To send an SMS message via a menu driven interface, please see the help section titled “Web Menu Interface”. This section describes how to send a text message programmatically via URL parameters.

To send a text message via SMS, use the following URL format:

http://127.0.0.1:8800/?PhoneNumber=xxxxxxxx&Text=abc+def+ghi

For 127.0.0.1, please substitute the IP address or host name assigned to your gateway PC. (Note: 127.0.0.1 is a local loopback address that can be utilized when you are connecting to the gateway from the same computer.)

For 8800, please substitute the port number that the gateway is configured to use.

Substitute the phone number that you wish to send the SMS message to for the “xxxxxxxx” in the “PhoneNumber” parameter. Use either the local phone number format, or the international phone number format (your network provider may or may not allow you to send to international phone numbers). If the international phone number format is used, note that you must substitute “%2B” for the “+” character, because of URL escaping restrictions. For example, to send an SMS to +447778001210, use the following URL format:

http://127.0.0.1:8800/?PhoneNumber=%2B447778001210&Text=abc+def+ghi

Substitute the text of the SMS message in the “Text” parameter. Note that due to URL escaping restrictions, space characters should be replaced with “+” characters. Also, certain special characters, such as “?”, “&”, “:” and “=” need to be replaced with an escape character. The gateway expects characters to be encoded in UTF-8 (Unicode-based) format, therefore some characters, including the Euro (€) may require multiple escaped characters. (Note: The Web Menu Interface automatically performs this escaping.) The following table shows common characters that must be escaped:

"	%22
<	%3C
>	%3E
&	%26
+	%2B
#	%23
%	%25
*	%2A
!	%21
,	%2C
'	%27
\	%5C
=	%3D
Euro (€)	%E2%82%AC

Message text up to 160 characters in length can be sent in a single SMS message. The gateway automatically supports the sending of longer messages by utilizing “concatenated SMS” to send messages larger than 160 characters in length. Note that some older mobile phones will not support longer SMS messages. For longer SMS messages, one message is sent for every 153 characters of text in the message.

Additional supported URL parameters when sending text messages or any other type of message supported by the gateway via the web interface include:

“ContinueURL” – After the gateway submits the SMS message, the gateway will return a web page indicating that the message was submitted successfully. This page will contain a “Continue” link that points to the URL specified in this parameter. If “ContinueURL” is not specified, the link will default to “javascript:history.back()” which links to the previous page. Note that the “http://” portion of the URL is not necessary and is assumed. Also note that it may be necessary to escape some URL characters, please refer to the above table for more information.

“Sender” – Specifies the phone number to be included as the sender of the message. (Note: Depending on the configuration of the gateway and the SMSCs to which the gateway connects, this value may be ignored.)

For a complete list of URL parameters, please refer to the section “URL Parameters for Sending Messages”.