How to filter messages sent from particular telephone numbers and messages sent to particular telephone numbers

There can be cases when you do not want to accept messages from a particular telephone number or cases when you do not want to enable sending messages for a particular telephone number. The following guide explains how to configure Ozeki NG SMS Gateway's inbound and outbound routes to filter telephone numbers.

To have this configured in Ozeki NG SMS Gateway, you need to set an appropriate regular expression in the inbound route or outbound route you want to use for filtering.

You can read about inbound routing here: Inbound routing
You can read about outbound routing here: Outbound routing
You can read about regular expressions here: Regular expressions

Filtering particular telephone numbers for incoming messages

To filter telephone numbers for incoming messages, you need to edit your inbound routes. To do this, click Inbound routing in the Edit menu (Figure 1).

inbound routing menu
Figure 1 - Inbound routing menu

You inbound routes will be shown. You can edit every route by clicking the edit button in the routes' lines (Figure 2).

edit inbound routes
Figure 2 - Edit inbound routes

You will see the edit form of the selected route. In this form, you can configure the selected inbound route. Here, you need to enter an appropriate regular expression in the Condition 1. (Sender phone number) field (Figure 3).

Figure 3 - Setting regular expression in the sender phone number field

For example, you do not want to accept messages from the telephone number +0022334455 and +1133445566. You will need the following regular expression to exclude these two telephone numbers:

/^(?!(.*)(0022334455|1133445566)(.*)).*$/

This regular expression matches to everything except +0022334455 and +1133445566, so messages from these two number will not be delivered. Note, that if you set only one incoming route to filter messages, if this route is in copy mode, then the message will be passed to the next inbound route as well. If you do not set the same regular expression on the next route(s), the message will be sent through those routes. You need to set the regular expression in every inbound route you have to completely ban accepting messages from the particular telephone numbers.

When Ozeki NG SMS Gateway recieves a message from these two numbers, you will see the following error in the service provider's log:

ERROR 1217: Message dropped. No incoming route found for message coming from operator 'SMPP0'.

Filtering messages sent to particular telephone numbers

To filter telephone numbers for outgoing messages, you need to edit your outbound routes. To do this, click Outbound routing in the Edit menu (Figure 4).

outbound routing menu
Figure 4 - Outbound routing menu

Your outbound routes will be shown. You can edit every route by clicking the edit button in the routes' lines (Figure 5).

edit outbound routes
Figure 5 - Edit outbound routes

You will see the edit form of the selected route. In this form, you can configure the selected inbound route. Here, you need to enter an appropriate regular expression in the Condition 2. (Recipient phone number) field (Figure 6).

setting regular expression in the recipient phone number
Figure 6 - Setting regular expression in the recipient phone number field

For example, you do not want to enable sending messages to +0022334455 and +1133445566. You will need the following regular expression to exclude these two telephone numbers:

/^(?!(.*)(0022334455|1133445566)(.*)).*$/

This regular expression matches to everything except +0022334455 and +1133445566 so messages having these two phone numbers as recipient will not be sent. You need to set the regular expression in every outbound route you have to completely ban sending messages to the particular telephone numbers.

When your users or applications will try to send a message for these two filtered numbers, you will see an error (Figure 7).

sending message to filtered telephone number
Figure 7 - Sending message to filtered telephone numbers

For more information please contact us at info@ozekisms.com.

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