We don't use it for evergreen or all our notices yet but I'd like to
give another +1 for Twilio and similar SMS API providers. We use Twilio
heavily during our summer reading / game (about 32k sms last aug, 24k in
july) and have never had a problem. They tend to be proactive letting us
know when a carrier is having delays or issues (think was only once in
last few years) and they do queuing and splitting so you don't end up
blocked.
We've also never had to deal with support issues related to them or
deliverability (just our own code). Patrons just need to associate their
number and it is forgiving on format, no provider drop downs or other
areas for error.
While not free the cost probably balances out with the lack of problems
and it actually working for patrons.
------
Ryan Eby
Ann Arbor District Library
On 2 Feb 2016, at 9:20, Boyer, Jason A wrote:
What we've done in the past (since it's only come up once or twice,
this doesn't exactly scale...) is manually send emails to the various
gateways with just the name of the carrier as the contents. Then they
can tell what to choose.
I had initially thought it would be cool to set up a "real" SMS
gateway with a CDMA/GSM modem and some code, but there are a lot of
things that would be cool that I've never gotten around to, so you can
guess how that's turned out.
Jason
--
Jason Boyer
Indiana State Library
http://library.in.gov/
-----Original Message-----
From: Open-ils-general
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Josh Stompro
Sent: Monday, February 01, 2016 10:31 PM
To: Evergreen Discussion Group
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] SMS Carrier gateways for MVNO's
**** This is an EXTERNAL email. Exercise caution. DO NOT open
attachments or click links from unknown senders or unexpected email.
**** ________________________________
Justin, here is an article that has helped me in the past figure it
out,
http://www.prepaidphonenews.com/2011/12/how-to-get-tracfone-net10-or-straight.html
Unfortunately it isn't quite as simple as looking at the serial
number, that only works for some non-smartphone models.
+1 to supporting a commercial SMS option, be it twilio or another
company. Making SMS text messages easier for users to enter would be
great.
Josh
-----Original Message--
From: Open-ils-general
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Justin Hopkins ??
Sent: Monday, February 1, 2016 3:43 PM
To: Evergreen Discussion Group
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] SMS Carrier gateways for MVNO's
Hi Josh,
We've fielded many help desk tickets from our libraries on this
question. We typically explain the issue to them as "unless they know
the underlying carrier it won't work for them". I learned something
today about the model number of their phone being indicative of the
carrier. That's good to know. One thing though, for AT&T- is the the
word "potato" or the roasted sweet potato emoji 🍠?
This reminds me of a discussion from a while back about trying to
gauge the interest of libraries to employ an honest to goodness SMS
solution. Personally I think it's a great idea, and while not free
it's also not very expensive. I can't put a dollar amount on the value
to the libraries, but based on the nature of our help desk tickets
concerning sms notifications and "text call number" opac feature I'd
say it has considerable value. At some point I had Blake doing some
queries to get at a number of texts send per month and IIRC the cost
would be less than $70/mo for the entire Missouri Evergreen consortium
at current Twilio rates.
Cheers,
Justin
On Mon, Feb 1, 2016 at 2:11 PM, Josh Stompro
<[email protected]> wrote:
Hello, I’m interested in how other sites handle SMS hold notices
for
customers that use Mobile virtual network operators like Straight
Talk, Ting and Tracfone? They all offer phones that work on
different
physical carriers, and the gateway seems to be different for each
one.
The default Straight Talk sms carrier entry included in Evergreen is
for Verizon, but if the user has a AT&T, T-Mobile or Sprint based
phone the Verizon gateway won’t work. Do you setup variants for
each
of the physical carriers? Do users actually know which physical
carrier they are on in your experience if you give them the option to
choose? I’m not looking forward having to explain that for
Straight
Talk if the model number of your phone ends with a v or an w it is on
the Verizon network, and if it ends in potato it is on at&t, etc.
Thanks
Josh
--
Regards,
Justin
