Having reliable, redundant and failover methods of delivery can make all the difference in crisis situations. Cellular hardware can offer a level of reliability in messaging that Internet-to-SMS messaging simply can not. In terms of delivering most SMS or text messages, there are two methods of delivery: Internet and cellular hardware. In many important circumstances, the Internet is often the first point of failure in a message delivery system. If PageGate is relying on an Internet connection to deliver messages, it will be unable to do so if that connection is down.
On the other hand, if you use cellular hardware as a primary delivery method, as long as the hardware and server have power and the cell towers in your area are operational, you will retain the ability to deliver text and SMS messages.
Above and beyond that, when using cellular hardware to deliver text messages, the people who receive those SMS have the option to reply to them. When they reply, their message is delivered back to the sending cellular device, where it waits in memory. PageGate can be configured to check the cellular hardware for reply messages received by these devices and process them in a number of ways.
In the most basic configuration, all reply messages are sent to a specified recipient or group. However, reply messages can be fed through the Command Line / ASCII API for basic processing, which allows you to conditionally modify what is done with the replies in some circumstances. Using a Filter Pack in conjunction with the SMS replies and the Command Line / ASCII API allows you to modify any part of the replies being processed, from what the message should say, to whom the message should be delivered. The Filter Pack also allows you to implement conditional modifications. For example, if a certain word or key phrase appears in the body of the message, you could have the Filter Pack completely change who that message is intended to go to..
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