We have just released a new version of the Web21C SDK for Java, PHP and Python.

Here is a list of the new features:

Messaging

• Unsubscribe – this enables a user to unsubscribe from receiving SMS messages by replying with “stop” as the first word in the SMS (the full list of keywords is: “stop”, “cancel”, “end”, “quit”, “stopall”, “unsubscribe”) - the application is then blocked from sending messages to that user.
• Eventing – this allows an application to send a message and pass in a URL as a parameter from which we will post HTTP requests when the status of their messages change e.g. from “Initial” to “Sent” to “Delivered”. This saves the sending application the need to poll for getMessageStatuses.
• Keyword case – previously you had to receive all inbound messages by passing your keyword into getRecievedMessages() in lowercase - it’s now case insensitive.
• Email – The messaging service can send email.

Voice Call

• Pre-call accouncement – When the first party is called, they will be played an announcement to let them know what’s going on, instead of previous situation where they got silence while second party was being called.
• Announcements are available in multiple languages and voices (1:English female 1, 2:English female 2, 3:English male, 10:Spanish male, 20:Italian male, 30:Polish male, 40:German male, 50:Greek male).
• After the pre-call announcement, the participants in a call will be prompted to “Press 1” in order to proceed.
• Participants have 30 seconds to “Press 1” – if they don’t, the call is terminated. It is possible to “Press 1” while the annoucnement is playing.
• CLI Blanking – Instead of sending a phone number to the participants in a voice call, the CLI is blanked, so they get “Number Unavailable”.
• Automatic refund – if either party does not “Press 1”, the call is terminated and credits are refunded.
• Number Blocking – calls to premium rate numbers are blocked.

Conference Call

• Pre-conference accouncement – When the first party is called, they will be played an announcement to let them know what’s going on, instead of previous situation where they got silence while second party was being called.
• Participants are played an announcement before being added to conference.
• There is the option to have no pre-conference announcement, or a choice of different announcements.
• Announcements are available in multiple languages and voices (1:English female 1, 2:English female 2, 3:English male, 10:Spanish male, 20:Italian male, 30:Polish female, 31:Polish male, 40:German male, 50:Greek male).
• After the pre-conference announcement, each participant will be prompted to “Press 1” in order to proceed.
• CLI Blanking – Instead of sending a phone number to the participants in a conference, the CLI is blanked, so they get “Number Unavailable”.
• Automatic refund of credits for unsuccessful calls.

Inbound SMS

• Help keyword – this has been reserved (effectively means its ignored if it’s the first word in an inbound SMS, so the second word acts as the keyword instead if they are using a shared number), so applications can decide to help their customers if they want to i.e. if an application picks up a message whose first word is “help” then they can respond to the sender with some useful help info.

Also, the following services are being deprecated due to lack of use by the existing customer base: Location, Contacts, Information About Me (IAM). Support for these services will be discontinued in a future release.

We’ll be releasing a new version of the .NET SDK for these services when it’s ready.