CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I think SMS functionality is less than mature right now, due to a lack of sponsorship and/or community interest in development of the code.  Check this thread:

  http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/CiviSMS

You might check with Tobias Eigan @ Kabissa.org to see if Kabissa worked out any SMS integration with CiviCRM or their CMS. 

There are a couple of general SMS modules available for Joomla that you could look at adapting or using:

  http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/communication/sms

Or, depending on your skill level with PHP, you might take a crack at developing this functionality in CiviCRM yourself.  There is some starter code available in the repository, but you'll need a programmer to get it working:

  http://svn.civicrm.org/civicrm/trunk/CRM/SMS/

And as a general note, I think SMS functionality in CiviCRM would go a long way toward making the product useful to organizations in Africa and other areas where cell phone saturation is much higher than Internet/email connectivity.  I worked on a project in Ghana and I remember how many people would check their email once every week or two, but were constantly on their phones; and I know many political groups used SMS blasts effectively.

Andrew

I tried contacting Andrew Perry and apparently i didnt get any replies from him. Anyway my programming skills stink and i am more of an end user than a developer....though i am willing to learn the act. Can someone direct me in the right direction on intergrating an sms component into civicrm.

You might also check with this Kampala-based organization that has launched a really interested suite of SMS-based information tools:

  http://www.grameenfoundation.applab.org/section/index

A blog post about it:
 
  http://www.kiwanja.net/blog/2009/06/grameens-applab-comes-of-age/

Yo our lot are going to need CiviSMS I think. We're going to need it to work with CiviEvents. We want to make it so that when someone buys a ticket the option "Receive SMS reminders for this event" is automatically ticked (allowing them to opt out). At an admin definable time prior to the event we want to make it so that CiviCRM automatically sends txts to everyone who has registered to receive alerts.

We need some kind of report in CiviEvents that says how many texts are expected to be sent off. (So that we can buy all the needed credit).

Then to make it more user friendly for everyone else. We want to make a few more options
- Ability for turn off and on Txt reminders for an event
- Ability to change the reminder text (Can we do things like add the name of the person in the text)
- Ability to send text reminders on click (We need to add security, something like Are you sure? so people don't accidently click that)
- Ability to send text reminders at a specific ad hoc date in the future
- Ability to send txt reminders at the default time before the event
- Default date should be changable in the Configuration of SMS
- Obviously need things like an ability to support a range of sms gateways, although we'll focus on our one.

So all these features are ones that we need and therefore we'll make if no one else is already doing it. Anyone want to work with us on this? (We're currently working on modifying Price sets in events, but we'll work on this next).

based on what we know/heard this is pretty much at the same spot as it was 18 months ago. the big change probably is SMS framework does not seem to be as well supported as i hoped it would

lobo

Hi Emily

Hopefully you received my PM back.  Am keen to get a skype call happening if possible.

Regards

Andrew

unfortunately the project that i was hoping would fund this integration on my end fell through. so i have nothing new to report, but maybe andrew does...