Last week I have been working for MAF Norge to connect CiviCRM to their SMS Gateway (PsWinCom) so that they can send and receive SMS from within CiviCRM. In addition PsWinCom offered a the possibility to send SMS which will charge the receiver an amount of money. This way MAF Norge used to receive SMS donations. Now they can do that from within CiviCRM.
This done by two components, one is the PsWinCom SMS Provider and the other a newly developed SMS Autoreply extension.
SMS Autoreply extension
The SMS Autoreply extension does sends auto replies to incoming sms-es. It is triggered by a keyword in the incoming sms. E.g. when a user send MAF Fuelsponsor it will receive automaticly an answer saying 'Hey Jaap thank you for becoming a fuelsponsor'. Also it possible to setup an amount to charge. E.g. this way MAF can send an SMS saying 'Hey Jaap do you want to donate 100KR send MAF DONOR 100 to 2377' as soon as the user sends MAF DONOR 100 to 2377 the reply will cost 100kr and can be like 'Hey Jaap thank you for donating 100KR'
This will end up in CiviCRM as a contribution of 100KR.
Comments
Hi!
We are so happy to have the sms-functionality within Civi. Now we have all the contribution automatic registered in the system without doing anything! And on my dashboard I can see a report telling me how much has been raised or how many are participating!
Surely, this is a dream come true, both from an administrator point of you and a fundraiser/communicator point of you.
Have a relaxing summer, best from Jostein, MAF Norway
Well done Japie!
Will it be possible to use this SMS Autoreply extensions with other SMS Providers at some point to receive donations via SMS? Also what are your plans for packaging these components as extensions on the CiviCRM extensions directory?
Yes it is possible to use the sms autoreply extension with other provider. However for the PSWinCom I have set up a parameter 'charge' which contains the amount to charge. If other provider understand this parameter then the charging of receivers will also work. But I don't think they do...
Regarding making it a generic extension. My plan was to do so. But since last week CiviCRM Scheduled reminders could do exactly the same thing. So I strongly advice users to lookin into sending sms from scheduled reminders.