Canned Responses: An Overview

Canned responses are scripted responses that texters can access as a list of titled scripts. You can also use canned responses to track data about your respondents. 

Image showing how canned responses appear to texters.

To track data using canned responses, you apply tags created for your team. Tags can also be mapped to VAN statuses on a team level or within your campaign. 

Note: Unlike canned responses, branched scripts use script answers to track data, and are mapped directly to VAN statuses. Read more about the difference here. To learn more about how to sync tags with VAN, check out our support article here.

You can add the titles and scripts of your canned responses to a campaign in two ways: by creating canned responses directly in Spoke, or by uploading the scripts to your campaign from a formatted Google Doc. 

Note: tags can only be applied to canned responses in Spoke directly, i.e. you'll still need to go into your campaign to add tags to canned responses uploaded via Google Doc.

There is no limit to how many canned responses you can add to your campaign. Keep in mind, however, that canned responses will appear to the texter in alphabetical order, not in the order that you entered them.

Upload scripts using a Google Doc 

To add canned responses to a campaign using the Google Doc Upload feature, follow the steps outlined here. Note that the upload will only create the canned response titles and scripts; it won’t add tags to your canned responses. To add tags, you’ll need to open up the “Canned Responses” section of the campaign and follow the instructions outlined below for adding tags.

Add canned responses directly in Spoke

To add a canned response directly in Spoke, click on the “Canned Responses” section of your campaign. (You can access this section of the campaign during campaign creation or by clicking “Edit” on your launched campaign.) Then, click on “Add New Canned Response”.

Click “Add New Canned Response” to add your first canned response.

This will open up a box where you can give your canned responses a title, add the scripted reply to be sent to the voter, and map the canned response to a tag. 

Image showing where you can add a title to your canned response.

To add a title, start typing in the Title field. 

Image showing a title added to a canned response. Click on "Script" to add the scripted reply.

To add the scripted response, click on the field under “Script” to open a popup window where you can type in your script.

Image showing the popup where you type in your scripted response.

Click “Done” to exit the script editor popup. To save the canned response, hit “Save”.

Add tags to a canned response 

To tag a canned response, start typing in the “Apply tags” field of the canned response. Select the tag you want to add from the dropdown menu. 

Image showing where you add tags to a canned response.

You can add as many tags to a canned response as you like, following the same principles: type in the name of the tag, then select it from the dropdown. You can also remove tags by clicking the “x” next to the tag. 

Image showing a canned response with a title, script, and tag.

Edit canned responses 

To edit a canned response, click the pencil icon next to the canned response.

Edit canned responses by clicking the pencil icon next to your canned response.

This will open up the canned response for editing. Click on any section to edit it, then hit “Save”. 

You can edit canned responses at any time, even after a campaign is already running, and you do not need to pause the campaign to do so. If texters are active in the campaign, be sure to ask them to refresh their browsers so they can access the edited canned responses immediately.

Delete canned responses

To delete a canned response from your campaign, click the trash can icon next to the canned response.

Delete canned responses by clicking the trash can icon next to your canned response.

You can delete canned responses at any time, even after a campaign is already running, and you do not need to pause the campaign to do so. If texters are active in the campaign, be sure to ask them to refresh their browsers so they lose access to the deleted canned response immediately.