers Receive

SMS

The customer receives a plain text message from the workspace's active telecom number. For most new workspaces this is the shared Esendex number; legacy workspaces may still send from Twilio. There is no special formatting or branding. It looks like a regular text.

If CE Pro inserts an estimate, proposal, or maintenance-plan link into the SMS, that link is a signed customer link. Generic quotes are the exception: they now use the shared public quote URL, while the other estimate-family records still use signed customer-token links.

If CE Pro cannot build a working secure estimate link at send time, it now avoids dropping a broken fallback URL into the text message. The SMS still goes out, but it tells the customer to contact you for a fresh secure review link instead of sending an unusable link.

Email

The customer receives an HTML-formatted email. The sender line reads as your business name with the address notifications@cleanestimate.pro. When inbound email routing is configured for your workspace, the reply-to address is set to your organization's CleanEstimate inbox address so replies route back into the same customer thread automatically. If inbound routing is not live yet, CE Pro sends without the reply-to mailbox attached and the settings area shows a setup notice instead of a fake inbox address.

Estimate, proposal, and maintenance-plan emails use signed customer links so customers land on the right public page when they click through from the message. Generic quote emails now use the shared public quote URL instead, which stays stable across preview, send, and resend.

Holiday-lights quote sends that originate from linked estimate-workspace actions still stay on the seasonal delivery path, so the customer receives the holiday-lights portal link instead of a generic residential estimate link. Fleet and commercial-building proposals still need to be sent from their proposal workspace rather than the shared estimate workspace, which prevents the wrong commercial template from being used by mistake.

Holiday-lights quote sends now also keep the delivery event tied back to the originating estimate record, so the customer timeline and message history stay aligned when the office follows up later from the shared quote-core workspace.

If CE Pro cannot build a valid customer quote link for a generic quote, the send action now fails before delivery instead of sending a broken URL.

Prerequisites

Before you can send messages, make sure the following are in place:

For SMS

• A telecom provider must be configured. Go to Settings and complete the Phone / Voice card for Esendex or Twilio.
• The SMS add-on must be active on your plan. Go to Settings then Billing to check.

For Email

• Email sending is built into CE Pro and is configured automatically for daily use. No extra provider setup is required from reps before sending.

Send Protection

CE Pro now adds cooldowns to manual email, SMS, and review-request sends:

• A single teammate cannot spam the same send action repeatedly in a short burst.
• The same estimate cannot be emailed or texted over and over in a tight loop.
• If you hit a cooldown, CE Pro returns a temporary rate-limit message instead of sending another duplicate communication.

This protects customers from duplicate sends and helps prevent accidental Esendex, Twilio, Mailgun, or review-request abuse.

Troubleshooting

The Send button is grayed out. Check that the workspace has a configured telecom provider and that the SMS add-on is active on your plan. If either is missing, the SMS Send button will be disabled.

The customer says they did not receive my SMS. Verify the phone number format. If the carrier later rejects the message, the conversation thread updates with the failed status so you can retry or switch channels. If the send is blocked immediately, CE Pro now returns a plain-language inline reason so you know whether the issue is an invalid number, a recipient delivery block, or workspace setup.

An email reply did not show up in my inbox. The customer must reply to the original CleanEstimate email, and inbound email routing must already be configured for your workspace. Standard replies route back into the matching contact thread only when that inbound mailbox is live. Forwarded emails or messages sent to unrelated addresses will not attach to the conversation automatically.

I need to know whether an email was opened. Open tracking appears directly on the outbound email entry in the conversation thread when the provider reports the open event back to CleanEstimate Pro.

The email composer says "Failed to send email." That message means CE Pro blocked the low-level provider failure details from the UI. Retry once, then confirm outbound email is configured for the workspace. If the message instead says Email sending is not configured, the workspace still needs email delivery setup before manual sends can succeed.