Messaging - Send video, text, and button with Viber

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NOTE:

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

This page walks you step-by-step through how to use Telesign Messaging to send a Viber message to an end-user that includes text, a video file, and a button. The video file is hosted by you. This page only documents the use of the url_action_video template. Telesign also supports two other templates that send video messages in Viber: video and text_video. Contact us if you need assistance using any of these templates.

Format and size restrictions

Video format: Viber accepts .3gp, .m4v, .mov, .mp4 videos.

Video file size: The size limitation for a video file is 200 MB. To ensure that your video meets the size requirements, Telesign handles the requirements for providing the size of the video file (in bytes), the duration (in seconds), and the video’s thumbnail URL when you send the request.

The video will be downloaded to the user’s device by pressing it in the received message only if the file meets the size and format limitations.

Content requirements

Although this restriction is subject to change, Viber currently does not allow the use of links which navigate to the following apps:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Line
• Signal
• Telegram
• WhatsApp

This restriction is applied both to the content of messages and links that you use in your Viber commercial account and business chat info pages (business website, description etc.)

See Viber's documentation for any other content restrictions.

Validation

Viber uses a validation process runs in its backend for each sent request to confirm that it meets all of its mandatory API requirements including any specific parameter requirements.

To ensure that all your sent files are validated and downloadable, each video’s server host must allow Viber’s client the ability to verify the file header to make sure the file meets its technical limitations. A video that will not allow a headers investigation might not allow users who receive it to download the file or play the content. The URL you upload your video file to must be hosted on a server that allows HEAD methods and includes the file Content-Length in the server reply. It is recommended that the video URL include the file extension (.mp4), otherwise, Viber cannot guarantee the URL will be parsed correctly for all devices.

Before you begin

Make sure you have the following before you start:

• Transaction Callback Service: You need to have this set up so Telesign can send you delivery status updates for your Messaging requests. See Messaging - Callback service for more details.
• Viber account details: To send a message using Viber, you first need to provide the details specified on the Set up Viber for your account page to our Customer Support Team.

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NOTE:

The Transaction Callback Service is also where you would receive inbound replies from the recipient of your message.

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CAUTION:

If an end user does not have Viber, the Viber send will fail. We recommend either ensuring your end users have Viber on their devices or including a fallback channel for users without Viber. Note that the url_action_video template does not support the use of a fallback channel. Use the video template instead.

Steps

1. Send a POST /v1/omnichannel request. Include the following param values:

Request example

POST /v1/omnichannel HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Basic 12345678-9ABC-DEF0-1234-56789ABCDEF0:vjE/ZDfPvDkuGNsuqCFFO4neYIs=
Host: rest-ww.telesign.com
{
  "channels": [
    {
      "channel": "viber"
    }
  ],
  "recipient": {
    "phone_number": "11234567890"
  },
  "message": {
    "viber": {
      "template": "url_action_video",
      "parameters": {
        "reply_id": "sasa",
        "url_thumbnail": "https://test.org",
        "open_url": "hhttps://example.com/viber/video_placeholder_name.jpg",
        "text": "Viber URL action message",
        "button_text": "Hello",
        "url": "https://example.com/viber/video_placeholder_name.mp4"
      }
    }
  },
  "message_type": "MKT"
}

2. If the request is processed successfully, you should see a response with a 3001 status code.

Response example

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/1.17.7
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2020 21:25:54 GMT
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 137
Connection: keep-alive
Allow: GET,POST,HEAD
{
  "status": {
    "code": 3001,
    "description": "Message in progress"
  },
  "reference_id": "35C8B5D509BC10689196FED2AD551B8A",
  "external_id": null
}

3. If the send in Viber format is successful, your end-user receives a message on their device that includes the video file.

4. If the send in Viber format fails, the service is only able to send to a fallback channel that supports both video and text.

5. Updates on the status of this message are sent to the callback URL for your Transaction Callback Service. The general callback schema common to both this and other products is described on Transaction Callback Service. Modifications to the callback schema for this product are described on Messaging - Callback service. Search for these callbacks based on the reference ID in the response to your original Messaging request. Each callback payload includes an object with the status of the send for each channel that is tried.

Callback example

GET /callback_endpoint HTTP/1.1
Host: your-callback-url.com
{
  "reference_id": "35C8B5D509BC10689196FED2AD551B8A",
  "external_id": "null",
  "status": {
    "code": 3000,
    "description": "Delivered",
    "last_channel": "viber",
    "updated_on": "2020-05-04 22:07:01:226"
  },
  "channel_status": [
    {
      "viber": {
        "code": 3000,
        "description": "Delivered",
        "reference_id": "65C77D4A6C5C09085694EFB6C554D2BF",
        "updated_on": "2020-05-04 22:05:00.325"
      }
    }
  ]
}

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NOTE:

In addition to the reference ID for the Messaging transaction itself, the delivery status payload also includes a reference ID for the message-send on each channel. These can be useful for troubleshooting purposes.