How-to: SMS Extension

SMS Extension allows to send SMS messages from inside of EFS. The messages are entered and sent via the familiar EFS mail dialog. The technical execution of the transmission is carried out by an external service provider.

Functional Scope

Customers with an own installation hosted at TIVIAN can optionally lease SMS Extension. On group installation, this extension is not available. For customers who are hosting externally, it is unfortunately not available either. To order the required amount of SMS, please get in touch with your Sales contacts. They can also provide a current list of prices. The dispatch is handled by the external service provider TynTec (http://www.tyntec.de). The costs are calculated per dispatch attempt. You can send messages from participant administration in personalized projects, from panelists administration, panel groups and panel samples. In anonymous projects, the dispatch function is not available. Sending messages from other menus, by triggers or other features is not possible either. Furthermore, SMS messages cannot be stored in mail templates. For each participant, one mobile phone number can be stored in participant administration. When writing SMS messages, you have to respect special restrictions of length and character set. EFS SMS Extension includes various checks which help you to follow the rules.

Storing Participants’ Phone numbers

The mobile phone numbers of participants are stored in the variable “u_mobile”. From EFS 7.0 on, this variable is available per default in new personalized projects and emp- loyee surveys. In panelists administration, it has already been a default variable before. The mobile phone numbers of the sender and of the receiving participants or panelists must be formatted according to international formatting rules:

• A total of eleven digits

• Two zeros at the start

• Country prefix, e.g. 49 for Germany

• The number itself (Example: 0049223379336)

For participants in personalized projects, the validity is checked. For panelists and admin accounts, there is no check implemented.

Defining the Content of Messages

When writing SMS messages, you have to respect restrictions regarding text length and character set. SMS Extension includes various checks which help you to follow the rules of TIVIAN’s standard provider TynTec.

SMS

For SMS, the following restrictions of length and character set apply: A normal SMS can have up to 160 western-european characters. If the SMS text is longer than permitted, it will be distributed on several SMS automatically. Up to 9 SMS with 153 western-european characters each are available for one text. Each of these follow-up SMS will be billed separately. If e.g. cyrillic or chinese characters are used, only 67 characters are available per SMS. If a split of the text is necessary, up to 9 SMS with 67 characters each are available. Each of these follow-up SMS will be billed separately.

• UTF-8 characters can be displayed, depends of the mobile device.

• Most mobile devices are not able to process word wraps in the text. Therefore, word wraps are automatically removed when saving texts.

• If wildcards are used in the SMS text, please mind that the length of the text can change from message to message.

Entering and Sending SMS

SMS messages can be sent from participant administration, from panelists administration, panel groups and panel samples. The sending process requires several settings which differ from normal mailings. Proceed as follows:

• Open the mail form.

• SMS messages can not be stored in mail templates. Therefore, usually the uploading of a mail template is not required.

• In the field “Delivery”, select the type of delivery. The available options are:

  •  E-mail

  • SMS

  • E-mail and SMS

• Confirm with Apply. If you have selected “SMS” or “E-mail and SMS” as type of delivery, the section “SMS delivery” will be inserted. In this section, you enter the settings for SMS delivery.

• Select the type. The available options are:

  • SMS

• Enter the mobile phone number of the SMS sender. This is the number to which replies will be sent.

  • Until EFS 9.0, the rules for formatting apply to the sender address as well.

  • From EFS 9.1, you may also use a non-numerical sender address, limited to eleven digits). Several customers asked for this functionality, assuming that returns might be considerably lower if only a numerical sender is used instead of the author’s name or the company name.

• Enter the text of the SMS.

  • Do not use word wrap. Most mobile devices are not able to process word wraps in the text.

  • By clicking the question mark icon, you can access a list of the wildcards available.

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• Choose the appropriate delivery options and click Preview mail. Proceed as normal, while carefully observing hints and error messages.

Checking SMS Dispatch

You can check if the SMS have been sent:

• The Mail Report provides you with an overview of the status of each sent SMS. The status of an SMS can be Queued, Sending, Sent, Not delivered.

• in the Participant administration → Mail transmission report menu.

• in the Platform cockpit menu on the Project mail overview menu. With the necessary access rights, you can view all project-related mail proceedings of the installation centrally in this menu.

Planning SMS Dispatch

Thorough planning of SMS dispatch and early ordering of the SMS packages required can guarantee a smooth process.

• To order the required amount of SMS, please contact support. They can also provide a current list of prices.

• As owner of an installation, you are responsible for all SMS dispatched from and billed on this installation.

• Estimate how many SMS you will need for a survey. Mind that depending of the length of the messages, several SMS might be required for sending one message.

• Check the size of your remaining SMS resources regularly. Order a new package before your resources are used up completely.

Managing the SMS Resources of an Installation

In the Options → SMS overview menu, you can see how many SMS are still available on your installation.

• In the “Assigned SMS packages” section, you can find the packages which you ordered from your contact at TIVIAN Sales.

• In the “SMS amount” section, you can see how many SMS can still be sent.

Do-Not-SMS list

You can access a blacklist for mobile phone numbers via the menu Options → Mail Queue → Do-Not-SMS list. All entries in the list are excluded from SMS communication on a global and/or project-specific level.

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Adding Participants to the List

You can easily add participants or their mobile phone numbers to the Do-Not-SMS list by importing them. To do this, proceed as follows:

• Click on the Import button.

• Click on the Download import template button.

• Open the import template and fill it out. In the rcpt column, enter the mobile phone numbers that you want to add to the list. Under pid, you can either enter a specific project ID for which the number should not receive SMS or you can enter 0. The subscriber with the corresponding mobile phone number will then no longer receive SMS at a global level. Save the file.

• Click on the Choose file button.

• Select the import template that you have just filled out.

• Click on Send file.

• In the next step, the variables are assigned to the corresponding column in the import file. As you have used the recommended import file, you can simply click Proceed to preview.

• A preview of the numbers to be imported is displayed. Click on Import.

• The numbers from your import file are now in the Do-Not-SMS list.

Inserting an unsubscribe link in SMS

Just as with emails, you can also add a link in SMS messages that participants can use to unsubscribe from email communication for a specific project or on a global basis. To do this, simply insert the placeholders #unsubscribe_global# and/or #unsubscribe_survey# in your SMS or SMS template. The placeholders are then automatically replaced by the corresponding unsubscribe link when the SMS is sent. If the participant clicks on the link, they will be added to the Do-Not-SMS list.