Author Topic: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders? (Read 3167 times)

Tiffani Chin · November 27, 2012, 03:11:08 pm

Hi all,

Wondering if anyone else has found a creative solution to this problem.

I am very excited that I just got CiviSMS working -- and it's the perfect solution for the mass SMS messages that we send to our students.

But, here's the situation: we have a number of college advisors working with students. They use Civicrm to record their interactions with students. We encourage them to send emails through CiviCRM because it automatically logs those emails. It's also ideal because, while CiviCRM records the email, students can reply directly to their advisor's email (and we have those email addresses forwarding so that inbound emails file under student accounts).

These advisors record the text messages that they send (they use Google voice, so they just paste the content of their messages into their "text" activity), but I would love for them to be able to send SMS "through CiviCRM" as well, so that SMSes would also record automatically (and thus get recorded more consistently).

However, I still want students to be able to respond directly to their advisors via SMS and I want students to be able to differentiate mass SMS from us from individual SMS from their advisors.

With the Clickatell API, that does not seem possible: all SMS messages come from our sender account, no matter who sends them.

Unless I'm missing something.

Or.... is there a way to add a BCC or something so that advisor's individual numbers are also included in SMS... or is there a way to mask the sending number... Or...

I'm stumped. But, open to suggestions and I think we could probably contribute some funds if there's a programming solution that someone (not me) thinks would work.

Thanks, as ever, for all of the help on this forum!
-tiffani

Donald Lobo · November 27, 2012, 09:26:24 pm

hey tiffani:

might want to chat with michael mcandrew on this and see if they have similar needs etc. Might also want to read up on some of the work he has been doing with future first:

http://civicrm.org/blogs/michael-mcandrew/chained-sms

lobo

Tiffani Chin · November 28, 2012, 01:19:16 pm

Thanks, Lobo.

I've been following Michael's posts in the forum carefully but hadn't found that blog page. I'll check it out and also reach out to him.

Michael McAndrew · November 30, 2012, 07:37:30 am

Hey Tiffani,

In your SMS API config, you can specify a from parameter that sets who the SMS appears to come from. You can set that to any number you want, but when I set it to a random number, Clickatell sent me a warning saying something along the lines of "stop pretending to be someone else or we will get angry with you".

The reason that they allow you to set it is that you might have registered a lot of different numbers and want to be able to send from them. However
1) Civi does not currently support changing the from number on a per SMS basis like it does with email. that could be implemented, but
2) I am not sure if you can register other people's number or just ones that clickatell assigns so not sure how useful that would be. it would be cool if you could authorise text numbers in clickatell - not sure if that is possible though - might want to check. the only thing is that if you did that you would not get reply back when the student replied.

So, another idea that may / may not work for you would be for you to get civicrm to forward all student SMS to their teacher. You could do this by SMS or by some other method like email. I think sending an email might be quite cool That way, you can send them an email that says: Your student just texted you and said that. Click here to reply to this student by SMS / email etc. which directs them to an appropriate form in civicrm.

Does that help?

Tiffani Chin · November 30, 2012, 02:09:32 pm

Hey Michael,

Thanks for all of the work that you and your crew have been doing on CiviSMS -- it's truly a great addition to CiviCRM.

I love your suggestion about having CiviCRM email teachers when students reply. I have inbound SMS filing, but I know that the teachers are not as good as they should be at checking the students' activities list. And, even if they can't respond right away, we would like teachers to know when kids are communicating with them. I do not know of a way to make CiviCRM forward things currently, so I assume that that feature would have to be added. Or am I missing something?

I suspect Clickatell is strict about numbers due to the spam regulations -- and I guess that makes sense.

If the forwarding worked, we could get by with two numbers, one for mass SMS and one for individual-initiated SMS. Then, at least the students could differentiate between mass messages that they might blow off and individual messages that they should pay more attention to.

I have asked Clickatell if we can have more than one number with our account. But, I think that if we had to, we could just have two accounts with Clickatell, individual senders would default to one account and bulk mailings could use the other.

Thank you so much for the suggestions -- this helps a ton.

If the forwarding function requires programming -- do you have folks on your team who could do it (I'm in charge of CiviCRM here but am by no means a developer). I think we could contribute financially towards such a feature.

Thanks!
-tiffani

Michael McAndrew · December 03, 2012, 07:02:47 am

Quote

Thanks for all of the work that you and your crew have been doing on CiviSMS -- it's truly a great addition to CiviCRM.

thanks - we've only done a small part of the work

Quote

I love your suggestion about having CiviCRM email teachers when students reply. I have inbound SMS filing, but I know that the teachers are not as good as they should be at checking the students' activities list. And, even if they can't respond right away, we would like teachers to know when kids are communicating with them. I do not know of a way to make CiviCRM forward things currently, so I assume that that feature would have to be added. Or am I missing something?

