• Release Date: March 23, 2023

Table of Content

Introduction

This release brings significant changes and improvements to the SMS Portal and API, including revamped campaign creation and editing pages, the addition of a Template Type field in the Template Form, and changes to the SMS API request parameters. Additionally, message body data will now be deleted from the database after 45 days, and a note has been added to the SMS Report page to indicate this.

Detailed notes for this release are given in the following sections.

Campaign Management

To ensure easy setup and effective management of your SMS Campaigns, the following updates are brought in through the Portal.

  • Global Campaign: A Campaign may now be setup as a “Global Campaign” where country restrictions on SMS Sending is not implemented. This can be setup while creating or modifying any existing campaign. However, Black-listed country restriction will remain in effect.
  • Template Category: Templates now can be categorized into pre-defined category names for better management and easy access while sending SMS using Portal Utility.
  • SMS Message Retention: Message Body of all SMSes are retained for 45 days.

SMS API Updates

Snapshot: Overall updates on JSON Payload for Send-SMS API. Some Keys are taken off and new Keys are added to it. Explanation given later in the document.

Old Payload

New Payload

  • Mandatory use of Template-ID: Template ID is made mandatory i.e.a Template of SMS Body must be pre-approved and used. You need not pass message body in API Call, as the body will be retrieved from the given Template-ID and used. To this effect, the following keys are taken out of the JSON Payload of Send-SMS API Call, these are no longer supported.
    • body
    • direct
    • recipient[n].body
  • Recipient Array is prioritized: In a single request, if the JSON Payload to send out SMS uses both to and recipient, then recipient array is used and to is junked.
  • Custom Data Object: A new data object is introduced in the JSON Payload to send out SMS. It is meant to define custom data for placeholder variables of template. This works only with phones number defined in to array, and not with recipient array. This data is merged only once with the body of the template and the merged content is sent out in SMS to all phone numbers.
{
        ....
       "to": [ "+91xxxxxx",  "+91xxxxxxxxx" ],
       "data":   {
                "event": "Arts & Crafts Fair",
                "venue": "Dilli Haat",
                "start_date": "Mar 26, 2023",
		"end_date": "Mar 31, 2023" 
        },
       "template_id": "37081401",
       ....
} 
  • Country Restrictions: If a Campaign is set for a specific countries, then country restriction comes into effect. All phone number used in to or recipient must be of the same country as defined in the campaign. All other phone numbers will be rejected.