what is required to connect SMS System to my ERP? - sms

we are implementing a new ERP System, and we need later to integrate with new SMS system.
We have existing subscription with a company for SMS text, we need now to know what is required to send SMS for example when employee confirmed for a leave.
I required only general description for that if possible.
Thanks,

If your service provider provides an HTTP API (which most providers does) then depending upon the technology stack you're using, you can make an HTTP call after confirmation event occurs.
Hope it helps.

Related

Responding to incoming SMS

I am new to Twilio and tasked with evaluating whether to switch from our current service which is CDyne.
We have an application that uses SMS to interact with clients on behalf of staff using two-way SMS. The app automatically launches SMSs at certain trigger events and based upon the responses from clients decides what to do next - including asking further questions of the client. The SMS gateway I use currently allows me to include a reference id in outgoing messages. This id is returned when someone replies to the message. This makes it dead easy to look up everything related to the incoming message and form a decision and reply. Twilio does not seem to have anything similar. In fact, it does not even return the SMS ID of the original message which seems to make it a pain to determine the relation. I understand you could potentially look up the FROM and TO and trace it back, but with multiple phone numbers being used for the same client (staff can send messages directly too using a different phone number and there are several numbers being used for mass text messages), this is potentially (very) hazardous.
Question 1: Is there any (good) solution to this issue in Twilio, and
Question 2: If not, why not??? (It seems pretty obvious and simple to include a reference to the initiating SMS in the reply)
This is one of the many features that CDYNE offers at no cost to their customers.
To my knowledge, Twilio doesn't offer this feature.
For additional information on SMS Notify!'s additional free features, check out CDYNE's wiki.

SMS read receipt through website

I am php developer and for our project (mobile website developed using JQM) we need following functionality,
We need to send SMS to the customer and when customer reads the SMS we need to get the receipt in our site so we can store in database.
I have checked different SMS service api such as ,
Nexmo,plivo,tropo,Twilio,textlocal,clockworksms
Most of them providing facility of the Delivery Receipts such as "delivered/undelivered/QUEUED/ACCEPTD" which denotes delivery status but we want weather SMS is read.
Is this possible in mobile website?
I have checked some reference which gives idea about doing it with andriod app.
http://mobiforge.com/design-development/sms-messaging-android
Thanks.
I have worked with several of the SMS gateway APIs you mention and talked to a number of SMS service providers over 2+ years. The answer to your questions is: No, there is no such thing as a read receipt for SMS in general -- to the very best of my knowledge.
The API delivery status is all you get. And even that status is not 100% reliable. Text messages usually go over a number of hubs to reach their target and service quality and response reliability depend on these.
If you want to make sure the user received your message, you need to have them respond either on you website (with some code you supplied) or by responding to your SMS (in which case you would have to send your message from your own inbound number).
You can get a more definite answer when you do payments via SMS. In this case, there will be multi-step protocols involved that ensure completion of the entire messaging process.

Web application control through text messages

I want to develop an application that works by receiving text messages from users to gather data. I have no clue where to begin and what to begin with. I can code in Python, C++, PHP and can do Java also.
I was wondering if there can be a personal development setup or framework on which I can develop such application. Releasing it is a different story but I do not have any idea about what setup is needed to develop this application.
Also, how much would this setup cost? Are there open-source or any other cheap alternatives?
There are a lot of services out there that let you receive SMS via a web request. The one I work for Twilio will send you a simple POST request to a URL of your choice containing To, From and Body whenever you receive an incoming message. You can read more about how it works here.
This service offers an api for receiving text messages. You can use the shared number and send it to your server with a keyword or you can pay a monthy fee to have your own dedicated number. So there would be a good place to start.

How can I send SMS messages like Twitter does?

Do all cell companies have open APIs that allow you to send SMS messages like Twitter does?
Do you have to pay to do this?
Many (most?) mobile companies have email gateways allowing you to send an SMS. For AT&T I believe it's phonenumber#text.att.net, but each provider will have a different address.
This wikipedia article summaries it pretty well. Some cell companies have easy formats. For example, Verizon uses number#vtext.com.
It depends what country you're in.
In the UK to pay to send - receiving is free.
Take a look at messagepub. They provide an easy API so that you can send SMS messages from your application.
If you want a reliable solution then yes you will have to pay for it, there are some limited free versions.
We used Clickatell with an earlier project http://www.clickatell.com/developers.php
It gets a bit more complicated. E-mail gateways may work for some carriers, but not others. As noted, it's based on your cell carrier, what we can the aggregator, and possibly a third-party "intercarrier". However, it also depends on volume. If you're just sending the occasional SMS via e-mail, it certainly can work, but, it's occasional in use, and you don't get the confirmations that your phone normally sees. For volume transfers of messages, you typically need to talk to your carrier about access to their "SMSC gateway". The SMSC gateway speaks an internet protocol (SMPP) to transfer messages from your app, into the carrier clouds. It it designed for volume, and you get response codes for your messages.

SMS alerting to respond to error situations faster

What is the easiest way to set up an SMS alerting system so that I will receive notification if my server doesn't respond or a GET query doesn't return correct content?
You can completely outsource the monitoring and alerting, for example by subscribing to Pingdom. The most basic Pingdom plan will monitor up to 5 services (including using HTTP GETs with optional content pattern matching) and send an SMS after a configurable amount of downtime.
If you want to roll your own solution, the first thing to get right is the monitoring software. Many, many third party solutions exist for this, from the free to the outrageously expensive. Of course, rolling your own "try a GET and do something if it doesn't work" script is always an option, but as with all software, feature creep may mean that you're just re-implementing existing solutions soon...
For the SMS notification, using an e-mail-to-SMS gateway might work for you, if you're in a territory well-served by such services. Most US providers, for example, provide free gateways, whereas in Europe they tend to be run by third parties and pay-only. As already suggested, Google is your friend here. Also, your monitoring tool may support sending notifications directly using a cellphone/GSM modem attached to the monitoring server.
Often I've found that what you need is a SMS modem attached directly to your monitoring server. What if the problem is the network connection?
What you want is an SMS gateway. There are surely some service providers local to you. Unfortunately, they are a bit hard to find. Try asking Google...
You can get a service like http://www.serviceuptime.com/ and the send an email to your-number#a-domain-your-provider-gives They usually have the exact domains for the providers on their respective websites but you could just try #t-mobile.com if your provider is t-mobile for example.
If you want to write your own tool should be pretty straightforward - send GET request if you dont get the expected response send email. You should run it from 2 different locations from 2 different ISPs tho because if there are routing problems and the request doesnt go through you'll get smsed

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