SMS routing and Digital Receptionist?

[YNS-Admin]

I have a main number going to a digital receptionist where callers press one, two or so on depending on what department they want. That all works fine, but the client says they have a lot of customers trying to text their main company number. They would like to see if there is a way to route the texts to one dedicated cell phone and still have the calls hit the call queue? The individual users do not have a DID.

 

[Evolute IT]

I have a main number going to a digital receptionist where callers press one, two or so on depending on what department they want. That all works fine, but the client says they have a lot of customers trying to text their main company number. They would like to see if there is a way to route the texts to one dedicated cell phone and still have the calls hit the call queue? The individual users do not have a DID.

You need to check with your provider if it supports SMS and if it can forward the messages. Some do, others don't. It really depends.

If you're using analog lines, it's probably not possible even at the provider level.

 

[leejor]

This had been around for a few years, worth a read.
https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/3cx-sms-did-you-get-my-text-message.44582/

On a side note, I really don't understand why people assume that a phone number is automatically able to receive a text.

 

[cobaltit]

On a side note, I really don't understand why people assume that a phone number is automatically able to receive a text.

It's a millenial thing. But as @Frederick Marcoux pointed out you need to work with your provider for this. Some providers can also do SMS and route that somewhere else (like us) but other providers don't have SMS capability so you have to go to one of those 3rd party SMS sites that can handle it. That in turn may require your current provider to change the underlying provider your number is with to accomplish that. Good luck!

 

[YNS-Admin]

We're using Vitelity, and it looks like they have a web SMS client that might work for what the client needs. I also set it up to email the SMS to a specified email address. There is a desktop client (written in silverlight OMG!) and the Apple app is not available to use in the US.
Thanks!

 

[Evolute IT]

We're using Vitelity, and it looks like they have a web SMS client that might work for what the client needs. I also set it up to email the SMS to a specified email address. There is a desktop client (written in silverlight OMG!) and the Apple app is not available to use in the US.
Thanks!

Omg, Silverlight! I thought that was dead and buried!

 

[VoIPTools]

Has anyone heard more about 3CX's plans to support SMS? I've seen various posts about 3CX adding support for SMS, but this has been rumored for close to a year. We have held off building an SMS client because we don't want to reinvent the wheel if this is something 3CX is going to do.

 

[Evolute IT]

Has anyone heard more about 3CX's plans to support SMS? I've seen various posts about 3CX adding support for SMS, but this has been rumored for close to a year. We have held off building an SMS client because we don't want to reinvent the wheel if this is something 3CX is going to do.

During the last sales webinar, the guy said that we should not expect this to be widely available until Q4 2021. They will start beta testing the integration but apparently they did it in a way that the provider doesn't seem to affect the SMS.

Basically, we are building our own too because we were waiting on this and instead of using provider's API for SMS, they seem to be using a cloud services that is paid. So that would affect the future licenses price.

Anyways, don't expect that to be ready anytime soon!

 

[VoIPTools]

I wondered about this. In my experience, every SIP provider seems to have their own API for sending and receiving SMS through their SMS enabled trunks. The only thought I had was some type of provider template similar to how we handle SIP trunks now in 3CX. But that seems like an ugly mess given the fact that there really isn't an API standard we can rely upon.

How does using a global SMS carrier work if you want to send and receive SMS from your business's primary phone number? Does that mean you have to port your phone number to this cloud SMS provider? Either that's an unacceptable approach, or someone knows something I don't (which is very likely).

Dang, if I knew it was going to be another year, I probably would have bit-the-bullet a long time ago and built a solution myself. Now I have to ask myself, is it worth risking investing the effort (money) to build a solution only to have 3CX provide the capability in a year or so, or do I just wait and hope it doesn't get delayed 2 or 3 more years. What to do...