Help on the service locosms

General Information

Options menu: The left side of the page displays the menu of the available primary functions of the site. If on there is a choice node [+] click on it to display its additional functions.

Change language: Clicking on the flags that are on the top right of any page you navigate to the appropriate language on this page. By choosing another language in form type of pages where you have not posted the current changes, will result in loss of these changes. Do not change language after you have begun the registration process, as this action will interrupt the flow of operations.

While completing any form, note that the compulsory fields to fill are those of yellow background color.

My Account

To change the password then enter your new password in the boxes Password and Re-Type Password.

The position Mobile Number or Sender ID must be filled with the information that appears in the SMS received on the recipient's mobile phone. There are two options to complete this field. Either enter a phone number (always with the country code at the beginning – 16 numerals long) or a name of up to 11 alphanumeric characters long (Latin characters are preferred as they preserve backward compatibility with older mobile phone devices).

Another option is to add an SMS Footer message at the end of the SMS in the form of text which can be up to 30 characters long. This footer will be repeated in every message. Take care to interweave gaps between the message and footer in order to ensure that it stands out from the rest. Of course, the footer counts in the character length of the message.

To receive an alert SMS when your credits rearch a certain number of credits, select the Alert type you desire and enter the mobile phone that will receive the alert. The alert SMS is charged as a simple SMS towards the selected phone number. You will receive 1 alert SMS when your credits reach the desired limit.

Phonebook

The Phonebook lists are organized in groups which can be used to send messages to.

Your contacts can be displayed either per group or per name.

Select “Add Group” in the main page of the phonebook. Provide a description, a short code of up to 5 characters long, select the type of group and save the group.
By selecting group "Personal Phonebook" up to 500 group members can be displayed in full in the phone book and also included in the contact list when you click "Send SMS". Do not enter more than 500 contacts in this type of group as the rest will not be displayed on any phonebook.
The type of group "Bulk target list" should be selected when the group includes anonymous phone-numbers and search by name is not required. The contacts of these groups are not shown in detail in the phonebook nor the "Send SMS", as their count is very often high. You can of course send messages to them by selecting "Send to group".

Select “Add Phone” of the main page of the phonebook to add a phone-number to an existing group of any type. Select the group you want to add the new phone-number and then enter the phone number with country code at the beginning of the number (using the International format ex. 4469xxxxxxxx), optional e-mail address and the “Save” the contact. If your phone is already elisted in the same group then entry will be refused.

Select “Search” of the main page of the phonebook to find contacts within your personal phonebooks. The available search criteria are “Name” and/or “Group” and/or “Phone number” and/or “E-mail address”.

Alternatively contacts can be uploaded using “Import from file”. On the top of the group listing there are three icons. Select the third icon (last icon).

Select from your local disk the appropriate file with contacts to be added. The file must be in the form of CSV (excel comma separated), ie fields separated by commas. The order of fields should be: name, phone, e-mail. Select the character set encoding as well as whether the new records will replace any existing entries with the same name in the same group or if new records will be added to existing ones. Finally press “Import”.

The next page will display all the records from the file and after making sure that the system correctly identifies the file, verify the import by clicking “Insert Entries”. There is no test for the existence of the same phone-numbers. However, the system ensures that no more than one message is delivered to the same number when sending SMS'es.


CSV file in a spreadsheet with contacts ready to be uploaded.


CSV file in a text editor with contacts ready to be uploaded.

Alternatively, “Export” a phonebook group to a CSV file on a hard disk can be achieved by clicking on the second icon (middle icon) on top of the group description and then “Save” the file to the disk.

If you want to get the phones from all groups then click “Export all” on the top of the main page of the phonebook. The information for the group is not included in the file that will be received.

To delete a group with contacts, press the X icon to the left of the group description of the phonebook.

Contacts can be copied or moved from one group to another by using “Copy” or “Move”. Select the phone(s) you wish by ticking the selection box to the right of every contact. If you want to select all the phones in the group, then check the selection box to the right of the group and all phones-numbers below will be automatically selected. Then use the drop down menu selection at the end of the group description and select the action required. Execute the action selected by clicking on the arrow icon next to the menu. The following page requires the user action to select the destination of the “Copy” or “Move”.

Similarly you can use the same method of selection of phone-numbers and drop down menu to “Delete”. Also “Edit” action is present in order to edit an existing phone-number.

