To start sending SMS messages select the New Message option from your control panel.

The Basic

Let’s get started - type your message in the Message box. Then build your list of recipients by selecting from your contacts and groups and/or just typing or pasting the recipient mobile number(s) in the Extra Numbers box and then clicking on the Send button to submit the message for immediate delivery.

Note: Any duplicate mobile numbers detected in the submitted message are automatically removed

Send SMS Message - Options

There are a number of SMS message send options available - setting sender identity, scheduling messages for later delivery and using extended character sets.

Sender Identity

Select a sender id for your outgoing SMS message. This is the text and/or digits that will appear as the message sender on the recipient’s mobile handset.

Tip: To receive text replies to a mobile handset, set the sender id on outgoing messages to the number of the mobile nominated to receive the replies.

You can set-up any number of sender id’s via your Settings page. These then appear in the drop-down box when composing a new message as shown above.

Schedule SMS Messages

By default, SMS messages are submitted for immediate delivery. To schedule SMS messages to be sent in the future, change the delivery date and time before clicking on the Send button. SMS messages scheduled for later delivery will automatically be sent at the date and time specified.

Changing the Time zone

When you open the New Message page it will automatically display your regional local time zone. Most of the time you would not need to change this, but when scheduling message delivery to international mobile numbers, this feature can calculate the time difference for you and ensure messages are delivered at the intended local time for the recipients.

For example, if you are in the UK but wish to make sure that your messages are delivered to your recipients in France on 01/12/2021 at 9am local time, you would schedule the message as shown below:

Select the Scheduled Messages menu option from your Control Panel to view and manage scheduled SMS message deliveries

Supported Character Sets

The characters that can be sent in a text message are defined by the encoding standards supported by mobile network operators globally – namely GSM-7 and Unicode.

On the New Message page these options are represented as shown below:

Default GSM

The Default GSM option uses the GSM-7 character set for sending SMS messages and is supported on GSM networks and mobile handsets globally. It contains the more commonly used letters, accented forms and symbols and is suitable for English and most West-European languages.

The GSM-7 standard also defines an extended character set containing the following characters:

{ } \ ~ [ ] | ^ €

Universal

The Universal option uses the Unicode character set and supports a huge range of characters not available in the GSM-7 character set. This includes non-Latin alphabets such as Chinese, Russian and Arabic, mathematical and technical symbols and emoji.

The full list of Unicode characters can be found here.

Default GSM or Universal?

Characters sent using the Universal option use up more of the available message data and this limits the length of a single Universal message to 70 characters. The maximum message length for a single Default GSM message is 160 characters. SMS messages are charged on a per message basis so this can have cost implications. For messages up to 70 characters the cost of a Default GSM message and a Universal message is the same.

Sending Long (concatenated) SMS Messages

If an SMS message exceeds the single message length of 160 characters for a Default GSM message or 70 characters for a Universal message, it is split into smaller parts, which are then sent as individual messages, each message also contains additional hidden information the recipient phone needs to re-order the message parts correctly and display as a single message. The table below illustrates the incremental and total number of characters available for a concatenated message, depending on the character set used.

The Total SMS Message Cost calculation shown in column 4 above is based on the standard SMS cost for each country. For example, the cost for a standard UK SMS message is £0.03, so a GSM-7 message of 440 characters would cost 3 x £0.03, a total of £0.09, or 9p.

SMS Delivery Reporting

Message submission details, along with the final delivery status and time are recorded and can be viewed online in either a summary or itemised format.

Sent Messages - Summary

The summary view of sent messages displays delivery status by batch. A ‘batch’ is an SMS message sent to 1 or more recipients and as shown below, this enables an ‘at a glance’ overview of the number of recipients, a delivery status breakdown and total cost for each batch message sent. A date range can be entered to filter the view and checking the Generate CSV Report box additionally generates a downloadable spread sheet report of the current selection

Sent Messages - Itemised

The itemized view of sent messages displays the delivery status of each individual SMS message, one per line. The default view when you enter this page displays messages sent in the current month, but this view can be filtered with a combination of search options by mobile number, contact name, batch id and start/end date. Additionally, checking the Generate CSV Report box will generate a downloadable spread sheet report of the current view.

Select the Inbox menu option from your Control Panel to manage inbound messages received to a dedicated virtual mobile number (VMN). From this page you can control your VMN settings - add/delete keywords and modify your auto-response and message forwarding options.

