Unable to send SMS to Group using Communication Plan Definition with Twilio

[lvenna]

Hi Everyone,

I’m working on sending SMS notifications to a specific group (leadership) using Twilio integration — everything is already configured and working at the instance level.

I’ve added the SMS feature in the Communication Plan Definition and selected the group in Communication Contact Definitions. However, the group members are not receiving the SMS. When I add an individual user directly in the Communication Plan Definition, that user receives the SMS successfully.

Has anyone worked on sending SMS to groups through Communication Plan Definitions? Any suggestions or best practices would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Laxma

[FernandoUrrutia]

While other types of communication (like email) can be sent to a group and ServiceNow will automatically resolve the members and their contact details, this doesn't seem to apply to SMS messages. Therefore, the best approach is to manually retrieve the group's members, ensure each user has a valid phone number, and then add them individually as SMS recipients.

This can be achieved using a Business Rule or a Script, which iterates through the group's users and adds them to the communication plan’s recipient list, allowing SMS messages to be sent correctly to each user.

[lvenna]

Hello Fernando,

Thank you for the quick response and guidance.

I ran a couple of tests:

• When I add my user directly in the Communication Plan Definition, I do receive the SMS.
• When I add my user via the Group (the group is selected in Communication Contact Definitions), I do not receive the SMS.

Based on this, it looks like the Communication Contact Definition may not be expanding the Group to users for SMS specifically.

Could you please elaborate on your suggestion below?

“I think you could try to obtain the group’s users and add them via BR or Script to the appropriate line for sending SMS individually.”

Thank you,

Laxma.

[FernandoUrrutia]

You should try sending SMS from a script (or B. Rules) in this first step... late... try sending to groups with scripts as an example. https://www.servicenow.com/docs/bundle/zurich-api-reference/page/app-store/dev_portal/API_reference/...

[lvenna]

Hello Fernando,

In our use case, when an incident is accepted as a Major Incident, the engineer handling it needs to send initial, status update, and resolution messages. These updates are manual, as engineers can send them whenever they choose, not based on specific system conditions or triggers.

From your suggestion about using a Script or Business Rule — if I understand correctly, those typically rely on certain conditions or events to execute automatically. Since our requirement is manual sending, could you please confirm if scripting is still applicable in this case, or if there’s an alternative approach within the Communication Plan framework that supports manual group-based SMS?

Thank you,

Laxma.