10. Do I have to own/be/belong to a community before I can use this service? What is a community?
Yes, you have to belong to or Administer a community before you can use this service. Additionally, either you personally or a community you belong to must have credit.
Anyone may join the default community. To join the default community, click on register.
11. How do I pay for SMS messages? Will I receive a receipt?
There are more than one way to pay for SMS messages:
You can transfer or deposit money into the Object Map account with your cell phone number or your community name as the Beneficiary Reference; OR
Get another CommunitySMS user with credits to give/sell you some.
A CommunitySMS network marketer can sell you SMS credits for cash and update your account immediately.
An optional receipt/payment acknowledgement can be SMSed or eMailed to you on request.
12. Must all people in the community be on one account or can they have seperate accounts?
Every community member has an individual account by default (the account id is the cell phone number itself).
The community itself has an additional, seperate account.(this account id is the short community name)
You can choose to pay money into the seperate accounts by using the
member's cell phone number as the Beneficiary Reference, or into the community's account using the Community name as the Beneficiary Reference.
(Personal credits will be used before Community credits)
You can transfer credits from your personal account to anyone else (including communities), and from any community you administrate.
13. How many people may be in a community?
We do not limit the amount of people in a community.
14. How many contact numbers can be in one Address Book Group?
We do not limit the amount of contacts in one Address Book Group.
15. How many address groups can every community member have?
We do not limit the amount of groups every community member may define.
16. Do I have to have Internet Access to use this service?
Strictly speaking, no. You can use this service from an SMS interface from your cell phone alone, if you want.
We do, however, advise you to set up your Address Book and Groups using the Web site, since this interface is much
easier to use.
17. Do I have to have a Cell phone to use this service?
Yes, you need a cell phone since this is the basic tool we use to authenticate you.
18. Are you going to divulge my particlars, e.g. Cell Phone number to third parties?
No. Part of the Agreement you agree to when creating your community is our commitment to keep your particulars private.
19. Are you going to send me any advertisements whatsoever?
No. Part of the Agreement you agree to when creating your community is our commitment to keep your particulars private, and we ourselves will not send you advertisements.
It is, however, possible for another party, who knows your number through other means, to send you marketing materials, either
directly or through the use of our service. We do not endorse or take responsibility for such action by either you or by other parties.
20. Are you going to divulge my address book details to anyone else? Are you going to send advertisements to my contacts?
Part of the Agreement you agree to when creating your community is our commitment to keep your particulars and the particulars in your address book private.
21. Can I integrate this service into my own/my community's web site?
Yes!
22. How do I send messages to cell phones from my community's own web site?
You use the
https://www.communitysms.com/CommunityPostMessage/community-name
url, and HTTP POST to it the following variables: NUMBER, PASSWORD, GROUP, MESSAGE. These are the sending person's cell number, his password, the group or contact name the
message is addressed to (Note: should be a cell phone number), and the message you want to be sent.
New!: You can also specify the variable REPLYPATH. If you pass that variable, it will force the use of the modem, instead of any cheaper SMS sending service, so that when the recipient reply, you'll see the message in your inbox. These SMS are always sent at the international rate (typically the cost of these SMS is more than normal SMS).
You can also check the latest messages in your inbox programatically by using the
https://www.communitysms.com/CommunityInbox
url, and send it the following variables: NUMBER, PASSWORD, GROUP (optional - only report messages from this number), IDX (optional - sends the next messages before this message index), TME (optional - sends the next messages before this date and time specfied in SQL notation YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:SS) and LIMIT (optional - how many messages to you want the call to return)
Optionally, you can configure one or more email address as 'belonging' to you (in the main options screen), and address your messages to '[cell-phone-number]@communitysms.com'.
The credits will be deducted from your communitysms account.
If you want messages from certain email addresses to be forwarded to your cell phone on your account, that can
also be configured here.
Email addresses are comma delimited. For incoming addresses, the full address or domain address (starting with the '@') or '*' can be specified. '*'
allows all incomer addresses, and the domain addresses allows all emails from that domain, no matter what the first part of the address.
23. How do my community's web site receive messages from a cell phone?
The community Administrator has the option of creating any number of fictitious extra accounts as members of his community. This virtual user will have its own address book,
password, and so forth. The 'cell phone number' of this member will be fictitious, but must me unique accross all communities. It can, in fact, be alphanumeric.
Under this user's settings, the routing must be set to either 'Block all' or 'Route to Email', since the cell phone number is fictitious. It will keep its received messages in the Inbox.
To receive messages set your Routing option to 'Route to Email', and set your web site's email address under 'My email address'. Any replies to your SMS will be sent to that email address.
Anyone can send a message to any user on CommunitySMS through an SMS by starting the message with '.[your cell phone number],'. Credit for forwarding it to your
actual cell phone, however, must come from that user's account, and if he doesn't have an account yet, there will be no credit for forwarding that
message to your handset. HOWEVER, the message will still go to your Inbox, and can still
be forwarded via email.
24. How do I send an SMS from my cell phone?
You type an SMS that starts with a full stop, then the name of the contact or group, followed by a comma, and the message itself directly after the comma:
.groupName,message
for example:
.friends,Howzit! Greetings to all my friends!
The message that arrives at your friends will be your own name, followed by the message, for example:
Peter: Howzit! Greetings to all my friends!
This message will appear to your friends to come from a certain Cell Phone Number (0837037034) that is in fact the Cell Phone Number
of CommunitySMS itself. This is the cell phone number to which you should send your carefully typed message.