The Basics

When a message is received to your VMN there are rules of precedence that control whether it is the default VMN or the keyword auto-response and message forwarding options that are activated.

• If a message is received that starts with a word that matches an existing keyword, then the associated keyword actions for auto-response, message forwarding etc will be used.
• If a message is received that starts with a word that does not match an existing keyword then the default VMN actions are used.

Keyword matching is not case sensitive. For example, you may set-up a keyword called “INFO” or “Info” or “info” and they will all perform the same task of matching incoming SMS messages starting with any case combination of the word “Info”. So, the choice of using upper and/or lower case in the naming of a keyword is one of user preference.

Alternatively, the VMN can be used as a catch-all – for example, if a message is received but doesn’t match an existing keyword then the VMN [DEFAULT] auto-response can be sent informing the sender that the message was invalid.

In the example shown below the VMN is configured to use the ‘[DEFAULT]’ auto- response/forwarding options when a message is received, unless the received message starts with a word that matches one of the configured keywords (JOIN or INFO), in which case the matching keyword auto-response/forwarding options are used instead.

The following sections describe adding and configuring a keyword on your VMN. The same auto- reply, forwarding and other options described below are available when configuring your DEFAULT global VMN settings

Received Message Actions

From the Manage Inbox page (as shown above) click on your VMN to reveal the keywords currently set-up. Click on Add Keyword to set-up an additional keyword and any SMS auto-response, message forwarding and other options that will be actioned when an SMS message is received to this keyword.

Keyword Details

Here you can add a new keyword and select the VMN (if you have more than one) that the keyword will be associated with. Setting the “Status” to “DISABLED” from “ACTIVE” will disable all auto-reply and message forwarding actions for this keyword.

Sending an SMS Auto-Reply

Enter the message to be sent when a message is received and select the ‘Active’ setting from the ‘Status’ box to enable the SMS auto-reply.

The Sender for the auto-reply is shown as the message sender on the recipient phone. Sender ID’s can be alphanumeric [max length 11, a-z, A-Z, no spaces) or numeric (max length 15, 0-9, no spaces).

Email Forwarding

Forward received messages to an email recipient as shown above. Any Additional Message is added to the body of the email.

SMS Forwarding

Received SMS Messages can be forwarded by SMS to an existing SMS Group as shown above. The cost of the forwarded SMS messages is deducted from your SMS credit balance.

Set the Sender on the forwarded SMS message by default to AUTO, which will be the mobile number of the message sender.

Leaving the Include Keywords box unticked will strip the keyword from the received SMS text before forwarding on via SMS. For example – If the keyword is INFO and the received message is “Info Please send me more details” the word “Info” will not be included in the forwarded SMS message.

Registering SMS Forwarders

With mobile numbers added in the SMS Forwarder box as shown above, inbound SMS messages will only be SMS forwarded if the sender mobile number of the received message matches a registered SMS forwarder mobile number.

Group Subscriptions

With the Group Subscriptions box configured as above, the sender mobile number will be added to selected group. For example – if the keyword for the above settings is called “JOIN” then all messages received starting with the word “Join” will be added to “Group 2”. The ”Action” box above also has a “DELETE” option for alternatively removing a mobile number from a “Group”.

Contacts can be added and organised into groups. Existing groups and contacts are then displayed on the New Message page (see section 3) where they can be selected as recipients, individually or in combination.

SMS Contacts

To view and/or delete SMS contacts select the Contacts menu option.

Check the boxes against selected contacts and click on Delete Selected to remove. To modify individual contact details, click on the name in the Full Name column. This opens the Modify Contact page below where you can change contact details and add/remove group membership for the selected contact.

SMS Groups

To view and/or delete SMS groups select the Groups menu option.

Check the boxes against selected contacts and click on Delete Selected to remove. Deleting a group will not delete the contacts that belonged to the removed group. To modify an individual group’s details, click on the name in the Group Name column. This opens the Modify Group page where you can change the group details and add/remove contacts from the selected group.

Select the Settings page to create new sender id’s for messages, set-up an email alert for when your credit is running low and change your login/API passwords.

Message Sender ID’s are set-up in the Sender ID box. These then appear in a drop-down box for selection when composing a message on the New Message page.

Valid format: Numbers only – maximum length 15 digits. Letters and/or numbers – maximum length 11 characters [a-z] [A-Z] [0-9], no spaces