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Overview

A sending pool decides which number a message goes out on. It is the outbound counterpart to routing rules, which decide who an inbound message reaches. A pool never picks a person. Find them at Settings → Channels → Phone & SMS → Sending pools. Pools group several channels together so Custral can pick one automatically for outbound activity, spread volume across them, and keep each channel under a daily sending limit. A pool covers one channel type: phone, SMS, or email, so a phone pool rotates across multiple phone numbers, an SMS pool across SMS senders, and so on.

How it works

Each pool has a type and a set of members (the channels in it), and every member has its own daily limit. When Custral needs to start a new outbound thread from a pool, it selects a channel using round-robin: it walks the members in order, skips any that have already hit their daily limit for the day, and remembers the last one used so the next request continues from there. If every member is at its limit, no channel is selected.
Daily usage is counted per channel for new threads and resets each day. Round-robin position is tracked per pool and rolls over after 24 hours.
Pools can also be assigned to users or teams, and each pool’s row shows how many channels it contains. Daily limits and live usage are visible when you open a pool to manage its members.
This screen manages channel pools across phone, SMS, and email. For provisioning and routing individual phone numbers, see Numbers.

Using it

1

Open Pools

Go to Pools in settings and choose Create Pool.
2

Name the pool and pick a type

Give it a name and select Phone, SMS, or Email. The type determines which channels can join.
3

Add channels and set daily limits

Open the pool’s Manage Members action, add channels of the matching type, and set a daily limit for each.
4

Assign to users or teams (optional)

Use the Assigned Users & Teams tab to assign the pool to a user or team.

Troubleshooting

When reporting an issue, include the request id shown in the error toast. It links the in-app error to the server logs.

Numbers

Provision and route individual phone numbers.