Reports

Here you can check/view your account traffic. The available search criteria are “Period from” and/or “Period to” and/or “Mobile phone”. To use the calendar, refer to section “Scheduled SMS”. For the “Mobile phone” enter the phone with the country code, ie. 4477xxxxxxxx

Message templates

You can insert messages and use them in the future.

Select “Create new” in the main page of the message templates. Provide a Name (to identify which message your are dealing with), insert the desired message and select the appropriate message characteristics. For the available message choices, refer to section “Sending SMS”.

To edit or delete a message template click on the corresponding icons found next to eact template in the main page of the message templates.

Purchasing SMS Credits

You can buy one or more of the packages offered by choosing one or more pieces from each package. Every package represents a number of SMS credits. Using these credits you can send SMS to various destinations that bare different charges (tariffs). The total value of your purchase is calculated and displayed automatically. The final price includes VAT.

Here contact information must be provided. New users making their first purchase should be aware that they will receive an SMS informing of the new password to be used in order to login to their account after the successful completion of the credit card payment or deposit in the Locotel bank account. The password can be changed by the used by navigation to “My Account” left menu selection.

The user will also receive a report with the details of the purchase to the e-mail address stated here.

Finally, if an invoice is required for this purchase, check the respective option to display the form for filling in the taxation particulars.

Click on the “BUY” and see the new page confirming your order, comfirmation of terms of use and payment method.

At the top of this page the order number is displayed. Write this number down in case any problem occurs during this transaction with your credit card or bank account deposit as it is additional identification of payment.

Before you select a payment method, check the option by which the user agrees to the terms of use and conditions of supplied services.

If the payment will be conducted by credit card, then select the type of card (either Visa or MasterCard) and click “Use credit card”. The user will be redirected to the collaborating bank payment site/page which provides highly secure credit card card clearance (using the international method 3D-secure by Visa). All the credit card information is passed directly to the bank and we do not keep any records of this credit card transaction making our site even safer to use. Buying procedure last a very short time (few seconds) and your account will be simultaneously be credited with the SMS credits purchased.

If payment by bank account deposit is selected then select by clicking on “Pay by bank deposit”. When making the deposit, please also include the order number and your name in the deposit form of the bank. The information will reach Locotel's accounting department within approximately three working days from the deposit day.

SMS Charges

Your account is accompanied by a wallet filled with credits. Every message send is formed by one or more SMS'es (depending on length and type of message, see the calculation at the end of the matter). Every SMS costs a number of credits depending on the network of the destination mobile phone. For example sending an SMS to mobiles of Vodafone – Greece requires one credit but Globul – Bulgaria requires 2.1 credits.

The credits are charged, ie deducted from your wallet, depending on all parameters of the delivery, even if it fails for any reason. Messages classified as Not sent are not charged.

Clicking on the “Home” entry of main menu (menu on the left), you can see the balance of your wallet credits.

How to calculate the number of SMS required to send a message?
When using the typical GSM character set that accommodates for Latin and Greek capital letters, then an SMS can carry 160 characters unless the message is longer than 160 characters (and thus required more than one SMS) so in this case any SMS can carry up to 153 characters.

It is also possible use a full set of characters (all letters in all languages and all symbols), in which case an SMS can carry 70 characters, unless the message is longer than 70 characters, so in this case each SMS can carry up to 67 characters .

In the case on concatenated message (up to 3 messages) then 459 characters can be carried and for messages using a full set of characters 201 characters can be carried.

All these calculations are done automatically while you type the text of your message box and update any changes to the required number of SMS.

Sending SMS

By choosing “Send SMS” you are able to select and send SMS to specified phone-numbers. The application top left panel Available Numbers includes all the personal phonebook entries. By either double clicking on contacts, or [>] or [>>] selections will appear in the Selected Destination panel. Using the same process you can cancel some choices transferring numbers back from the right panel on the left.

It is also possible to send a message to a phone-number by entering it using the International format in the box Additional Number. The latter number is added to the group of destinations in the right panel. There must be at least one destination.

The selection “Send to groups” of the main menu allows the dispatch of messages to all phone-numbers included in the selected groups. It is similar in function to the “Send SMS” application. You can select multiple groups, and the application takes care of sending only one message to phone-numbers common to multiple groups.

