Once SMS is enabled, your firm is assigned its own SMS number. You send texts from the Inbox, and replies come back into the shared inbox rather than to anyone's personal phone — so the whole team can see and continue the conversation.
SMS is provisioned by Nagaris, not self-service. If the Team Channels card on the Channels page shows SMS as Not connected — or the Inbox shows No inbox configured — contact support to enable SMS for your firm. Once enabled, SMS shows as Connected with your firm's number, and the compose button in the Inbox becomes available.
Go to Inbox and click the compose button. The New Message sheet opens.
Select the SMS tab.
In To, search and select a contact. The picker lists contacts that have a phone number — if someone's missing (including yourself for a test), use the add-contact option to create them with a phone number, and they'll appear immediately.
Choose a Template — either Custom message to write free text, or one of your saved SMS templates.
Type or edit the text in the Message box, then click Send.
The right-hand Preview shows the message as a phone bubble, along with a live character and segment count.
When you pick an SMS template, the Message box fills in automatically with the template text, and any variables (like the client's name) are substituted from the selected contact and your organisation where Nagaris knows the value. From there:
Fill in the Variables fields to complete any remaining placeholders — the message box updates to match as you type, as long as you haven't edited the message yourself.
Once you start typing in the Message box, your edits are kept and won't be overwritten by later variable changes.
Switching back to Custom message clears the box so you can start from scratch.
The character and segment counts always reflect what's currently in the box, so you can see how edits affect the number of SMS segments (and therefore cost — see the SMS cost article).
Open any SMS conversation and type in the Type a message... box at the bottom, then press Enter or click the send button. Under the box, Nagaris shows a segment hint such as 2 SMS. 300/306 used so you know when a reply spills into a second (billed) segment. Replies can be up to 1,530 characters; new messages started from the New Message sheet are limited to a single 160-character segment.
Outbound messages show a status icon: a clock while Pending, one tick when Sent, two ticks when Delivered, and a red alert if the message Failed (hover for the reason when available).
SMS recipients are drawn from your Contacts in Nagaris — anyone with a phone number recorded. There's no separate SMS list to maintain: add or update the contact, and they're available to message. Contacts without a phone number simply don't appear in the SMS picker (No contacts with a phone number.).
SMS conversations, like email and WhatsApp, can be archived with the Archive button and restored later with Unarchive.
Every teammate sees the same conversation history; opening a thread marks it read for you only.
For texting many clients at once, use bulk SMS from the Clients or Contacts list — see Sending bulk email and SMS.
