Start TXTing on us!
Starting with Version 8.0, Web+Center offered SMS -TXT messaging to your Web+Center techs and customers in addition to email notifications for support cases.
This TXTing option gives you one more method to communicate important support issue updates to your customers and techs in a timely manner. Some tech/customers might have their personal communication strategy setup to continually monitor phone calls and TXT messages with their smart phone, but emails are not viewed or updated continuously. Enabling SMS options on Web+Center can add that level of responsiveness you may need in your support operations.
Note: Web+Center SMS services does not allow the user to TXT back a reply in any way to the messages.
SMS Gateway access is critical
To gain access to the world wide SMS network requires a subscription based gateway that is fairly tightly controlled to prevent SPAM abuses from taking over our cell and SMS networks. The reason you don’t get SPAMMED with cell TXT messages is that telcos and SMS gateways have been able to be successfully monitored and controlled to prevent SMS abuses.
To interface with the cell TXT/SMS network, we have select Twillio as our SMS gateway vendor and integrated their API into our Web+Center code. TXT messages cost about $.0075 / msg. (That’s 3/4 of a cent per message)
**To help you explore the SMS feature within Web+Center, we are offering free, 3 months SMS services with a special Twillo account we have set up for all Web+Center users. After 3 months if you want to continue SMS services, we required you purchase your own SMS service with Twillo. The cost is very minimal (under $5-10 per month) for most organizations and configurable as to when and who gets SMS messages.
How to configure SMS on your Web+Center
To enable and configure SMS TXT options with Web+Center follow these steps:
- Click on Administration
- Click on System Configuration Options (System Configuration Level tech status required)
- Click on SMS Configuration option
- Enter the following Twilio Access Codes into SMS Notification Configuration Page Form
- Check the Enable SMS Messaging and Notifications check box
- SMS Phone Number/Short Code +16503197875
- SMS Account SID: ACc7af7249179e238b24bdd6a6d17e8231
- SMS Auth Token: 8a94f0a3ce73e89a62f4c37202853dc2
- Press the Submit button to save the values.
Testing your proper SMS settings
There are now various options in Web+Center to use your SMS options to TXT techs or customers directly or provide an additional case notification option.
To verify your SMS Web+Center feature is properly configured, try these steps:
In the Tech+Center, create or edit a customer record and in the Cell/TXT field on the left, enter a valid SMS formatted phone number in the E.164 format. You will want to have that cell phone near to you while performing this test.
For USA based numbers, this will be adding a +1 (USA country code) in front of the 10 digit phone number with no spaces. So the cell number of (650) 342-2345 would be +16503422345.
Save that customer record.
Open up a new or existing case for that customer. Within the case form, click on the button that says Sent TXT to customer. This will launch a pop up window that allows you to enter the message.
Enter your TXT message and press theSend TXT notification button and confirm the message was successfully delivered to the phone. It should be almost immediate.
There are many options throughout Web+Center for direct TXT messaging or automatic case TXT notification updates now that a TXT phone number is configured.
Configuring Tech and Customer SMS Numbers for Techs and Customers
Techs: tech SMS numbers on the Tech Account form in SMS Text/Cell field
Customer: Enter the Customer TXT number in the Cell/TXT number Tech+Center, Customer+Center or Customer+Mobile
Contact ISS if you have any issues configuring your SMS TXT feature.
Web+Center SMS API
Web+Center is unique from other Help Desk Vendors by offering you 100% of the source including the code to send out these SMS messages.
There is one primary SMS code ASP module to handle the TXTing features once it has been configured. We have built this module to be called from any of the Web+Center applications (tech+center, customer+center, tech+mobile, etc) by placing this code into the language subdirectory.
The SendTxtMsg.inc file located in the language directory contains a simple API call to send messages.
The subroutine:
SendTxtMessage(TxtNumber, Message )
Takes two string parameters, TxtNumber and Message.
To include this function in your ASP code module, simple add this line near the top of the ASP module you are calling it from:
<!– #INCLUDE FILE=”../Language/SendTxtMsg.inc” –>
Then to call this subroutine in you ASP code, it can be called like:
TxtNumber = “+16503422345”
Message = “This is a test message up to 150 characters long”
SendTxtMessage TxtNumber, TMessage
All of the SMS Twilio configuration information is pulled in from this function automatically. This allows you to add more TXT’ing custom functionality to your Help Desk and customer support systems in places and methods where you need an additional notification method besides email.
Putting it all together!
Web+Center runs “out of the box” for most of the our users, but we offer SMS options and a wealth of other API’s and customization options to let you build a world class application for your IT support help or service desk or custom system for your organization. We invite you to explore the tools in the Web+Center tool box and SMS messaging is just one of many available to you.
We look forward to helping each our clients personally on projects and upgrades to enable the most out of your Web+Center product!