You may have noticed that our web application pages are now loading faster, especially pages containing contacts and reports data. This is due to an optimization exercise we have completed on our Database systems, making data retrieval more speedy.
Do provide us feedback should there be other areas you feel we can improve on to make our web application work better for you!
Many users don’t realize that this feature exists perhaps because it’s hidden under an “further options” link. If you happen to have to send a SMS broadcast at a time when you are not going to be physically at your PC or in the office, you can actually create a Campaign and then set the time and date that it will be processed.
To do this, create a SMS broadcast campaign just like you normally would. At the final step where the “Start Campaign’ button appears, there is a link called “further options”. Click on this and a panel for setting the broadcast date appears. See below:
Choose the desired actual broadcast date and time and then click “Start Campaign”. That’s it, your campaign has been scheduled for broadcast!
For Mobile Inbox Campaign users, you can now configure an auto-reply message of more than 160 characters, up to 800 characters in fact.
i.e. When mobile users send an SMS to your Campaign Inbox, your auto-reply can be as lengthy as up to 800 characters.
Do note that for messages of more than 160 characters, every 140 characters (roman text) will be considered as 1 SMS message and the appropriate number of credits will be deducted from your account accordingly (if you are a Basic Plan users)
We have updated the Portal with more than 20 new features!
The 3 major ones are:
1) QuickSend selection mode
-We have refined the selection mode for manually entering mobile numbers versus selecting from your Contacts. You will find a new mini-tab bar in the middle of the page, click on the appropriate tab for the mobile number entry method you prefer!
2) Broadcast Campaign options
-At the message composition step, the various options now automatically appear in a neat box on the right side of the page. The details for each option further appears when you select that option.
3) Campaign Favourites
-We are introducing a new feature called “Favourites”. This feature became quite critical for users who had sent campaigns that already number in the thousands. With the new “Favourites” feature, you can now mark a campaign in the Reports section as a favourite (click on it’s ‘Star’). This Campaign will henceforth appear in the Campaigns page to be monitored until you decide to un-favourite it again
The rest of the 17 features are improvements, refinements and minor new features found all over the Portal. These include functions for managing your SMS subscription list, daily Email reports, Contact Groups merging and many other cool new capabilities. Have fun exploring!
When starting a SMS Receive Campaign, you will be expecting SMS messages to come in, be received and appear in your Campaign report. Such a Campaign can be created for various objectives, such as to receive enquires for your product or service (most popular!), for receiving feedback, or for receiving submissions for a Luck Draw.
You will of course have to tell mobile users that they have to send in SMS message in respond to your Campaign.
You can let mobile users know of your campaign via various means:
When you created the SMS Receive Campaign on the Portal, you would have been prompted to choose a keyword as part of the Campaign setup. You will have to tell the mobile user to place this keyword as the first word in their SMS message before they send the SMS to the Portal shortcode 73333.
Assuming that you have chosen the keyword “Cola” and you are looking to collect a subscription list of people interested in receiving further news about your product, examples of how you can tell your potential mobile users about the Campaign are as follows:
Send <Cola> < “Your Name”> to 73333
Send “Cola” SPACE “Your Name” to 73333
Send Cola <Your Name> to 73333
All the above examples will work! The Portal is smart enough to filter out the < symbols and quotes to make sure the SMS message appear in your Campaign report!
We’ve overhauled the COMMZGATE Website!
Singapore users will find Singapore specific product info and services at http://www.commzgate.sg while the original commzgate.com site will soon be re-launched to cater for our venerable and faithful Enterprise Edition product.
More significantly, we’ve added a brand new User Forum section to our site. Via the various forum categories, users can now ask questions and discuss various issues ranging from SMS Marketing to in-depth technical discussions. Users of the COMMZGATE Portal under the Basic Plan will also have support issues predominately handled here. Do check it out!
Pfizer has launched a SMS-based smoking cessation programme in support of its smoking cessation drug Champix /Chantix
Apparently, research has shown that half the fight to quit smoking is psychological.
Users of the drug are hence assisted with up to daily SMS encouragement reminders to keep up the good fight , not to give up and basically to keep the chin up until the end of the drug course.
To register, send QUIT to 73333 , you will be prompted to enter your drug course start date to begin the programme.
