E-mail to SMS and SMS to E-mail forwarding

Can I forward a single e-mail to many SMS numbers?

Yes, you can forward every e-mail to up to 20 SMS numbers.

To forward an e-mail to many numbers all you have to do is to enter all the SMS numbers separated with a semicolon into the "Send SMS to (phone number):" field in the "E-mail to SMS" tab of the E-mail user configuration form.

More information is available at: E-mail to SMS Configuration page

Can I forward an incoming SMS to many e-mail addresses?

Yes, you can. There is no limit to the number of e-mail addresses that can receive a copy.

You should create an e-mail user for each recipient e-mail address in the "Users and applications/Add user" menu item. After this, you should add incoming routes in "copy" mode to the inbound routing table for each user to forward a copy of the incoming messages to the appropriate e-mail addresses.

More information is available at: 2 Way SMS to E-mail gateway page

Can the software download e-mails from POP3 accounts and forward them as SMS messages?

Yes, the software can be configured to download e-mails from any standard POP3 e-mail account. It supports standard POP3 connections (port 110) and SSL based POP3 connections (port 995).

You can use this option to download e-mail from your Internet Service Provider, your Linux mailserver, from your company Exchange server or from Google G-mail. To setup this feature all you have to do is to add an E-mail user to the software using the "Users and Applications / Add user" menu item and configure "E-mail to SMS" forwarding.

Does the software have escalation capability? In more detail, can we create a script by a specific keyword in incoming email with the following rule: "Forward SMS to 1st Number, wait for the response within specific time: 3 minutes. If there is no response, forward SMS to 2nd Number, wait for the Response within specific time: 3 minutes, ... up to 10 numbers."?

The software does not support this kind of scripting.

Such a solution can be created with the help of an external application, you can develop it yourself or you can request for a price quote for the development from Ozeki Informatics at info@ozeki.hu.

Does the software support secure SSL based POP3 connections for downloading e-mail?

Yes, it does.

All you have to do is check the "SSL" checkbox in the "E-mail to SMS" tab of the E-mail user configuration form.

Does the software support Secure SSL based SMTP connections?

Yes, it does

To enable this option you have to configure it in the "Advanced" tab of the E-mail user configuration form.

If I create 500 e-mail to SMS Accounts and Ozeki is set to pick up e-mail from 500 different POP3 e-mail accounts (account1-500@domain.com) every 90 seconds - What will be the impact on the system?

The e-mail server will die. The SMS server will not delay the polling until sufficient capacity is available. This means that 90 second polling interval would go up to several minutes.

If you want to setup an e-mail SMS gateway, setting up 500 POP3 clients is not a good option. The POP3 technology is based on polling, which means that both the e-mail server and the SMS server is likely to become overloaded with this setup.

In this scenario, you should configure an event-driven system. This means that if an e-mail arrives to the mailbox it should trigger an event, for example, a HTTP request to send the SMS. Polling is not a good option. We can give you more detailed information about this event triggering if you give us more information about the e-mail server. For example, on a unix/procmail system, you can achieve your goal by editing a small procmail script.

If my SMTP server requires authentication, can I specify my SMTP username and password?

Yes, the software supports SMTP servers that require user authentications and it also supports SMTP servers that do not require user authentications.

To enable SMTP user authentication, you have to configure it in the "Advanced" tab of the E-mail user configuration form.

Is the following number format supported: +322010444455@sms.domain.com?

No, it is not.

Concerning its technology, this product works as an e-mail client. It can download e-mail messages using POP3 from a mail sever and can forward them as SMS messages. If incoming SMS messages are received, they are converted to e-mail and sent using SMTP through a mail server.

The +322010444455@sms.domain.com number format would require the SMS server to have a built in mail server. Based on our experiences we have found that including a mail server in an SMS Gateway is not a good option (Ozeki Message Server 6 has a mail server included). The are many reasons for this. For example:

- The number of SPAM messages, and e-mail viruses are growing and the SPAM traffic can reduce the efficiency of the SMS gateway. Setting up and updating SPAM filtering on external mailservers (Exchange, Sendmail, etc.) is much easier.

- Often, the SMS Gateway is installed on a computer that already has a mail server running, and it cannot allocate the SMTP port (25), to receive outgoing mail messages.

- E-mail bounce backs and mail loops, are harder to handle and can also decrease the performance of the SMS functionality.

So the answer to the question is that we do not support this phone number format in Ozeki NG. You should put the phone number in the subject line :).

Is the software able to get email (Pop3) and send (SMTP) with clear from headers/footers/attachments codes � only first 160 characters that will send to SMS?

Yes, the software does not include the headers/footers/attachments in the e-mails. It extracts the subject line and the text of the message body. You can configure what is the maximum length of text that should be forwarded in SMS. If you set this number to 160 characters, only 1 SMS will be sent.

Is there filtering capability by specific keyword on incoming email?

You can configure keyword(s) in the SMS software. If an e-mail subject contains the specified keyword(s), it will be sent in SMS.

To configure keyword based filtering, you need to open the "Filter tab" of the "E-mail user configuration" form. In the filter tab enter your keyword into the "Keywords in Subject" editbox.

More information is available at: E-mail to SMS Configuration page

Is there filtering capability by specific keyword on incoming SMS?

Yes, you can decide which e-mail address should receive the incoming SMS message. You can forward an SMS messages to one or more e-mail addresses based on the keyword of the SMS messages.

Keyword based filtering is handled in the routing configuration. To use this option, you have to add a new incoming route to the "Inbound routing" table. The "Inbound routing" table can be edited by clicking on the "View/routing/inbound" menu item.

In the "Inbound routing" configuration form, you should click on "Add" to create a new route. In the new route creation form, select the source (service provider), where the incoming SMS message is coming from, enter your keyword into the "Condition 3. (Keyword):" editbox and select the destination e-mail user.

If you want to forward the incoming messages to only one e-mail user set the Mode option to "Move" and you are all set. Click "OK" to exit.

If you want to forward the incoming messages to more than one e-mail user, you should set the Mode option to "copy" then click "OK" and you should create a similar rule for the the second user, and for the fird, fourth, etc. user.

More information is available at: Inbound routing

Can I submit non-text messages such as VCard using an e-mail to SMS configuration?

Yes you can.

You can submit a VCARD (or any other message type) from POP3, if your subject line is empty and the e-mail body contains the following format: 

SMS:VCARD
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N:family name;given name
TEL;VOICE;HOME:home landline phone number
TEL;VOICE;WORK:work landline phone number
TEL;CELL:mobile phone number
TEL;CELL;WORK:work mobile phone number
TEL;FAX:fax number
EMAIL:e-mail address
URL:homepage address
BDAY:date of birthday
NOTE:note text
END:VCARD

This format is composed of two parts. The first line is the message type identifier, the second part is the message data formatted according to the Ozeki Message Type specification.

When the built in SMTP server is used, which user account will send the messages?

The admin account

If you don't use SMTP authentication, the message will be sent by the admin account. Note, that you can also configure the built in SMTP server to request a username and password. To do this you need to enabling the SMTP authentication checkbox in the server preferences form at the built in SMTP Server section.

If SMTP authentication is configured, you need to create a standard user account with a username and password. After this configuration is applied and the standard user account is created, you have to configure your e-mail client (SMTP client).

In the e-mail client (SMTP client), configure SMTP authentication and a username and a password, to be able to send SMS messages through the built in SMTP server.

More information