Group Messaging
Group Messaging lets you create two-way Twilio Conversations with groups of students, parents, or staff over SMS or WhatsApp. Unlike broadcast messaging, group conversations allow participants to reply — making them ideal for tournament coordination, team chats, and parent communication threads.
- 1
Name your conversation
Enter a descriptive name such as 'Spring Tournament Team' or 'Belt Test Prep — March'. This name appears in the conversation list and is used for media downloads.
- 2
Choose a channel
Select SMS to reach participants by text message, or WhatsApp if your studio has WhatsApp enabled. All participants must be reachable on the chosen channel.
- 3
Set retention period
Choose how many days to keep the conversation and its media (between 30 and 90 days depending on your plan). After the retention period expires, the conversation is archived and media is deleted.
- 4
Add participants
Select the staff, parents, or students to include. Only users with a phone number on file can join a conversation. You must add at least one participant.
- 5
Click Create Conversation
The conversation is created in Twilio and participants are added automatically. They will receive the first message from your Twilio number.
- 1
Enable scheduling
Toggle 'Schedule for later' when creating a conversation. A date and time picker will appear.
- 2
Set the send time
Choose the future date and time when the message should be delivered. The system will queue the conversation and send it automatically.
- 3
Message body
Enter the initial message to send when the conversation fires. Scheduled messages are processed every 5 minutes by the cron job.
- 4
Reviewing scheduled messages
Scheduled conversations appear in the messaging list before they are sent. Once fired, they transition to a live conversation.
- 1
Storage quota
Your plan includes a base media storage quota. Additional storage can be purchased as add-on packages from the Billing settings page.
- 2
Storage meter
The messaging dashboard shows a storage usage bar. When usage reaches 80%, a 'Buy More Storage' link appears. At 95% or above, the storage bar turns red and new conversations cannot be created.
- 3
Supported media types
Images (JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF up to 10 MB) and videos (up to 50 MB) are supported. Images larger than 2 MB are automatically compressed to reduce storage use.
- 4
Media per conversation
The conversation list shows how many media files each conversation contains. Open a conversation to browse or download individual files.
- 1
Request a download
On the conversation detail page, use the Actions menu and select 'Download All Media'. This queues a background job to package all media into a zip file.
- 2
Email notification
When the zip is ready, an email is sent to the studio owner with a download link. The link is valid for 24 hours.
- 3
Export isolation
Downloaded zip files are stored in a separate exports prefix in Azure Blob Storage and are not counted toward your media quota.
- 1
Automatic expiry
Each conversation has an expiry date calculated from the creation date and the chosen retention period. The expiry date is shown on the conversation detail page.
- 2
Media deletion
When a conversation expires, its media files are deleted from Azure Blob Storage and the storage quota is reclaimed. The media expiry cron job runs nightly at 2:00 AM UTC.
- 3
Archiving manually
You can archive a conversation before it expires using the Archive action on the conversation detail page. Archived conversations are read-only but their media is retained until expiry.
- 4
Updating retention
Owners and managers can extend the retention period from the conversation detail page. The new expiry date is recalculated from the original creation date.