Email & Text Message Sender

In the past I have worked as a referee for an indoor soccer facility. Every week I would get a text message from them asking me for my available schedule. Once they compiled the schedule, they would then send out each person’s schedule via text or email. There are a number of problems with this system that I have tried to solve, mainly:

• The soccer facility doesn’t have the ability to send out text messages because (like most businesses) their only phone is a traditional land line. The employees use their own personal cell phones.
• A different worker sends out the texts and emails each week. I never know who is texting me. The workers have to look up each referee’s file and send out either an email or a text depending on the ref’s preference.
• If a ref is slow to respond to the text, the employee who sent it might be off work and they would have to forward the text to whoever is working. This is a HUGE pain.
• There is no central database of referee’s contact information.
• Some refs like to be notified via text, others prefer email. There is no system to do them both.

In addition to notifying referees, this system can also be used to notify captains of teams about their game time. Each week the managers are using their personal cell phones to send out texts and the owners don’t reimburse these expenses. The managers are loving the fact they don’t have to use their cellphones anymore.

The system I built gives the user access to a database in Excel. They can search for contacts, edit contacts, add new contacts, or delete contacts. Each contact has its own information that is stored (once it has been entered and saved). I believe this system solves all of the above problems.

Program:

http://files.gove.net/shares/files/11w/rjw35/Ultimate-Msg-Sender.xlsm

Write up:

http://files.gove.net/shares/files/11w/rjw35/text-email-msg-sender.pdf

(If anyone ever needs help with this code in the future, email me: rhett at byu.net)