First Major FrontlineSMS Experience - sent to 1800 users

[saikyo]

On Friday, I used Frontline SMS for the first time to send a message to 1,800 people from a contact list I imported.

I added myself to the contact list just to be sure that it would work.

I started sending early morning, about 9am on Friday, and at about 11:30 am on the same day I noticed that it wasn't 1/3rd of the way done sending the messages.

I left the office for the week expecting to maybe receive the message later that night. It never came.

When I got back to the office on Monday, I noticed the security log of the computer was full and I couldn't log in until an administrator came to clear out the logs. I doubt that this was Frontline SMS related, but who knows.

After getting into the system, which had been rebooted by the tech, I relaunched FrontlineSMS and noticed that most of the messages were still either PENDING or OUTBOX status.

I exported MESSAGES so that I could count the status detail.
465 messages sent.
227 messages pending.
1153 messages in outbox.
4 messages failed.

Checking the logs it seems that it is sending one message every 20 seconds.

We did receive replies during this time, so that seems to be working fine.

Questions:
Is there some way that I can easily watch "live" what FrontlineSMS is doing? It would be nice if I could see a running log showing when messages were sent, or flagged pending, or whatever. Since the FrontlineSMS interface lists all the messages across multiple pages it is difficult to keep track of what is going on in realtime.

Related, now that I'm back into FrontlineSMS messages that were still PENDING or in OUTBOX, are being sent again, it automatically picked up where it left off.

If I delete PENDING or OUTBOX messages, will that cancel the send entirely?

I am using a Moterola L6i Phone on a Windows machine.

Also, I am mainly usin the NEW view, if anything I am asking about would be easier to do in the Classic view, please let me know!

Thanks for any feedback!

[Alex Anderson]

Hi Saikyo,

If you have direct access to your database, you can delete the messages from there. I am not sure there is an easier way in the normal screens.

To keep track what is going on in real time, you could try looking at the "Latest Events" list on the Home tab.

I hope this helps,

Alex

[kiwanja]

Hi Saikyo

I see Alex has responded below.

If you have internet access on your FrontlineSMS machine, I'd recommend sending these kinds of volumes of messages via Clickatell or IntelliSMS. Although attached phones and modems generally work well, 1,800 messages is quite an ask. You could try attaching additional phones to speed it up and share the load, if you have any, or break the message sending down into smaller batches (by breaking your Group up into smaller ones).

Best of luck with the rest of this!

Ken

[saikyo]

Thanks for the tips.

Clickatell etc isn't an option for us due to the high cost of sending messages with them (compared to local provider).

Using 2 phones is an interesting idea, if only there was a way to do so while sending from the same number as not to confuse users. Is it feasible to "clone" a sim card so that the same number exists on two different phones?

The group thing seems like a good idea and I think I'll try that next time.

How man contacts is considered a fair number for a group? I don't see suggestions or warnings about making a group too large in the documentation.

As for deleting the pending and outbox messages, it was far faster to get it done once the phone was unplugged. Word to the wise.

Thanks!

[Ben Whitaker]

incidentally - for a normal physical GSM handset, the theoretical maximum rate of sending/receiving is 5 messages per minute in perfect conditions according to the official GSM spec, so your experience of 3 messages a minute is not far off that, although I'd hope for more in an extended period as you tried.

As Ken said, using an internet based "virtual SMS" sending service that is plugged directly into the mobile phone networks would be more appropriate for lots of messages in short time.

If clickatell is too expensive, and you are intending to do large message sending regularly, look for some local "bulk SMS aggregators" that send SMS in your area, and create a FrontlineSMS plug-in to enable sending SMS through that new internet provider, so that you can use that. There should be forum threads about this somewhere...

When using an SMS aggregator, you can "fake" your SMS sender address as required, so as to be consistent for your users, but if you ever hope to receive thousands of messages an hour, then you should consider a bulk SMS receiver system too, as a single physical SMS handset will be limited by the same radio limits as mentioned above!

However, to send loads of SMS without an SMS aggregator, using multiple physical handsets, that will work fine by plugging loads of phones into one computer, but the messages will appear to be from the identity of the handset that sent each message. This will also spread our the replies which is desirable to cope with volume of responses, unless there is some other requirement?

You can always use one incoming identity, but just expect users to put up with different identities of reply messages?

[saikyo]

Thanks for the detailed response!

I'll keep my eyes open for some local bulk SMS aggregator. This sounds like the best solution.

As you said, the multiple cell phone option wouldn't be optimal for us as it would be tough to make it clear to our users that we are mailing from more than one number.

In the meantime, I'll try breaking our group up into smaller groups to make managing the sends easier.

Technical limitations... Gotta love 'em!