Messaging

Aculab Cloud lets you communicate with your customers using SMS text messages and MMS messages with multimedia content. You can purchase telephone numbers and use them to send and receive messages.

• Requirements
• Sending and receiving messages
• US-specific information

Requirements

To send and receive messages, you need:

• A Production or Premium account - these have permission to send SMS, but you need to contact your This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to enable this. Trial accounts have limited permissions and can only send SMS/MMS to one validated number.
• A telephone number on Aculab Cloud which has messaging enabled - to check this, view your purchased Telephone Numbers. If SMS/MMS is enabled for a number a green envelope icon will be displayed. You can enable/disable SMS/MMS by clicking the envelope icon. If no envelope is displayed then messaging is not supported on your number.
• A web server - so Aculab Cloud can tell you about status updates for your messages.
• Credit on your account - so you can buy a number and pay for your messages.

To receive messages, you also need:

• An Inbound Service for your number which must be able to handle messages. An Inbound Service tells Aculab Cloud how to handle incoming messages and calls to a particular number.
  
  • First, view your own Telephone Numbers.
  • Click on the service link icon to edit or create the service for your number.
  • Click the service's Messages tab and enter your url into the Notification page field. This is the URL of a page on your web server which Aculab Cloud will access to tell you when new messages arrive.

Note that, to send messages, you don't need an Outbound Service. You only need to call the managing messages web service.

• Sending Messages
• Receiving Messages

• How it works

  You pass the message to Aculab Cloud via the Managing Messages Web Service. You can do this from your browser's address bar, call the appropriate function from one of our High-Level Language Wrappers or call it direct.

  Aculab Cloud queues the message then submits it to a carrier and accesses your status_page to say that's done. The carrier accepts the message, sends it on towards the mobile phone, and Aculab Cloud accesses your status_page to tell you it's been sent.

  If you've requested a delivery report and they're supported, the phone will acknowledge receipt, the carrier passes that on to Aculab Cloud, which accesses your status page to tell you the message has been delivered.

  For more details

  See Handling status updates for details of what is sent to your status page.

  

• How it works

  A mobile phone sends a message to your number. It is received by one of our carriers, which passes it on. It's received by Aculab Cloud, which accesses your notification page to give you the message.

  How to receive messages

  When messages are received on your numbers, you can choose to be notified via pages which you host on your web server. To make this work for one of your numbers:

  • Check you've enabled messages (SMS/MMS) on that number by viewing your telephone numbers and ensuring a green envelope is displayed for the number. If a red envelope is displayed, click to change to green.
  • If you've not already done so, create an Inbound Service for the number.
  • Again if not done already, configure the number's Inbound Service by entering the URL of your web page on its Messages tab.

  For more details

  To see the content of what Aculab Cloud passes to your notification page, see Managing Messages.