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Text-message Support

133 posts
Mon Jan 09, 17 9:33 AM CST
We send Text-Messages (SMS) to our customers e. g. for "Gallery ready", providing Access Code, Gallery Expiration and more (because some customers check their email twice a week rather then looking every minute on facebook and WhatsApp).We want to do it with sytist rather than sending Text-Messages manually.

First, we suggest to have an additional field for Mobile Number, so we have use the Field Phone for Landline Phone and have a seperate field for Mobile Phone (which can receive Text Messages).

Second, we suggest having Default eMails Extended for a Text-Message-Version (max. 480 characters) of each template.

Third, we suggest, Sytist is able to send the Text-Message additional or instead of an eMail either to an SMS-Gateway (an eMail-Address which is Mobilenumber@sms-provider.com where we would have Sytist to be able to set @sms-provider.com as our SMS-Gateway anywhere in the admin area) or we fill the Mobile-Number-Field with 0176123456@sms-provider.com instead of only the Mobile Number 0176123456.
16,148 posts (admin)
Tue Jan 10, 17 5:36 AM CST
I have been looking into SMS off and on. Is there a certain service you recommend?
Tim Grissett, DIA - PicturesPro.com
My Email Address: info@picturespro.com
133 posts
Tue Jan 10, 17 3:47 PM CST
Not really. We are using the Diafaan SMS Server many years without any Problems (https://www.diafaan.com/diafaan-sms-server/light-edition/). As we want to use not only the Web-based GUI but eMail-to-SMS Gateway, we would have to upgrade to the (quite expensive) Basic Edition. The most important feature for us is to get a delivery report, once the Text Message was delivered to the Mobile Phone (not only send to the Network but not delivered to the Handset yet, which might be out of coverage or switched off). Diafaan doesn't support this, so we have the Focus on:

http://www.smsdeliverer.com/
Advantages: Very good Price (starting from 49 USD), lots of functions
Disadvantage: limited suitable for use on a Windows Server, No delivery Reports sent back to eMail. Have to look into the Report to see, if message was delivered.

http://www.nowsms.com
Advantages: Huge Functionality including Delivery Report by eMail (but a quite bad, not good looking Website, better see that Manual: http://www.nowsms.com/pdf/nowsms.pdf)
Disadvantage: Expensive (starting from 395 USD)

http://www.activexperts.com/sms-messaging-server/
Advantages: Huge Functionality including Delivery Report and API / VBScript Support (you can get eMail, if Text Message weren't delivered on the handset within a pre-defined period)
Disadvantage: Very Expensive (695 USD)

In any Case we would use the eMail-to-SMS-Functionality although the Software support HTTP-API. I think SMS-Support for Sytist is enough, if Customer-Database is Extended to store Mobile-Phone-Numbers and enabled to send different versions of Default eMails (Standard eMail and Short-Message).
R
247 posts
Tue Jan 10, 17 4:29 PM CST
www.eztexting.com works for me...
133 posts
Tue Jan 10, 17 4:31 PM CST
Thank you! Interesting... but unfortunately not available for Germany.
R
247 posts
Wed Jan 11, 17 7:59 PM CST
too bad...maybe part of a selection to choose from like the payment choices?

I don't have a high volume of online booking and most of it is for charity fundraisers...so five cents a text is a very nice feature!
133 posts
Mon Aug 20, 18 4:18 PM CST
I'd like to remind this wish. Maybe there is a Little trick (editing some php-files) in order to solve this.

We are able to send out text-Messages from Sytist. We just set customers eMail-Address to e. g. 015735722220@sms.sms. Exchange Online routes all eMails sent to "@sms.sms" to our SMS-Gateway. Everything is fine, except we only have ONE field for eMail-Address in Customers Account. That's why:

We are creating Customers account and we have disabled Self-Registration. When we Setup a Customer Account we set eMail and Password to the Customers Mobile number (which is of Course no valid eMail-Adress). No more issues of misspelling eMail-Adress or Passwords. Just the Mobile number. After first Login the Customer can change his eMail address and Password.

We want to keep everything simple. We do not want to tell the Customer "Please login by entering your mobile number, followed by @sms.sms". As we only have one eMail-Address field (and no way to enter secondary eMail-Address) we have to decide between entering "015735722220@sms.sms" in the eMail-Field and being able to send SMS to our Customers (like described above), which is important for Gallery reminder e. g. OR to keep it simple without the Need to tell the Customer to enter their mobilenumber followed by @sms.sms and set the eMail-Address to 015735722220 but being unable to send SMS from Sytist. Even there should be a way to Setup a Exchange Rule to route Messages sent to invalid eMail-Addresses containing only numbers without @, Sytist reject sending Mails (even Test-Mails) to such (invalid) eMail-Adresses.


Possible solutions might be:

1. Enabling Sytist to send eMails to invalid eMail-Adresses (containing only numbers withouth @)

2. Additional Field in Customer's data for secondary eMail or Maybe there is a way just to enter two email-addresses in this one field, e. g. separated by Semikolon?
When eMails are sent, the invalid eMail-Adress 015735722220 is ignored/rejected by Mail-Server, but the secondary eMail 015735722220@sms.sms is sent.

3. Modified PHP automatically adding "@sms.sms" when the eMail-Address is invalid (missing @) so the eMail-Address is stored 015735722220 (for easy Login) but eMails are sent to 015735722220@sms.sms to our SMS-Gateway

4. All eMails sent by Sytist going CC to [Telephone Number of Customer]@sms.sms by Admin's setting
Edited Tue Aug 21, 18 3:11 AM by Lucas H.
L
7 posts
Tue Aug 21, 18 4:54 AM CST
We do the same thing, by sending an email to the customer's phone number followed by the SMS gateway, the gateway recognises our email address as the sender and sends a text. We use ClickSend, so would email 01493298389@sms.clicksend.com - it would be good to add this as an option in sytist, and give the customer the option to enter their mobile and sign up for sms updates during account creation
133 posts
Tue Aug 21, 18 5:00 AM CST
Nice to hear, other Users do text-Messaging, too. I forgot to say, that it doesn't matter to have a own SMS-Gateway. The feature request is the same, if you use SMS-Providers. If we wouldn't use our own SMS-Gateway (we only pay 5 EUR/Month for our SIM-Card sending Unlimited Text Messages and are able to receive Text Messages too) we would use and recommend https://www.messagebird.com/ working the same way Luke described for clicksend.com.
Edited Tue Aug 21, 18 5:00 AM by Lucas H.
133 posts
Sat Sep 01, 18 2:42 AM CST
Tim, could you give us your rating about my feature-wish (from 20th Aug, see below)? Please tell us, if: never will be supported / maybe supported in remote future / could be supported within the updates in the next 6 month.

Either this feature:
Add a Field for "Secondary eMail-Address" in Customer Account (Login with first eMail-Address only, but eMails sent always to secondary eMail-Address too, if existing)

or (much better way)
All eMails sent by Sytist going CC to [Telephone Number of Customer]@[SMS-Relay, e. g. @sms.clicksend.com] by Admin's Setting

We would like to pay / donate for having this (very important) feature.
Edited Tue Sep 04, 18 2:24 AM by Lucas H.
16,148 posts (admin)
Sun Sep 02, 18 6:01 AM CST
I have it in my notes to look into but can't say when that will be. I can't give any sort of timeline or promise if when it will happen.
Tim Grissett, DIA - PicturesPro.com
My Email Address: info@picturespro.com
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