The Daybook e-letter news, tips and features to help you get the best from your system August 2004

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SMS Messaging with Daybook Enterprise

OVERVIEW

SMS Messaging makes it easy to send short messages from Daybook Enterprise to one or more mobile phones.



 

SETTING UP THE SYSTEM

You will need to create an account with the message service provider, SMSRelay as follows:
Go to www.smsrelay.com
Click on Signup (Under the Account section) and create your new account, taking a note of your user name and password.
Buy some credits.
In Daybook Enterprise, go to the ‘Preferences’ screen (‘Data Manager’ volume; ‘Core’ menu; ‘Preferences’).
Click on SMS Settings in the pane on the left of the screen.
The SMS Settings screen looks like this:

Click the ‘Save’ button to save these ‘Preferences’.

 

Note: NB: Only one-way SMS is available at the moment. Two-way SMS (allowing tracking of messages for receipt, etc) may be implemented in a later version of Daybook Enterprise.


SENDING SMS MESSAGES

SMS messages can be sent from the ‘Diary’. There are two ways to send messages:

Send a quick message without creating a Diary entry
Send a message attached to a Diary entry


Sending a Message NOT Attached to a Diary entry

Click on the SMS button (top of the window)


Enterprise will prompt you for the mobile number to which you want the message sent. Enter the number and click on the OK button.

This brings up the SMS message entry window:


The rest of the information should be entered as follows:


Contact Name


The name(s) of the contact(s) to whom the message is being sent. This will be blank if you are sending a quick message which is not attached to a ‘Diary’ entry (as in the example shown here).


Mobile No.


Mobile phone number(s) to which the message will be sent.


Message (limit 160 characters)


Enter the message into this area. The ‘Characters Remaining’ message to the right of the area will tell you how many more characters you can use.


Adding Additional Recipients


When you first create a new message, it will show one recipient: either the phone number you entered for a Quick Message, or the contact name and phone number from the Diary entry if it is a Diary message. But you can send the same message to any number of recipients, subject to:

The maximum number of recipients per message that you specified in the Preferences screen
The number of credits you have available.

To add a recipient from your Contacts database, simply enter the contact’s name into the enterable area under the Contact Name heading. Daybook Enterprise will look up the contact’s details for you and put their mobile number into the Mobile Number field (if they have one). Alternatively, you can simply enter a number directly into the ‘Mobile Number’ field.


Click the Plus symbol (in the Functions palette) to add the new contact to the list of recipients.


To remove a recipient from the list, click on a name or mobile number and then click on the ‘Minus’ button (in the ‘Functions’ palette). Please note: you cannot remove the main contact (the first one that was entered).


Sending a Message Attached to a Diary entry

In the Diary window:
Select a Contact to send the message to.
Click on the SMS button next to the Document field:
The Send SMS window (shown above) will open up, with the selected contact and mobile number. Please note: if the contact you have selected does not have a mobile number, you will be asked to enter one before the message can be sent.

Sending the message

Click on the ‘OK’ button or press the ‘Enter’ key to send the message.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MESSAGES ARE SENT?

When you click on the OK button to send a message, a request is created and sent to your server. The server handles the actual sending of all messages. It captures responses from SMS Relay and:

Updates your Credits Available figure
Makes a note in the Diary as to the success or failure of the message.

If you have sent a Quick Message (i.e: a message not attached to a Diary item), if the message was sent successfully you will not see any response. However, if the message was not sent (for instance if you have run out of credits, or your Internet connection was not active), a new Diary item will be created showing the nature of the problem.

If the messages were attached to a Diary item, there will be a message attached to each Recipient showing the status of the message.

You can view this information by selecting the appropriate Diary item and then clicking on the SMS button next to the Document field.

For example, this SMS Message window shows the result of successfully sending a message to two recipients:



On some older versions of Modulus, the word SEARCH may need to be used in place of QUERY. Also note that on Daybook v6, the QuickReport form has been changed slightly, but works in substantially the same way.

Should you require assistance in producing macros (formulas such as this) which can streamline your business processes the Daybook Team will be able to quote you a price for this service.

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