The bottom panel is used to enter the Message Text. This can be done by either selecting from any templates previously created or directly by entering text in the panel, or choosing a template text and editing it accordingly. On the right of the Message text there are two counters. The bottom counter shows how many SMS are required to send the message, while the top counter shows how many characters are left to complete the last SMS. This is a useful indicator in order to minimize the use of additional SMS'es. The application supports the concatenation of up to 3 SMS'es that create a message of maximum 459 characters long (GSM7 encoding).

If there is the requirement of the SMS to be immediately displayed on the screen of the destination mobile device tick the Send as flash message selection box. Bare in mind that Flash messages ARE NOT SAVED at the destination mobile device and as soon as they are viewed they are erased automatically.

To send SMS'es that contain all characters, including Greek literals, tick the selection box Send as unicode message. In this case, the capacity of per SMS is reduced from 160 to 70 characters for a single SMS, regardless of the type of characters within the message which may be even only Latin. Concatenated SMS'es can then reach the maximum length of 201 characters.

Send from file

You can send different messages to different receivers.

Create a CSV file that will contain the fields: Receiver,Message,Sender,Signature,Flash,Unicode. The fields: Receiver,Message are mandatory. The fields: Sender,Signature if empty use the predifined values. The fields: Flash,Unicode if 1 then considered as selected, if 0 or empty then ignored. Do not use the selected delimeter in any field. Maximum CSV file size: 5MB.

Select from your local disk the appropriate file with the contacts and messages to be sent. Select the character encoding used by the selected file. Select the delimiter you want. Finally click on “Import”.

The next page will display all the records from the file and after making sure that the system correctly identifies the file, verify the import by clicking “Send SMS”.


CSV file in a sreadsheet with contacts and messages ready to be sent.


CSV file in a text editor with contacts and messages ready to be sent.

Scheduled SMS

This feature allows the scheduled dispatch of messages to a single destination or a group of recipients. The scheduling can have up to four repetitions at four different times. Each task performed releases its position for additional mission planning. Thus this message cab be send as many times as required, and possibly to other destinations from batch to batch. There is also the option to cancel pending schedules.

To create a new schedule select “Create new” to the main page of the “Scheduled SMS”.

Fill in the recipient's phone in order to send a single number, or leave blank this item and select a group from your phonebook for a group dispatch. By selecting a phone-number cancels the selection of a group.

The next four fields are used to set the date and time of a scheduled dispatch. By clicking on the yellow region a calendar will be displayed for easier selection of dates. The change of month, year and the time of day can be done using the respective arrows. After selecting all the above, click on the day of the month and your selections will be placed on the form automatically. To edit the date/time of a schedule then after you see the calendar view, click on the X below the days of the month. If scheduled time is past then the mission will be executed in the next 10 seconds. If the scheduled task is, by accident, placed in the past then the schedule will be executed within the next 10 seconds.

The bottom panel is used to enter the Message Text. This can be done by either selecting from any templates previously created or directly by entering text in the panel, or choosing a template text and editing it accordingly. On the right of the Message text there are two counters. The bottom counter shows how many SMS are required to send the message, while the top counter shows how many characters are left to complete the last SMS. This is a useful indicator in order to minimize the use of additional SMS'es. The application supports the concatenation of up to 3 SMS'es that create a message of maximum 459 characters long (GSM7 encoding).

If there is the requirement of the SMS to be immediately displayed on the screen of the destination mobile device tick the Send as flash message selection box. Bare in mind that Flash messages ARE NOT SAVED at the destination mobile device and as soon as they are viewed they are erased automatically.

To send SMS'es that contain all characters, including Greek literals, tick the selection box Send as unicode message. In this case, the capacity of per SMS is reduced from 160 to 70 characters for a single SMS, regardless of the type of characters within the message which may be even only Latin. Concatenated SMS'es can then reach the maximum length of 201 characters.

The planned mission would be saved in active state. To de-activate it, go to the main page of the “Scheduled SMS” and select “Edit” by clicking the middle of the three icons on the right side of the scheduled task. Changes can be conducted to any information, even if execution of past schedules has occurred. To change the status between active and inactive, select at the bottom of the page the corresponding selection box having in mind that any other changes will not be performed.

Click Submit to save the changes.

