Version 0.8.9 of mQuery released today gives some more dynamic control to people using dedicated numbers/MSISDNs. If you have your own Number routed through mQuery you can now route types of keywords (aka Advanced keywords) such as email addresses and numbers.
So, now you can ask mobile users to send in their email address and forward those sorts of messages to your web application (then send out an email to them with more information or vouchers).
An additional secret advanced feature (contact us for more info) is the option to have keywords that start with a common string.
Why would you do you use this? Basically it could be like this. You want your SMS users to send in a vote during a talent contest that has 20 contestants. You have several of options
- Setup 20 keywords such as c1, c2, c3 ... and 20 different unique actions
- Setup one keyword such as talent, ask everyone to start their message with this and then the contestant number.
- Setup a starts with keyword that treats all messages starting with "c" as the same class of keyword and then you can report on these and even use a dynamic response to reply with.
I recommend this method but you need to be careful if you have a lot of keywords as the order of precedence needs be be taken into account.
That is the why, now how do I do it?
Easy. Unlike the other Advanced Keywords this one needs to be entered manually.
- Figure out what you want to start each keyword with. In this case lets say everything for a clown contest starts with "clown", eg clown1, clown2, clown3 and so on.
- In the mQuery keyword list setup a new keyword using the following special string
See how that works? Basically, anything starting with "clown" will match this keyword if it doesn't match other keyword you have explicitly configured.
Now you may want to send an SMS to confirm the vote for the clown and there is a special dynamic response tag you can use to sort of personalise it.
As always, feel free to ask us questions or provide feedback.
News from May 14, 2007
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