Hyperlinks in Workflow templates

[Mic_L_Angelo]

Hey folks, I’d like some help here with a workflow sms template I’m trying to implement.

I want to make a hyperlink of a deep link in slack (“slack://channel?team=T3X708LG6&id=G69A0TUNP”) using “#shifts” as the text.

I have made a template that incluses this <<HYPERLINK(“slack://channel?team=T3X708LG6&id=G69A0TUNP”,“LinkText”"#shifts")>>

However, when i get the text, it displays the message as {“URL:” “slack://channel?team=T3X708LG6&id=G69A0TUNP”,“LINK” “#shifts”}.

The community messages on here indicate that there were issues with Hyperlinks in templates that has since been fixed, but still feels like there’s an error happening.

This issue has been driving me insane for the past day or so, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[Mic_L_Angelo]

Further investigation into this

This is what i typing into my template. (references a cell that contains a hyperlink
<<HYPERLINK(LOOKUP(“DISXB0NU", “The Correspondence”, “KEY ID”, “Deep Link Shifts”),"#shifts")>>

I have attached what i get sent.

This leads me to believe that the issue is a bug. The way Appsheet interprets the expression in SMS incorrect. Can anyone offer any insight on how to make this work?

[Phil]

Are you trying to construct an SMS message?

The Hyperlink function normally constructs HTML, which to the best of my knowledge, won’t work in an SMS message.

You might be able to construct a simple URL which might work in a SMS.

I am not very confident of this. Hopefully some else in the community knows more than I do.

[Mic_L_Angelo]

yes, i’m trying to put a hyperlink in an SMS message, which I thought was possible to do.

[LeventK]

@Mic_L_Angelo
It’s not possible to send a hyperlink with SMS. As the standard SMS length is only 160 characters and most hyperlinks are pretty long (usually between 40 to 100 characters), they can eat up necessary space in your message. As well as contain characters that may lead to even longer messages due to those characters being from the Unicode character set. Therefore I may advise sending URL directly but via a valid URL shortener service like https://bit.ly

[Mic_L_Angelo]

@LeventK The problem is these are “deep links”, as in they are supposed to directly launch the external mobile app I’m specifying (Slack in this case). They are not in standard URL format, so I cannot use a URL shortener service. I’ve gotten SMS messages with hyperlinks from my mobile carrier, but it’s sensible to believe they would have special abilities.

This unfortunate that nothing can be done, as the deep links count toward the 160 SMS character limit. So I’ll have to send out 3 texts instead of one. If anyone else has any insights with how to send a shorter version of the deep links, I’d appreciate it.

[LeventK]

@Mic_L_Angelo
You can use bit.ly or tinyurl website’s REST API service to shorten your URL but I don’t think it will open the slack app, it will try to open it in your mobile browser. At least it worth trying. You can never know without trying.

[Mic_L_Angelo]

I’ve already tried the shortener option previously (before i sent my initial question. It does not open the app directly. Redirecting to the Website link is not suitable for my intended purpose.

I might just try the email option instead. Not my prefered choice, but i try to work with it.

In any case, I’ve just decided to deal with the issue.

Thanks for the insight.