How to Setup Ad-Hoc Messagain in the PageGate Email Interface Transcript for Video:
Welcome to the video tutorial overview of how PageGate’s GetMail module can use ad-hoc messaging. In this tutorial, we’ll be going over what ad-hoc messaging is and how it can be used in conjunction with email processing.
Before we begin, you must have at least a 5000 recipient license to gain access to PageGate’s Ad-Hoc features. For licensing information, please contact our sales and registration department at sales@notepage.com or by phone at 781-829-0500 x 1.
To start, let’s go over what ad-hoc messaging is. In most environments, you’ll have a static recipients and groups list that determines who a recipient is, what device or address they’re tied to and how to deliver messages to them. For example, you might have a recipient named Grant Wyatt who’s tied to an SMS delivery carrier with his specific cell phone number in the ID field. That way, any time someone wants to message Grant, they send to his recipient.
However, you can also have an ad-hoc configuration where you pass the contact information in a freeform manner to the program. So, instead of having static recipients that tie a name to a number, you could have a single ad-hoc recipient that you pass a phone number to. This allows you the ability to send to any number you want without needing a static recipient in the list to represent that phone number.
There are a few ways that ad-hoc messaging can be implemented with the GetMail module and they all require an ad-hoc recipient, so let’s start there.
First, open the PageGate Admin.
Next, right click on Recipients and select Add.
Give the recipient a name, something straightforward like ahm or adhocmail.
Set the ‘Type’ to Ad-Hoc.
Set the Carrier that should be the method of delivery for these messages. For pages and email, this is usually straightforward but this is where things can get a little complex for SMS delivery. If you use cellular hardware to deliver SMS, you could configure an ad-hoc recipient tied to your SMS carrier and pass the 10 digit cell phone number as the ID. However, this is possible because cellular hardware delivers SMS in the same manner as cell phones; you don’t need to know which carrier the cell phone numbers you’re sending to are associated with.
Internet methods of SMS delivery, however, require that you do know the carrier each number is tied to as the various carrier gateways don’t share messages. AT&T will only accept messages for AT&T phones, Verizon for Verizon phones, and so on. In that setup, you could configure an ad-hoc recipient tied to each carrier but you would need to know the carrier of the phone numbers you’re sending to.
The ‘Max Chars’ field in the recipient settings is half of a message splitting equation in PageGate. The carrier ‘Max Chars’ determines the maximum number of characters that can be contained in a single block and the recipient ‘Max Chars’ determines the maximum number of characters that you want to be able to send to these devices and addresses.
When finished, click Apply.
Now that we have the ad-hoc recipient in the program, like we mentioned earlier, there are a few ways of configuring ad-hoc input with GetMail.
The first method requires you to host a domain or sub-domain with GetMail. In this method, you can send email to your ad-hoc recipient and put contact IDs in the subject line of the message to have the body of the message delivered to all IDs in the subject line. For example, if the domain or subdomain managed by GetMail is sms.emsalert.com and your ad-hoc recipient’s name is alerts, you could send a message to alerts@sms.emsalert.com and use 7818290500;7813214842;7818290503 in the subject line to have the body of the email delivered to the three numbers referenced in the subject line.
The second method requires the ad-hoc recipient to be tied to a POP mailbox. If an ad-hoc recipient is tied to a POP mailbox, you can send email to that email address and put contact IDs in the subject line of the message to have the body of the message delivered to all IDs in the subject line. For example, let’s say that you have an ad-hoc recipient tied to something@adomain.org. If you send an email to that address and use 7818290500;7813214842;7818290503 in the subject line, PageGate will send the body of the email delivered to the three numbers referenced in the subject line.
The third method requires you to host a domain or sub-domain with GetMail. In this method, you can submit an ad-hoc value before the @ of messages addressed to PageGate’s messaging domain. For example, we could configure the system to accept any 10 digit number prefixed to the messaging domain. Let’s say that our messaging domain is sms.emsalert.com; that would let us send an email to 7818290500@sms.emsalert.com or 8315923214@sms.emsalert.com or any other 10 digit number before the @.
To implement this method, go to Interfaces – GetMail – Settings – AdHoc.
Check ‘Enable Ad-Hoc Mail’
Click Add.
Set the ‘Starting ID/PIN’ value to the beginning of a numeric or alphanumeric range and set the ‘Ending ID/PIN’ value to the end of that range. For example, if you want the program to accept all 5 digit IDs, you would use 00001 as the starting value and 99999 as the ending value. If you want it to accept all 10 digit IDs, you would use 0000000001 as the starting value and 9999999999 as the ending value.
You can also use alphanumeric sequences for non-standard implementations as well. For example, you could use A001 as the starting range and B999 as the ending range to have the program accept any numeric value prefixed with A or B.
Once you determine the ID range you want to accept, select the ad-hoc recipient these messages should be delivered through.
When finished, click Apply.
This concludes the video tutorial on how to use ad-hoc messaging with PageGate’s GetMail module.
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