Braun and Oral-B have jointly launched a OktoberFest SMS Campaign where customers can stand to win a fully-paid trip for 2 to Munich, Germany to celebrate the German OktoberFest beer-drinking festival.
Customers will have to purchase $128 worth or more of Braun or Oral-B products and SMS their details to 76767.
The Braun / Oral-B OktoberFest SMS Campaign is powered by the COMMZGATE Platform.
If you are programming an application to interface with an GSM modem hardware device to send and receive SMS Text Messages, you will most likely be communicating with the GSM modem device using AT Commands.
When issuing commands to the GSM modem device, you will get back a series of return codes from the device, which is in turn a result of how the GSM modem device had interacted with the GSM network.
The return codes are in the form of 1 to 3 digit numbers.
Here is the full list of the possible return codes and what they mean:
CMS Error code list for GSM Modem devices
1 - “Unassigned (unallocated) number”
This cause indicates that the destination requested by the Mobile Station cannot be reached because, although the number is in a valid format, it is not currently assigned (allocated).
8 - “Operator determined barring”
This cause indicates that the MS has tried to send a mobile originating short message when the MS’s network operator or service provider has forbidden such transactions.
10 - “Call barred”
This cause indicates that the outgoing call barred service applies to the short message service for the called destination.
Samsung mobile phones now come embedded with a range of pre-installed Java Games playable in trial mode. To activate the game you like to full action mode, simply select the ‘Activation’ button and wait for a SMS to arrive in your SMS inbox.
The SMS message will ask you to confirm the purchase of the game activation code by replying with the word ‘GAME’ back to the shortcode from which the SMS message came from. The secret activation code will hence arrive in your SMS Inbox.
WAP PUSH enables the delivery of multimedia content to mobile devices without the need for the full-fledged MMS delivery protocol. Instead, a hyperlink is delivered to the mobile device of the recipient as a Service Indication message. The recipient mobile device will automatically prompt the recipient to download the content on the hyperlink and display it over a GPRS/WAP connection.
Formatting a proper WAP PUSH message as hexadecimal string has been something of a mystery to many people, as there is close to no useful documentation on the Web on this, and Nokia’s own documentation is very cryptic at best.
Hopefully, the following provides a clear and easy-to-understand guide on how to construct WAP PUSH messages!
Basics: ASCII to Hex Conversion
A WAP Push message essentially consists of the Internet URL containing your multimedia content, and this URL is wrapped by some SMS-specific headers, which we will explain below
Your need to first convert your URL into a hexadecimal string. Use the table found at the following page to convert each character in your URL string into its hexadecimal equivalent:
http://www.commzgate.sg/blog/2007/07/the-gsm-default-alphabet-set-gsm-0338-7-bit/
ING Private Bank has enhanced their in-house COMMZGATE Setup to a pretty heavy-duty one involving multiple GSM modems and the ever-amazing N-Port IP-based Serial Port Appliance server.
The N-Port application is basically a specialized server appliance with its own IP address and up to 16 RS-232 serial ports extending out of the back of it for connection with serial devices such as GSM modems.
The COMMZGATE Enterprise Server installed on-site communicates with the N-Port using the supplied management program (runs on Windows and Linux).
The enhanced setup allows for increased message throughput as well as sophisticated message routing based on destination mobile number country codes.
Wikipedia has published a comprehensive entry on SMS Gateways. Check it out
HERE.
Many of the email-to-SMS capabilities offered by the Mobile Operators listed in the article is not readily available in this region. For a local alternative, check out the Email-to-SMS solution offered by COMMZGATE.
Too busy to program another API connection? Here’s good news! You can now use your program’s in-built emailer function (eg. mail() in PHP, JavaMail in Java) to send out an SMS message via COMMZGATE.
The rules are really simple. We expect the email to have the email headers for Subject, From and To to come in the following order.
Subject: 6598477466
From: system@acme.com
To: 758858@commzgate.net
Have the mobile number you intend to send to in the email Subject field. Your From email address should be registered with us as a authenticating ID, and lastly send the email to the commzgate.net email address assigned to you.
Contact us if you are interested in a trial account!
Sandisk Singapore has launched a SMS Campaign to promote its MP3 player and storage products.
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