All You Need to Know About SMS

As well as emails, you're able to send text messages through Agillic. Our SMS feature is also controlled through Flows meaning you have full control over who receives your SMS and when.

• Outbound SMS
  • Creating an Outbound SMS
  • Using Data Fields in an SMS
  • Using Promotion Content
  • Sending a Test SMS
  • Sending an SMS in the Flows Module
• Inbound SMS
  • Keywords
  • Shortcode
  • Syntax
    • Examples:
      • Person Data
      • Events
      • Events and Person Data
  • Testing Inbound SMS
    • Testing By Doing an HTTP Call

Outbound SMS

Creating an Outbound SMS

The SMS Content Editor is where you draft your SMS. It's found in the Channels module, under Outbound. You can use lots of different sorts of data to personalise your SMS and can even insert content based on an existing Promotion.

Configuring an SMS

The SMS Editor has a character counter so you can keep track of how many SMSs you will need to send the message. It's important to remember that dynamic data fields and some special characters will affect the 'maximum allowed character' count per message. 

Using Data Fields in an SMS

The Outbound SMS channel supports 'merging' in Person Data, Global Data, Unique Lookup values, and Promotion content. These options are available from the text editor toolbar (found below the text editor), and the right hand side of the SMS editor, when the text field is clicked.

Merging in Dynamic Data fields in an SMS

Using Promotion Content

Promotion content is inserted by clicking the 'plus' icon, labelled 'Add a Promotion Block'. Simply select your Promotion, and the 'Promotion field' to be inserted. Please note that the promotion field must be of the type 'Text'.

Inserting a Promotion Block in an SMS

Sending a Test SMS

Sending a Test SMS is made possible directly from the SMS Editor. Simply click the 'Test' icon, fill in a phone number and the ID of a recipient whose data you wish the sms to be based on.

As every SMS Gateway handles unicode characters and character optimisation individually it's important that you test your SMS before sending to your live recipients. This is equally important whether or not you are sending your SMS messages via an integration to a custom SMS Gateway or via the Agillic standard SMS gateway.

Sending a test SMS from the SMS Editor

Sending an SMS in the Flows Module

You send an SMS by inserting an SMS Step into a Flow. This means you can control who receives the SMS by using the familiar Flow tools such as Target Groups and Triggers. 

Inbound SMS

Inbound SMSs are another way of connecting with your recipients. They allow recipients to send SMSs back to you, perhaps to request extra information, enter a competition, or change the settings of their account.

If you'd like to handle inbound text messages, you need to register a keyword. A keyword is unique to your instance which means that they aren't shared between Staging and Production environments. 

When an inbound message is received, the phone number from which it originates is matched against an existing recipient within your instance.

You may also choose to allow the creation of new recipients when receiving an inbound message from a previously unknown phone number. This setting is found in Settings, under Mobile.

Mobile numbers starting with a '+' will not match with those without '+'. We highly recommend that phone numbers do not contain '+'. Instead, you should use the following format: ‘4512345678’.

In order for you to set up Inbound SMS successfully, you need to understand the basics of Keywords, Shortcode, and Syntax. 

If you want to use this feature, it's required that you index the Person Data field configured to store mobile hone numbers (by default MSISDN). This is to ensure quick access to mobile phone number values. Read more about how to apply an index to a Person Data field here

Keywords

Your Operations Manager or Agillic Support will be able to assist you in registering a keyword with the default SMS Gateway provider. Please note that these keywords have an associated monthly cost, the cost is listed on your price list.

It often makes sense to register the name of the instance as a keyword. This allows you to reuse the keyword in different contexts.

How to configure Inbound SMS - Once you've registered a keyword, you may now begin configuring the Inbound SMS settings. Inbound text messages may be used to either trigger Events or update Person Data values. 

The Inbound SMS settings view

Shortcode

A shortcode is the phone number the messages should be sent to in order to be processed by your instance.

Agillic’s default gateway for Danish inbound SMS keywords is the shortcode 1980. You will receive the gateway shortcode for your country when you order your first keyword.

Shortcodes in different countries - Shortcodes follow the country in which the user’s subscription/sim plan belongs, not the country where the user is currently geographically located. This means that users travelling abroad will be reachable via your normal SMS Flow and shortcodes.

Syntax

The syntax determines how the inbound message is interpreted in terms of which Events and Person Data fields to update with the received content.

We have registered the keyword ‘AGCANDY’ at 1980, and configured the following syntax in ‘Inbound SMS’ settings:

AGCANDY PERMISSION

‘PERMISSION’ here is the name of a Person Data field. This would allow a recipient to send in the following message: ‘AGCANDY yes’, which would result in the value ‘yes’ being saved to the person data field ‘PERMISSION’.

The syntax for updating Person Data is stated below. Please replace the placeholder text with the relevant values.

Syntax - {KEYWORD} {NAME OF PERSON DATA}

Example - AGCANDY yes

You have to register an additional keyword for each syntax you wish to support.  

Examples:

Person Data

Events

Using double quotes allows you to quote an Event which has spaces within the name such as "Hans Christian Andersen".

Events and Person Data

Agillic will recognise any value with an '@' as an email address and save it as the email address of the user. This can be more secure than using 'EMAIL' in a Syntax, as it would not allow invalid email addresses to save.

Testing Inbound SMS

You can test your Inbound SMS configuration in two ways:

• By sending an actual SMS to your registered shortcode and keyword.
• By testing the configuration on Staging by an HTTP call.

Testing by doing an HTTP call

In the example below, replace the placeholders:

• {PLACEHOLDER1} is replaced to match the name of your instance.
• {PLACEHOLDER2} is replaced to match the phone number you wish to simulate a message from.
• {PLACEHOLDER3} is replaced to match the message you wish to send.

Link - https://{PLACEHOLDER1}-stag.agillic.eu/inboundsms/IPXInbound?OriginatorAddress={PLACEHOLDER2}&Message={PLACEHOLDER3}

Example - https://agilliccandy-stag.agillic.eu/inboundsms/IPXInbound?OriginatorAddress=4501234567&Message=AGCANDY stop 

You can test this by visiting the completed URL in a browser, or by performing an HTTP POST call using a tool of your choosing (cURL, Python, etc.).

Suggested Next Steps

• How to Create an SMS
• Understanding How SMS Characters are Calculated
• How to Insert Personalised Text in an SMS