Messages sent out of order

(Sam Ward) #1

Hi,

I have a flow where I am sending a Card, followed by a Ask a Question. In the test console, they send in the proper order, but over SMS, the Question arrives before the Card.

What’s the best way to enforce the proper ordering of messages?

Thanks!
S

(Daniel Beckett) #2

Hi @sam_ward

Are all of the actions happening in the same flow or separate ones? It should be working in sequence if the actions are in the same flow but what may help is to insert a short Wait action to stagger the actions.

(Sam Ward) #3

Thanks, they are both in the same flow.

I wonder if it might be a network issue, since the Card includes an image, while the Question is just text.

I’ll experiment with a Wait action, but the smallest increment is a minute, which feels like a long time between messages. We’re sending an image to the user of their census tract, and the question is to confirm we calculated the right one, since the geocoding service we use can be off by a bit. Sending those two together would be best if we can swing it…

(Daniel Beckett) #4

You can use ‘Wait Until a Date’ to delay by a number of seconds. For example, if you put in ‘+5s’ it will delay by five seconds.

(Sam Ward) #5

Ah! Great to know - I’ll give that a go…

Are there any other options to enforce the order of messages, or is that the best bet?

Thanks,
Sam

(Karen Barker) #6

Hi Sam,

The order in the flow should really be enforcing the order of the messages, but with SMS there is always the possibility of latency on the network. As such adding the wait between the 2 messages that are coming in the wrong order is the only option to be able to delay the second message from sending. :slight_smile: