Flowroute SMS

Yeah, I get it. This is a ‘I have question X and just answer it for me.’ situation. The answer has been given, if you’re going to use FreePBX you will need to write your own solution or have someone develop a solution for you. You can go the commercial route and get 3CX or some other PBX that has built in Flowroute messaging support. Those are pretty much your options at this point.

As for the rest, do with it what you will. It just seems like messaging was a vital service for your customer and I was just making sure that you and the customer are aware of what is going on. As not knowing can end up having a negative impact.

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10DLC is a requirement for texting from any VoIP line to any cellular number now days. It has gotten worse now where every campaign requires a manual vetting by the gateway provider that connects all VOIP carriers to the mobile network called Syniverse. You can not send a message to a mobile number from VOIP without it going through them. They are now taking up to 15 days to Vet a single campaign and starting March 31st they will not allow messages through their gateway without a campaign associated with the number.

Even Flowroute will tell you this and that you can’t send or receive messages until you register a brand and a campaign and than have Syniverse vet and approve the campaign which requires strict opt in requirements from customers before you can even send a reply to them.

To qualify for P2P it has to be consumer to consumer with no APIs used. Only mobile to mobile qualifies for that and consumer grade services like Google Voice. Your business would never qualify for a P2P exemption. You would have to register a campaign with the use case of UCaaS.

The problem your going to have is to deal with all the required automation for opt in and opt out and not allowing to send a text or reply to a text without a explicit opt in first. This is becoming a nightmare for companies trying to do conversational texting.

Oh yeah, I didn’t think of this as it is one of the newer things that has been coming.

Where do you want your SMS to be handled? Do you want to work on it on a web interface like UCP or handle it on your endpoints? Which would lead to the question, what phones do you have deployed?

Ideally it would be integrated right into whatever SIP client we’re using. Currently, we’re using Zoiper.

So what happens if a prospective customer got your number from a friend who used you 10 years ago and assumed that SMS now works with more than mobiles so tries to contact you that way (I’m assuming your can port landline numbers to VoIP in the USA)?

Also, maybe I’m out of touch with modern business jargon, but, to me, campaign implies an exercise that involves large scale communication that is to some extent unsolicited, but not necessarily electronic. The closest to solicited would be a yellow page entry. I’m not sure how that applies to an ongoing professional relationship, e.g. between a general medical practitioner and their patient, or between a school and a parent.

If the OP is right, and people are beginning to expect SMS to work with any business number, there may well end up with pressure to backtrack on this.

PS, as I read it, what offering does not use VoIP protocols, and if forced to use the 10DLC address subspace, will not correspond to what I would think people would understand by a VoIP line.

Common sense does not apply here. The mobile industry has casted out all non mobile carriers. Their rules are very stringent and they consider anything non consumer to consumer to be 10DLC. No exceptions. The word campaigns is stupid since in the UCaaS space you do 1 to 1 conversations but those are still considered 10DLC and require a campaign.

To be exempt from Campaigns to send SMS you have to be qualified as P2P. Here is the form you have to submit to The Campaign Registry for that approval by each of the wireless carriers. We had 1 customer who only sells residential service submit this and TMobile denied the exemption but ATT accepted it. So their is not even uniformity within each carrier but if you can’t get past the first 3 questions alone you can not qualify.

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Definitely ridiculous. Hopefully they figure it out sooner rather than later!

Figure what out. They are adding more layers of BS every 6 months. It’s not getting easier. The wireless guys have all the say as it’s their network and they can just choose to block us from it 100% if they choose to.

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Do you just love to argue or what’s the deal? A bit exhausting. Figure it out as in figure it out. Hopefully peel back the layers of BS and be more realistic. :man_facepalming:t3:

I was asking a question. Figure what out? If you mean make it easier or relax things they are going the opposite direction. If you mean figure out how to setup everything. than it’s already been figured out and all the providers have processes in place to register your brand and campaign and have it vetted.

I mean realize that their “one size fits all” approach might not work as well as they once thought and “figure it out”. I guess time will tell.

I will share what our company has worked with in regards to using our Flowroute numbers for SMS. We found a website software package that we purchased and installed on a webhost. The package author kindly added the necessary code so that Flowroute is now a gateway that can be added.

The website allows our company to log into the website and see the conversations and respond. Also we can initiate individual or blast message campaigns. The software allows setup of of automatic responders for STOP, HELP, etc.

The website can also be setup for different users to have access to only their numbers. You can also use the website software to resell SMS services.

Our company has purchased and used, I am not representing or selling for this software.
Ultimate SMS
It is sold via

Code Canyon.net - Ultimate SMS

This is NOT the Wordpress plugin by the same name.
This is entirely separate from your VOIP PBX. It only uses the same SIP Trunk providers API’s for SMS via a web interface on YOUR webhost.
I am offering a possible solution to the OP’s question. Not trying to solve or inform regarding the 10DLC regulations.

YMMV

Awesome! Thanks!

Here’s what you can share with flowroute if you want to suggest that they build an integration with FreePBX

https://wiki.freepbx.org/plugins/servlet/mobile?contentId=91357684#content/view/91357684

textable.co is a service I use that integrates with Flowroute. Has a web UI and an iPhone app. Separate from FreePBX

As other commenters have pointed out, there are alternatives to using Sangoma’s SIP trunks to send and receive texts. There are also alternatives to using FreePBX that have very robust SMS texting included - and they handle all of the regulatory issues at their end. Take a look at https://www.getweave.com/. But be prepared for some sticker shock if you are using FreePBX on the basis of primarily cost.

I primarily steer clients toward a complete Sangoma solution (hosted FreePBX, Sangoma SIP Trunks and Sangoma Connect for SMS messaging) - it’s just the most straightforward to manage this way and the support from the Community is by far better than other systems, including those like 3CX (which also has integrated SMS as well as a decent softphone). 3CX supports texting on flowroute trunks. How to enable SMS Text in 3CX. Manage them all from the chat feature

At my own office, which has been using FreePBX since 2004, we used to have SMS texting on the Vitelity trunks and DID’s (they have a portal web app for this, similar to their Fax web app) But we’ve since migrated our vitelity trunks to flowroute. All the sip trunk providers I am aware of these days though do require 10DLC registration, but it’s pretty much a one-time PITA and really not that difficult. we didn’t have any issues registering two of our number (our support numbers) through flowroute. In fact, flowroute sent us alerts well in advance that it was required.

All that said, It frankly would not be all that difficult for Sangoma to incorporate SMS into Sangoma connect through major SIP trunking providers like Flowroute. I have a “feeling” it’s a revenue capture issue though. Unless Sangoma can capture revenue from the integration of other SMS enabled Sip trunk providers (like 3CX does), it’s not going to happen because it can take revenue away from other Sangoma products. As for FreePBX being OSS, Sangoma in fact sells a “commercial” version of FreePBX called PBXact, and FreePBX is more “freemium” than “OSS” these days. Try setting up a robust business class FreePBX system without buying many other add-on “commercial” modules. So the argument against 3CX being proprietary really is somewhat of a red herring.

BTW, like waldrondigital at my own office I use textable for sms and mms messaging with two of my flowroute numbers that I ported over from Vitelity. It requires keeping a separate Web app open on the desktop, but since we do not use Sangoma connect internally, That’s just fine. We use 3CX softphones on the workstations anyway (very usable softphones with video capability and they do not require a 3CX server and work with FreePBX - and they are “free”), and Asternic’s FOP2, as well as Asternic’s CDR Reports and Asternic’s Call Center Stats, (all three far superior to the “equivalent” Sangoma commercial modules IMO).

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