SMS overview
Sending methods
Accolades can send SMS messages to mobile phone numbers using 3 main methods:
- Sending to arbitrary numbers;
- Sending to a CRM customer;
- Sending a large number of messages by uploading a .csv file (SMS campaign).
The SMS management is available by accessing the SMS module from the Accolades menu.
Limitations
Because of the procedures used to send messages to the mobile network carriers Accolades has a couple of restrictions for the messages:
- Messages longer than 160 characters are truncated;
- No diacritical marks are allowed (letters with diacritical marks are automatically converted to their Latin counterparts).
SMS status
The process of sending a SMS message is not instant. When a user sends a message (regardless of the method used), the SMS is just queued by the Accolades server, for further processing. The processing interval is usually just a couple of seconds but, in certain situations it can take a few minutes.
Because of this process, a message can have one of the following states:
- Waiting
- the message has been received by the Accolades server and it is waiting to be sent to the mobile carrier;
- Sending
- the message has been sent to the mobile phone carrier and it is waiting for a confirmation;
- Send
- the mobile phone carrier acknowledged that the message has been received;
- Error
- the message cannot be sent.
Warning: Not all the carriers can confirm that the message has been received by the mobile device. There are cases when the mobile phone in unreachable (for example without signal). In this case the mobile carrier will retry to send the message later. Although the message has not yet reached the mobile device, the carrier notifies the Accolades server that the message has been sent.