Inbound SMS
Overview
In addition to the Web21C SDK outbound message service, we also offer our customers the added benefit of Inbound SMS messages. Inbound SMS messages enable you, your application, or your organisation to receive and process SMS text messages from any mobile phone or mobile network.
We currently offer UK Inbound long numbers with coverage areas worldwide (except US) for both dedicated or shared use, and US shortcodes for shared use only. If you would like to get signed up now for any of these options, please contact us via My Apps.
Features
- Allows SMS messages of up to 459 characters to be received.
- Dedicated numbers for sole use, or shared numbers with a keyword.
- Help keyword - this has been reserved (effectively means it is 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.
- 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 are : "stop", "cancel", "end", "quit", "stop all", "unsubscribe") - the application is then blocked from sending messages to that user.
- Resume - this enables a user to resubscribe to an application they have unsubscribed to by replying with "resume" as the first word in the SMS.
- Inbound SMS Events - this allows an application to set up an inbound message event listener and send us details of a URL to our mailbox from which we will post all inbound messages to them thus saving the application the need to poll for getReceivedMessages. This is a fire and forget HTTP post so if the application needs to be absolutely sure of picking up all messages then it should also poll once a day. These events can also be sent securely (HTTPS) if necessary and can include your own unique parameter in the post as a further verification that the event is legitimate. For more details on doing this please look at the How-Tos.
Note:
Messages longer than 189 characters containing special characters cannot be guaranteed to appear correctly in the application.
Applications
- Allow potential customers to SMS you for more information on your offerings
- Enable your employees or staff to update you with information
- Run marketing campaigns with SMS text as a reply option
- Enable SMS voting or contests
- Allow customers to contact you for sales
- Use SMS to update your blog or whereabouts on the run
- Send your application an SMS request and it replies with useful information
- The options are seemingly endless...
Code Example: (Java)
InboundMessageManager inboundSMS = new InboundMessageManager();
ReceivedMessage[] recMessage =
inboundSMS.getInboundMessagesForKeyword("keyword");
System.out.println( recMessage[0] );