Messaging - Overview

📘

NOTE:

To add this product to your account, contact a Telesign expert. This product is available for full-service accounts only.

Telesign Messaging is an omnichannel engagement product that allows you to enrich your end user communication strategy, with the advanced features, and options provided by various channels. This helps you create rich and reliable communications flows with your end users using the channels they are most comfortable with and which they use daily. You can include images, GIFs, videos, surveys, link buttons, and more. Choose delivery channels in a cascading order, and if the send to one channel fails, the service sends the message using the next channel.

Available channels include:

• Rich communication services (RCS)
• WhatsApp
• Viber
• MMS
• SMS
• Email

📘

NOTE:

Although this product can be used purely to send SMS-messages, without even attempting to send on another channel, you may find our SMS product more convenient and streamlined for that use case.

Common use cases

• Rich media - You can include photos, GIFs, and video in messages.

• Trusted messages - You can include branded messaging using customizable colors and logos and a verified business checkmark.

• Message templates - Create a template for a campaign's messages in advance, making it easier to send requests.

• Email - You can send transactional emails such as password reset notifications, account onboarding notifications, appointment reminders, shipping confirmations, sign-in attempt confirmations, newsletters, or follow up surveys.

General requirements

• Resource: rest-ww.telesign.com/v1/omnichannel

• Protocols: https

• Authentication: Basic (easiest to implement) or Digest

• Encoding: Accepts only UTF-8 unicode characters as inputs.

• Accepts: application/json

• Responds With: application/json

• Required Headers: Content-Type - json

Basic usage

1. Set up a Transaction Callback Service to receive notifications about messages sent through this API.
2. Select the primary channel you want to use: RCS, MMS, Viber, WhatsApp, or email.

🚧

CAUTION:

Although the SMS channel is technically usable with any template, we recommend only using it for a fallback message, not as the primary channel. Rendering of advanced features is most reliable on other channels.

3. If you have not already done so, work with our Customer Support Team to set up an account for any channels you plan to use. Detailed instructions for those channels that require an external app or account can be found on these pages:

   • Set up RCS for your account
   • Set up WhatsApp for your account
   • Set up Viber for your account
   • Set up email for your account

4. For channels other than email, select a template from the tables below based on your desired primary channel and use case. If there is a feature of the channel you want to use that you don't see covered by these templates, see our how-to guide Add Custom Template. To set up a template for emails, contact our Customer Support Team for assistance.

RCS: Templates by use case

WhatsApp: Templates by use case

MMS: Templates by use case

🚧

CAUTION:

You can only send MMS messages from US sender IDs and only with short codes.

Viber: Templates by use case

Some Viber templates can only be used with certain account types:

📘

NOTE:

If you are using SMS as a backup channel, we recommend using text for a text-only template. Advanced features may not render as expected on SMS.

5. (Optional) Select one or more backup channels, if desired.
6. Send a request to the API, referring to the documentation pages below for your primary channel and use case as needed.

Documentation by category

Reference

• Send a message with advanced features

• Check channel-capability of a phone number

• Check capability of a phone number for an RBM agent

• Templates

Callbacks

• Receive RCS callbacks
• Receive WhatsApp callbacks
• Receive MMS callbacks
• Receive Viber callbacks
• Receive inbound SMS callbacks
• Receive email callbacks

How-to guides

• General

  • Add custom template
  • Callback service
  • Receive inbound messages

• RCS

  • Send text-only message with RCS
  • Set up RCS for your account
  • Send media with RCS
  • Send link button with RCS
  • Send call button with RCS
  • Send link button in rich card with RCS
  • Send call button in rich card with RCS
  • Send suggested replies with RCS

• WhatsApp

  • Set up WhatsApp for your account
  • Send text-only message with WhatsApp
  • Send media with WhatsApp
  • Send file attachment with WhatsApp
  • Send location with WhatsApp

• MMS

  • Send media with MMS

• Viber

  • Set up Viber for your account
  • Send text-only message with Viber
  • Send image with Viber
  • Send link button with Viber

• Email

  • Set up email for your account
  • Send message via email