To see more details in relation to the implementation of scheduled SMS dispatches, click on the first of the three icons to the right of the line required. You will see all the dispatches executed and those still pending. For those already executed the results are shown per dispatch. Attention here, as the application if the operation has been completed successfully. To check if the message(s) finally reached the addressee(s) view the reports at the main menu selection “Outgoing SMS”.

Scheduled Campaign

Here you can schedule message dispatches with different content from a file. You can also select the number of phones and minutes between each dispatch.

At the main page with the scheduled campaigns you can view all the active campaigns. If you wish to also view the canceled or completed campaign click on the option ALL.

Click on CREATE NEW at the main page with the scheduled campaigns in order to create a new scheduled campaign.
Enter the campaign name, when the dispatches will start, how many number each dispatch will have, the time (in minutes) between dispatches, the CSV file delimeter and when will this campaign will expire. Finally, select the CSV file with the following fields: Receiver, Message, Sender, Signature, Flash, Unicode. The fields: Receiver,Message are mandatory. The fields: Sender,Signature if empty use the predifined values. The fields: Flash,Unicode if 1 then considered as selected, if 0 or empty then ignored. Select the delimiter you want. Click on SAVE, check and verify your selections. The campaign and its dispatches are saved.

To view more information regarding a campaign, click on the VIEW icon at the main page with he scheduled campaigns. You can then view campaign details, graphs on how many dispatches have been or not completed and the SMS status so far. Also a table with all timed dispatches is available. You also have the ability to Pause a running campaign, Restart a paused campaign and to Cancel/Delete the specific campaign.

- Pause: All the remaining dispacthes are deactivated. Running dispatches or completed dispatches are not included in the Pause state.
- Restart: A paused campaign can be restarted. If the remaining dispatches are scheduled in the future compared to the restart time, then the scheduled times are not changed. If the timing of remaining dispatches is expired compared to the restart time, then the timings are changed based on the campaign details and they start on the same time as the restart. When restarting a campaign you are allowed to reset the validity.
- Cancel/Delete: Same as Pause but restart is not allowed.

Outgoing SMS

The Display messages are shown most recent first in this report. The first column displays an incremental number of the message of this report, while the second column of the code of the message stored by the application. If a message was sent in a bulk delivery, the second column will show starting code no as well as the ending code of its messages. The third column shows the time of dispatch. The fourth column is the the sender ID, the fourth is the destination phone-number and the sixth column is the network this phone belongs to. The seventh field shows the message and if this is a message of a bulk delivery, then this text is also a link to a breakdown of all the messages and their statuses. The eighth column shows the result of delivery. The status can be anyone of the following:

- Pending: The message is queued to send.
- Sent: The message is in transit to be delivered.
- Delivered: The message reached mobile device of the recipient.
- Failed: The message was not delivered either by mistake or because the destination number does not exist or has a problem, or there is a problem at the destination eg. a switched off mobile phone for a long time, full memory of the mobile, etc.
- Not sent: Because of a technical problem, the message was not sent. In this case there is no charge.
If this is a bulk delivery then in the status column shows the number of messages per status and by clicking on one of the results someone may see in detail the messages are their statuses.

It is possible to delete messages from the view, they are not lost from the account database but can not be restored them into this view again. Messages that are deleted can be recovered only by taking a CSV export. To delete a message click on the X in the last column. Then confirm the deletion of the dialogue that follows. Alternatively, the deletion of many of the messages are viewed on the page, please check the last column and click “Delete Selected” at the bottom. There is a choice to select all the messages that appear on this view, in the last column in the line of titles.

At the top of the page you can download the file of the messages. The type of file can be either CSV or XML. Press the button corresponding to the type of your choice. Either export all messages or by requested date/time period. Tap into the fields and select dates on the calendar displayed for the beginning and the end of the period required. To use the calendar, refer to section Scheduled SMS”. The archive includes messages were deleted and this state is indicated at the last record field.

SMS Search

Searching for a specific SMS you have sent is a common task. The available search criteria are “Period from” and/or “Period to” and/or “Receipient” To use the calendar, refer to section Scheduled SMS”. For the “Receipient” enter the phone with the country code, ie. 4477xxxxxxxx

Using the SOA and API

The application has the ability connect to third party systems and applications, allowing thus the M2M (Machine to Machine) communication directly with the service for sending SMS. For technical details please download the file web_service.pdf