Diverting unwanted notifications from the mobile operator

[MARS Lab (Gordon)]

When topping up our prepaid account on the FLSMS phone modem, the mobile operator sends an automatic response back to the modem to confirm the payment: "Your top up was successful.  Check your account balance and expiry date for FREE by dialling *225."

Problem is, that the notification message from the operator then gets forwarded to everyone on the distribution list for our Get the Word Out Project.  Even worse, it is confusing to those on the distribution list it because it looks like a message that could refer to their own mobile phone account.  

To solve the problem we  created a keyword that catches the first word of the operator's reply message "Your" and then sends it to a Contact group called "Diverted Messages" in order stop it from being forwarded to the distribution list.  FLSMS then sends an email to the project administrator's account to let him know that a message has been diverted.  The email contains the phone number and contents of the message that was diverted.  We do this just in case one of the project participants sends a message starting with "Your".  If such a case were to happen, the administrator can see that it is a legitimate message and then forward it manually to the distribution list.

A small but important modification that prevents unwanted messages from reaching participants in the project.

[kiwanja]

Hi Gordon

Many thanks for sharing this! Really great solution to the problem. We'll make sure it's a featured post so other users who have the same issue can easily find it.

I hope everything else is going well. Thanks, as ever, for your support!

Ken