Send an SMS alert using NPrinting

[richbyard]

So, how to send KPI results to a user by SMS rather than email so you can get a result like the one below. This could be used for daily or hourly status messages to Senior Execs, for operation direction to the salesforce or the distribution team, or for conditional based alerting when KPI results meet a certain criteria. There are so many use cases here... I've also added an example in Arabic (google translate version) to show right to left language capability in the SMS.

It's actually reasonably simple but you do require a 3rd party SMS gateway to perform the translation of an email to an SMS. All telco operators offer these services, and a number of other web based operators too, and all work in much the same way as the example here.

Step 1 - Setup your SMS Gateway provider account

I have used TextMagic for this example as it's easy to work with and offers a free trial with some minimal credit for testing.

• Create your account.
• Setup the basic settings:
  • navigate to Services > Email to SMS
  • Add allowed emails (this is the sender of your email from NPrinting) https://my.textmagic.com/online/emailtosms/emails
  • Edit the send & receive settings to convert the body of the email to SMS and set a limit to how many SMS's it will be converted to. https://my.textmagic.com/online/emailtosms/settings

Other services that will work in a similar way (and may be cheaper)

• Most local Telco providers
• ClickSend - Bulk SMS Gateway & Email Marketing Platform – Email & SMS Marketing

• SMS Country - Send your email via SMS- Email to SMS- SMS Country

• SMS Global - Email To SMS | SMS To Email | Email Text Messages | SMS from Outlook

• Text Anywhere - TextEmail – Send SMS Text Messages from any Email system and Microsoft OMS – TextAnywhere.net

• Esendex - Email to SMS - Send and receive SMS via email - Esendex

Step 2 - Setup your NPrinting instance with the user to receive the SMS

Your SMS gateway provider will indicate the email format for the mobile number you wish to send the SMS to. For example, with TextMagic the format is 4470851234567@textmagic.com for the telephone number +44 7085 1234567 (a clearly made up number).

This is the email address to assign to the user in NPrinting. Note: It is likely that you will have 2 NPrinting user accounts for a single individual if they receive SMS alerts and other reports from NPrinting (hub, newstand, email attachments etc).

Step 3 - Create your HTML report (or import the one attached along with the example application)

The HTML report is very simple. It looks like this in the NPrinting Designer Editor window and is looking at Gauge objects as tables.

Step 4 - Setup your Publish Task

Go through the normal setup process.

• Add the report you have created in step 3 (as HTML output)
• Assign your users (the SMS user you wish to send to as per step 2)
• Check that the destination for the user is email
• In the email section use the tags to embed the report content (and perhaps the users name etc)
• Add a trigger to schedule the report
• Save the changes

Step 5 - run the publish task and receive the SMS

It's pretty easy eh!

Troubleshooting:

• Ensure that your user is assigned to a role in NPrinting. If no role is assigned the email will not be sent.
• Ensure the sending email address, as per the email message in step 4, is included in the TextMagic allowed emails
  • https://my.textmagic.com/online/emailtosms/emails
• Ensure you have some credit left on TextMagic as this will stop things working too...

[mdmukramali]

Hi ryy‌,

it seems very interesting and will be very helpful.

TextMagic seems not working in Saudi Arabia.

please, could you suggest any other Messaging service if possible?

I want to try it.

Thanks,

Mukram.

[richbyard]

Hi Mukram,

I did a quick google search for "email to sms" + "saudi arabia" and have a number of results that would be worth exploring.

Send your email via SMS- Email to SMS- SMS Country

Email To SMS | SMS To Email | Email Text Messages | SMS from Outlook

TextEmail – Send SMS Text Messages from any Email system and Microsoft OMS – TextAnywhere.net

Email to SMS - Send and receive SMS via email - Esendex

I would also talk to Mobily, STC and other Teclo providers to see what services they provide as I would expect them to provide similar functionality (Du and Etisalat offer it in the UAE).

Many thanks
Richard

[ogster1974]

Looks very interesting and like the fact NPrinting has now got Embedded reports in the email.

The SMS services obviously have an additional cost to them over and above the existing delivery methods.

As a rough rule how much does it cost to send? I guess if you charged the receiptient they wouldn't be to happy and also would they not need to have an option to be able to opt out of the service?

[richbyard]

Hi Andy,

This is an example using a pay as you go service so will not be the cheapest way to implement if used heavily. Telco's will offer more subscription style pricing for larger volumes.

My example, sending to a number in the UAE, costs $0.059 per SMS (less than 6 cents) but check the link below to check re destination country as it does change...

SMS Pricing: Affordable SMS for Business Communication

Hope this helps.

Richard

[mdmukramali]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for your time and kind reply,

let me try to use any of the service .

Thanks,

Mohammed Mukram.

[ogster1974]

I guess like all new delivery methods you have to be careful with how you implement these solutions. 

50 users in the UK receiving hourly updates during working hours (mon-fri) can have almost a £500.00 monthly cost ontop of your exisitng NPrinting commitments.

So definently one for a targeted requirement rather than general information distribution.

I like it and how this with the bots are allowing us to extend how we extend how we deliver our reporting through Qlik.  Thanks for sharing Richard.

[stevedark]

Hi Andy,

It feels like there should be a way to get that cost right down.  Using an automation tool like IFTTT you should be able to craft a recipe that will receive an email and send a text.  If you got an old Android phone and get a cheap SIM with a large number of inclusive texts you should be able to get that cost down considerably.

You could also have NPrinting change the colour of your Phillips Hue lights in the office when your margin drops below a certain point, or get it talking to Sonos and you can have Fiesta by the Pogues come on each time an order over a certain amount hits the data.

The possibilities are limitless. 

[ogster1974]

Love those ideas.  IFTTT you certainlly could, again mindful of volume restrictions.  I want to see it in your office

[richbyard]

I like you're thinking and a great way to use an old phone, not sure about your playlist with the Pogues but each to their own ;-)...  Are there volume limits on IFTTT? I've played with outputting a file to dropbox (directly from the script, or macro in QV) which then became an SMS alert through IFTTT which works but not sure how reliable it would be...

[stevedark]

I'm not aware of any limits.  There are services you can plug in that do have limits, but I think if you are using your own SMTP server and your own SIM card you would be fine.  I hear you about reliability, so perhaps sending via both that route and email (as a backup) would be the best route.

Worth also mentioning on this thread that you can do quite a lot with sending using QlikView Alerts and the free Notification Connector in Qlik Web Connectors.  I've some apps that write HTML out during the load script which is then pulled into the body of an email using the Notification connector and that works well.

See these posts for the different required elements:

https://www.quickintelligence.co.uk/write-csv-qlikview-store/

https://www.quickintelligence.co.uk/free-qlik-web-connectors/‌

By using different services as triggers and receivers all kinds of solutions can be crafted.