You would have to code it. I don't think it would be too hard to hardcode a use case. Better would be to try and make a nice UI around it. A general framework for "doing something when something happens" would be an awesome addition to CiviCRM. We might be able to get there one step at a time

this code https://github.com/michaelmcandrew/ff/blob/master/extensions/org.thirdsectordesign.chainsms/chainsms.php#L72 is the part that decides to process a
and this code: https://github.com/michaelmcandrew/ff/blob/master/extensions/org.thirdsectordesign.chainsms/CRM/Chainsms/Processor.php

are the parts that decide what to do when an inbound SMS is received. It would be pretty easy to change these to send an email. It would take more work to make a UI, i.e. make it generalised and user friendly but it would be a cool task, no?

Quote

If the forwarding function requires programming -- do you have folks on your team who could do it (I'm in charge of CiviCRM here but am by no means a developer). I think we could contribute financially towards such a feature.

we are v. busy and 'transitioning' at the moment, but could look at doing this early in the new year if you like.

Tiffani Chin · December 04, 2012, 06:29:35 pm

It would be a really cool task -- I wish that I could be the one to do it!

I'm definitely interested in following up with this project (and I'm going to check out the code just to see what I can make of it).

We're sort of in transition right now too (and I've probably got enough on my plate giving the basic SMS functionality a good test in the next few months!) ... so maybe we can talk in a couple of months and see if we can put something together?

Thanks!
-tiffani

Michael McAndrew · December 05, 2012, 06:18:24 am

yes - feel free to get back in touch when u are ready

Tiffani Chin · January 23, 2013, 10:04:20 pm

Michael,

Still wanting to do this just trying to find time to even think about it!
But -- looking around for some other info, I found this site: http://wa.greens.org.au/content/o-setting-your-civi-sms-account

Do you know these folks? It seems like they already have something in place that notifies SMS senders via email if there is a reply to their text.

Are you familiar with this?

-tiffani

petednz · January 24, 2013, 03:08:44 pm

Hi - I have gotten in touch with them - but then read through it a bit more thoroughly.

It says "Once you have created your list of contacts you need to export them so that they can be used by the SMS sending system"

So I think they are just pulling names out of civi and importing to the SMS agent.

Michael McAndrew · January 26, 2013, 06:38:30 am

Quote

Do you know these folks?

nope

It seems like they already have something in place that notifies SMS senders via email if there is a reply to their text.

Quote

Are you familiar with this?

afraid not - might be worth contacting them

Tiffani Chin · February 04, 2013, 03:11:08 pm

petednz:

This was the FAQ that intrigued me:

8. If all users of the Greens system all use a single incoming mobile number to receive replies how do we distinguish replies for one user from those of another user?

Each user has a distinct (personal) email address. When that user sends a bulk SMS the system checks to see which user sent the SMS and which mobile number it was sent to. When a reply comes from that mobile number it is automatically sent to the senders email address.

Do you have a contact for whoever is running their CiviCRM system? I'd like to follow up but I feel like finding their IT department may have me tracing a lot of your steps.

Michael:

I'm ready to talk about trying to set up email notify. I'd like to make sure we aren't duplicating something that is already out there but I'd like to see if we can make this happen (in your busy schedule and my paltry nonprofit budget

).

petednz · February 04, 2013, 05:24:15 pm

Quote from: Tiffani Chin on February 04, 2013, 03:11:08 pm

petednz:

This was the FAQ that intrigued me:

8. If all users of the Greens system all use a single incoming mobile number to receive replies how do we distinguish replies for one user from those of another user?

Each user has a distinct (personal) email address. When that user sends a bulk SMS the system checks to see which user sent the SMS and which mobile number it was sent to. When a reply comes from that mobile number it is automatically sent to the senders email address.

I still think that is referring to the entirely non-integrated 3rd party system. I have asked for a name to pass on to you in case it is not the civi part that you are interested in. Pls confirm

Tiffani Chin · February 04, 2013, 09:51:36 pm

Maybe I'm just reading it too optimistically.

But, yes... that's exactly the part I'm interested in.

Oh well -- I guess we have to make it happen.

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Author Topic: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders? (Read 3167 times)

Tiffani Chin

Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders?

Donald Lobo

Re: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders?

Tiffani Chin

Re: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders?

Michael McAndrew

Re: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders?

Tiffani Chin

Re: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders?

Michael McAndrew

Re: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders?

Tiffani Chin

Re: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders?

Michael McAndrew

Re: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders?

Tiffani Chin

Re: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders?

petednz

Re: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders?

Michael McAndrew

Re: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders?

Tiffani Chin

Re: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders?

petednz

Re: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders?

Tiffani Chin

Re: Ways to make CiviSMS more like email -- messages from individual senders?