FLSMS not passing MO and Two way number

[Jack Augustin]

Hi,

I am in the US and have been using a Clickatell Central API account and connect through  HTTP API. Here is an example of the string I used :a href="http://api.clickatell.com/http/sendmsg?user=ljaxxxxxx&password=9ixxxxxx&api%0b_id=3xxxxxxx&mo=1&to=1xxxxxxxxxx&from=1xxxxxxxxxx&text=Thank+you">http://api.clickatell.com/http/sendmsg?user=ljaxxxxxx&password=9ixxxxxx&api
_id=3xxxxxxx&mo=1&to=1xxxxxxxxxx&from=1xxxxxxxxxx&...> Some information has been blocked for security purposes. The problem is FLSMS is not passing the MO and the TWO-WAY number to Clikatell gateway. Although the message is marked SENT in FLSMS but not DELIVERED because the MO and the TWO-WAY have not been passed, so it ends up in "Routine Error". If anyone is familiar with this kind of issue please let me know. FYI, I have contacted Clickatell and they are the one who told me that is what's happening.

Thanks.

 

[Alex Anderson]

Hi Danny,

Sorry for the confusion - I was talking about 1.6, which the guide is written for, and 1.7 (which is not released).
I am not sure of the mechanism for dropping in additional aggregators in v2 yet (although it should also be *possible*).

Alex

[Jack Augustin]

I have inserted a screenshot for your convenience. The From Number dialogue box would be a good place to enter the number you want people to reply to. However in my case I entered and API string that seems to work as well.

[Laura Walker Hudson]

Hi folks

Sorry for our slowness in replying to this today.

You're right that FrontlineSMS doesn't currently support two-way messaging using Clickatell - you might find it easier to extend version 2 than version 1, but my understanding is that it would mean adding incoming http connections, which we haven't yet done. As we're in Nairobi the developer team is unfortunately no longer in the office, so we won't be able to jump on a call with you this evening - I appreciate that's outside your timeframe, and apologies again.

We will look to add two way support, and other aggregators, as soon as possible.

Best wishes

Laura

[Jack Augustin]

Thank you Laura for your response. Right now I can get my messages delivered by using the steps that I mentioned above. I just can't get people to reply or receive through FLSMS using some script combination as oppose to using a GSM modem.

Regards,

Jack

[Danny Mai]

Thanks Laura.  If we could speak with someone in the Morning time Nairobi (evening time CDT) that might be helpful as well.  From what I understand of the clickatell documentation:

http://www.clickatell.com/downloads/Clickatell_two-way_technical_gu...

Section 11.3, there are multiple methods to retrieve messages from Clickatell via polling and/or ftp and then have to be parsed.  However, I do not know whether Clickatell will automatically forward messages to an http service (this might be what they define as the callback URL).  I understand version 2 might support it better, but we need autoforward functionality that currently isn't in version 2.  (and Groups was harder to figured out in 2 as well).  I do like the http nature of version 2, though.

Maybe we can look at the ftp log file method as an alternative, but not sure how easy it would be to discard previously committed messages.  Thanks for any help you all could provide in our time sensitive project.

[Danny Mai]

As we have been researching this more, and converted our outbound messages to use ClickaTell, we still have a capacity issue.  We have over 800 subscribers.  Since FrontlineSMS currently sends messages to each recipient one at a time, it takes over 10-15 minutes to send all these messages out.  While that may not seem like a lot of time, for folks waiting on critical election results, it seems like a lifetime.  

I not sure whether Frontline or even ClickaTell or any other gateway allow batching of a single message to multiple recipients, but I thought I would throw the idea out, in case anyone has any thoughts.

Thanks!

Danny

[Jack Augustin]

Hi Danny,

Here is something I think you can try: I assume the 800 subscribers are broken down into groups. That said you can open a group from the left pane of FLSMS and it will expand all members of that group on the right pane. Now hold down the SHIFT KEY and highlight the whole list of members from that group. Then Right-Click on the highlighted list and select SEND SMS and everyone on that list will receive the message at once. I tried it and it worked.

Enjoy

[Danny Mai]

From my experience, it still queues each recipient to send one message for each recipient.  Also, the max number of recipients in the right pane is 100, and you have to page to the next page to get the next set in the group.  What we've done is clicked on the group, and clicked Send SMS at the bottom left pane and it does the same thing- creates one message for each recipient, vs. a batch processed send to the gateway.  What I was hoping to be able to do was the have the gateway take all the numbers at once, and just handle the message, vs Frontline sending individual messages.

BTW to answer your receive issue, we are using a t-mobile sim card (unlimited messaging only) with an AT&T sierra data modem to receive messages, but letting people know to subscribe via one number, but will receive via another number.  Clunky? Yes - very, but it completes the communications loop.