Once your message has been send to all your friends, you will be sent a report via SMS to tell how how successful the sending process was, for example:
Message sent to 5/5(mike,susan,john,dave,joe)
You can also stop sending an SMS by sending the command '!stop' to 0837037034.
25. How do I edit my address book from my cell phone?
A Complete Tutorial is available for this purpose on the Help page after you log in. You can add contacts to a group, remove contacts from a group, clear groups,
query a list of groups, query a list of contacts in a group, and query a cell number for a contact, all via specially formatted SMS commands.
26. Can a community member only send to other members, or to anyone?
You can send to anyone set up in your Address Book (contacts).
This is NOT limited to only other members of the same or any other community. It can be
any number at all.
Please note, the number must correctly refer to an actual device capable of receiving SMS messages, otherwise
the messages will not go through.
If you do not enter the international format of the number, please check afterwards that the
number has been correctly converted to international format, and that the correct country code has been added to your number.
27. How do I delete names out of my Contacts group?
Go to the contacts->groups screen. Select the names of the contacts you want to delete in the list on the left, and press the delete key.
Alternatively, you can delete the contacts group in the main contacts screen, which will not delete it, but
clear it completely.
28. Why is my messages being split over more than one SMS?
Because your outgoing message is attempting to be longer than 160 characters (which is the physical maximum for an SMS), and your cut off
long messages option is disabled.
Your outgoing message will have your name in front, with a colon and a space following, and then your message. If the
total of all of these characters together is more than 160 characters, your message may be split.
To avoid this, set a short user name in your options, type shorter SMS messages, or enable the cut off
long messages option.
29. No, the name in front is actually not my name as set up! Why is that?
Because the person who owns the number you've sent the message to is already a CommunitySMS user herself.
She also has your number in her own addressbook.
This person will receive your name - in a message from you -
NOT as set by you in your details, but as set by herself in her addressbook.
30. Is CommunitySMS secure?
Yes. To support PDA's of which some do not support SSL (which is the Secure Sockets layer you need for an absolutely secure site),
we support both
a secure and a plain web site. The choice lies with you, the consumer, to use either the one or the other.
To use the secure web site, put an 'https:' in front of your internet address, instead of 'http:'. You can
browse the secure version of the web site here.(notice the lock at the bottom of your window)
You can browse the plain version of the web site here.
From our side, we take care never to publish your password on this web site: it is one direction only. We can securely send your password to your cell phone via SMS,
but we will never display it in a web page where anyone else can see it.
The password entry fields are also secure: no-one can walk past and see what you have entered there.
Your password is also never displayed in the internet URL.
From your side, it is your responsibility to keep your password unknown by other people, change it regularly via the
options page, not choose an easily guessed password or dictionary word (use both numbers and letters in your password), and keep your cell phone secure.
If you take care to fulfill the above security policy, your SMS account will be safe from hackers. Most hacking occurs when passwords become known.
You can also change your account's cell phone number via the options page at any time if necessary.
31. How do I set up emails to be routed to SMS?
You can configure one or more email address as 'belonging' to you (in the main options screen), and address messages from your email to '[cell-phone-number]@communitysms.com'.
The credits will be deducted from your communitysms account.
This is set up under My email address: on the details - main page.
If you want messages from certain email addresses to be forwarded to your cell phone on your account, that can
also be configured here.
This is set up under Incoming email addresses: on the details - main page.
For incoming addresses, the full address or domain address (starting with the '@') or '*' can be specified. '*'
allows all incomer addresses, and the domain addresses allows all emails from that domain, no matter what the first part of the address.
Email addresses are comma delimited.
32. How do I personalize my SMS to each individual recipient?
Wherever you specify the literal $name in your SMS, it will be replaced by the name of that particular recipient as you have it set up under contacts.
33. How do I export numbers to my PC?
There are 2 ways to export your numbers. You can either export all at once, or one group at a time.
To export all numbers:
- Go to the contacts menu.
- Go to the export submenu.
- Click on export all my groups.
- Click on save.
- In the Save As window, choose the folder where the file should be saved and click save.
- You can now open the saved file using MS Excel.
To export one group:
- Go to the contacts menu.
- Go to the export submenu.
- In the Group to Export drop down box, select the group that you want to export.
- Click on download.
- Click on save.
- In the Save As window, choose the folder where the file should be saved and click save.
- You can now open the saved file using MS Excel.
34. If I close the Browser window or I lose my internet connection while an SMS is going out, will the SMS still go out or will it be interrupted?
The SMS will still go out.
The server process of sending the SMS is independent of the mechanism to display the progress in the browser window.
35. How can I see the progress of an SMS delivery?
Click the link called 'Sent SMS Delivery Report' at the bottom of the 'send SMS' screen, below the Message entry box.
This will display a list of the most recent sent SMS, and their status: whether already delivered, or still in progress: including the amount of SMS that has already been sent.
36. Can I interrupt the sending of an SMS before sending is completed?
Yes.
There are two ways to interrupt the sending of an SMS that is currently in progress:
The first way is by clicking the 'cancel' link next to the particular bulk SMS in the 'Sent SMS Delivery Report' screen.
The second way is by sending the SMS command '!stop' to the CommunitySMS number (0837037034). This will stop all your SMS that are currently in progress, and if any, report how many were stopped.
37. I want to allocate credits within a community. E.g There are three users and 1500 credits in ABC account and I want each user to have 500 credits so that no one uses more than the other.
Go to the Community's Account page, and pay the credits into the users' personal accounts. Each user has an account that is his cell phone number in international format, e.g. +27831234567.
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