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FireTone sends SMS through your organisation’s own FireFlo account. You bring the account; FireTone keeps its login, a copy of what your provider has approved, and every message it sends with what became of it. SMS costs you what FireFlo charges; FireTone adds nothing.

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Connecting the account

Settings → SMS (operators: choose the organisation in the page header first): Connect tests the login and syncs your balance, your sender IDs and your approved wording. Sync now refreshes them; do it after your provider approves something.
A gateway on a private network is refused unless the server allows private addresses (FIRETONE_HTTP_ALLOW_PRIVATE), the same rule as an IVR’s Fetch data step.

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Sender IDs

The names your messages come from. Your provider approves them; FireTone shows their state: Make default chooses the one every SMS comes from unless its template or IVR step names another. Request a sender ID files the request with your provider; it is usable once they approve it. Without any sender ID, FireFlo sends from your login name, which an enforcing account usually refuses.

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Approved wording

Some accounts accept only messages that match wording the provider approved (India’s DLT rules are the usual reason). The account card says which yours is. On such an account, every template is checked against the approved wording as you edit it, and a warning says when FireFlo would refuse it. Request wording files new wording, with {#var#}, {#num#} or {#alp#} where it varies.

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Templates

SMS templates holds the wording for each kind of SMS: after a missed call, after a call, new voicemail, and alerts. Each starts with built-in wording that you can replace, and Reset puts it back. IVR SMS templates are named ones for the IVR’s Send SMS step.
  • Variables work as in email: click one to insert it ({{caller}}, {{org.name}}). A variable the SMS does not have is refused when you save.
  • The editor counts characters and SMS parts with the sample values. Curly quotes, dashes and ellipses are replaced with plain ones before sending, because one of them would make the whole message Unicode: 70 characters per SMS instead of 160. The editor names any character that still does that.
  • Send from picks an approved sender ID, or leaves the default.
  • Send test sends it, with the sample values, to a number in international form (+61412345678).

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After-call SMS

After-call SMS texts the caller once a call is over:
  • After a missed call: the call rang an extension or a queue, nobody answered, and the caller left no message. A call the caller finished in the IVR on their own is not missed.
  • After a call that reached somebody.
Each rule can apply to every number or to one, send from a chosen sender ID, and has a quiet window (60 minutes unless you change it): a caller who rings three times in that window is texted once. The wording is the After a missed call or After a call template. Only callers with a mobile number are texted: an internal extension or an anonymous caller is not. Flow test calls never are.

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Alerts and voicemail by SMS

  • Alerts: in Organisations → edit, Text alerts to takes up to five mobiles. A toll-fraud alert is texted to them as well as emailed.
  • Voicemail: in the extension’s settings, Text new voicemail to gets a short text for each new message: who called, how long, and a link to listen.

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Sent SMS

Every SMS, newest first: A refusal is not retried; Send again is there when you have fixed the cause. A busy gateway (429, 500) is retried after 1, 5 and 30 minutes. If FireFlo took the message and then did not answer, FireTone does not send it again, because FireFlo has no way to tell a repeat from a new message. That row says to check the FireFlo portal. Delivery receipts need the platform’s base domain, which FireFlo reports to. The account card shows the address. Without it, SMS stay at Accepted. An organisation sends at most 500 SMS an hour, so a loop in a flow cannot empty the account before anybody notices.