Outbox v Pending v Sent

[Ryan Knight]

Hi All,

I am wondering what the difference is between a message in the "Outbox", a "Pending" message, a "Sent" message and a "Delivered" message. In a moment of little foresight, I sent ~1900 messages using one phone earlier today, but need to disconnect the phone from the computer shortly so I can fly home for the holidays.

Will "Pending" messages be delivered if the phone is disconnected from the computer?

[kiwanja.net]

Hi Ryan

Wow, that's a lot of messages to send through an attached phone! In short answer to your question, messages first go to the outbox (in a similar way to email), and then are passed through for processing (pending). Only when they say "sent" have they gone. If the phone is disconnected then they will stay "pending" until the phone is reconnected. Bear in mind in all of this that it takes about a minute to process and send around 8 - 10 messages (this is a GSM network restriction, not one on our end), so the number you are looking to send will take some time. (We'd recommend using a Clickatell or IntelliSMS account for these volumes - details are in the "Settings" section of the Help files).

Ken

[Ryan Knight]

Hi Ken,

And what is the difference between "Sent", "Failed" and "Delivered"? Failed and delivered are pretty straightforward, but we have a bunch of "Sent" messages from our latest blast and I'm wondering what they're up to...

Thanks,
Ryan

[kiwanja]

Hi Ryan

"Sent" signifies that the messages left FrontlineSMS, so they likely were delivered okay. For some reason the delivery confirmation wasn't received - maybe the phones were off, out of range, etc. or the receipt just never got back to your hub. If you're running this in the US, then most (maybe all) of the networks there don't support delivery confirmations - very odd but there you go.

Hope that was helpful. \o/

Ken