In this FAQ you will see how to configure Email2SMS and SMS2Email feature on 2N® VoiceBlue Next gateway. First of all you can read a brief introduction how do these features work and after that there are several important steps which have to be met for proper settings of this feature:
Note: As a very first step please make sure that the license for Email2SMS feature is uploaded into your 2N®VoiceBlueNext gateway. This license is sold as a package for 10 users (you can buy licence for 10, 20, 30, etc. users) and you can have up to 200 licensed users in the gateway. If you want to verify whether you have the correct license uploaded in your gateway, go to section "Management -> License key". You should see the licenses called SMSE and SMSUx and in the "Active" row. SMSE indicates that Email2SMS function is enabled and SMSUx indicates number of licensed users where x stands for this number (see the picture below). If there is not a license for Email2SMS (SMSE) then you will not see tab "Messaging" on the top bar!
2N® VoiceBlue Next can be configured to resend email messages from the PC to any address (GSM numbers) in the form 734123456@domain.com. The subject and the body of the email will be sent as one or more SMS messages to the mobile number e.g. 734123456 showing the 2N® VoiceBlue Next user as sender. On the other hand, if the user sends a SMS message from his mobile phone to the SIM inserted in 2N® VoiceBlue Next gateway, the SMS will be sent to the user email account associated with the gateway.
The figure below shows sending/receiving SMS via SMTP/POP3. If the users create user accounts in the gateway, they can access the accounts via the e-mail client and send SMS messages to the gateway via SMTP. The gateway receives the messages and re-sends them to the GSM users (mobile phones) according to the predefined routing rules.
A message coming to 2N® VoiceBlue Next from GSM is routed according to the incoming SMS rules and delivered to the user´s email account via POP3.
In the first step go to section "Messaging –> Modules grouping" and enable SMS server – check the appropriate check-box. Next add GSM modules to SMS groups in order to facilitate incoming/outgoing SMS routing. It can be done based on your requirements e.g. according to the GSM provider, etc. The last step in this section is to assign SMS groups created in the previous step to the User groups if you want to use messaging with different routing rules (e.g. to different company departments). The GSM gateway can contain up to 4 User groups and up to 4 SMS groups.
Note: in this section you can also enable AutoCLIP routing for SMS. Set the maximum time for which the automatic SMS routing record (response) will be saved in the AutoCLIP table. It means that once you send an email to some specific GSM number (734123456@domain.com) and after some time the mobile user responds to this message and sends a SMS message to SIM card inserted in the GSM module from which the email was previously sent, then this message will be automatically resent directly to the user who sent an email.
In the example below GSM modules 0 and 1 were added to SMS group 0 and only users from User group 1 can use these modules (for incoming and outgoing SMS routing).
As a next step you need to skip to the section "Messaging –> Users", click on the "Add" button and create new SMS user(s) who will send and receive SMS messages. There are several parameters in this section which have to be set. You need to select the communication protocol for SMS processing (SMTP/POP3 ) and assign the user to User group. Also do not forget to define the Login name (without domain) and Password to log into the SMS server via your e–mail client. You can see all parameters from this section in the picture below where was created user "Test Account" with the login "Test" and password "test123". Once you fill in all parameters, click on the "OK" button. The user will be added and after that you have to make one more click to the "Save settings" button in the bottom right corner of the page (blue circle label in the picture).
Set the parameters of domain in the "Messaging –> User Group –> General settings" sub-menu. The domain is automatically assigned to the user´s login in the selected User group and it represents the user´s e–mail address. In this section you can also define some parameters for POP3 and SMTP such as subject of email, maximum SMS per email, next you can add “From” field as well as “Subject” to SMS (see the picture below).
In our example (in the previous step) a new user was created with login name "Test". In this section we will set domain as: gateway.com. Then the e-mail address of the user with rights to access the SMS server will be Test@gateway.com. The “@” character is completed automatically and it is not included in the domain´s field.
Now specify the routing rules for incoming SMS messages – this is done in the "Messaging –> User Group –> Incoming SMS routing" menu where you click on the "Add" button. There are several parameters which can be set or modified (see the picture below). Three most important ones are:
Note: The rules are applied for incoming SMS sequentially, starting from the first rule. If all the set rules are met in a row, the SMS is routed according to the row.
As a last step you need to specify routing rules for outgoing SMS – it is done in the "Messaging –> User Group –> Outgoing SMS routing" menu where you click on the "Add" button. In this section you will specify mainly these parameters:
Note: do not forget to enable the SMS server as shown in the first step (there is a check-box)!
In the picture below there is shown settings for User Group 1. Messages (emails) from all users in this User group are routed via SMS group 1. It means that these emails will be transferred to SMS and sent only via GSM modules assigned to SMS group 1. It is GSM module 2 in our example (as you can see in the picture from step 1).
Follow the steps in pictures below. In step 10, you have to fill Name (choose name of account), Email address (fill the address which you created in gateway in previous part, for this example it is Test@gateway.com), server of incoming and outgoing mail (fill IP address of the gateway), Username (same as email address) and password (fill password which you created in gateway in previous part, for this example it is test123)
Continue to step 13, there you have to fill username and password again, it is same like in step 10 (Test@gateway.com and test123). After you will press on "next" in step 15, new window will pop up and all you have to do is press "Finish". Now you can start using sms2email feature.
