The Now SMS E-Mail Gateway is a software product that provides bi-directional SMS to e-mail support, allowing e-mail messages to be sent to SMS recipients, and allowing SMS message recipients to reply via SMS with the reply being directed back to an e-mail recipient.

The Now SMS E-Mail Gateway accepts SMTP (internet) messages, and routes those messages to SMS recipients (e-mail address format is phonenumber@domain).

The gateway allows SMS users to send internet messages in two ways, either as a reply to a message received via the gateway, or as a new message. To send a new message from SMS to an internet e-mail recipient, the beginning text of the SMS message must be an e-mail address to receive the message. SMS replies to e-mail messages are supported in one of two different methods, depending on the configuration of the gateway:

If 20 or more phone numbers (or shortcut codes) are allocated to the gateway, each time the gateway routes a message to an SMS recipient, a different sender phone number is used. When the user replies, based on the phone number they reply to, the message is routed to the appropriate internet e-mail address that generated the message being replied to. (To avoid potential confusion, we recommend allocating a higher number of phone numbers to the gateway.)

If only a single phone number is allocated to the gateway, then a code number is included with each message routed to an SMS recipient via the gateway. When a user replies to a message, they must include this code number as the first text of the SMS reply.

The Now SMS E-Mail Gateway requires an SMPP (Short Message Peer-to-Peer Protocol) connection to an SMSC (Short Message Service Center), with the capability to send and receive messages. An additional product, the Now SMS/MMS Gateway can act as an SMPP server, allowing the E-Mail Gateway to be used in conjunction with GSM modems or other types of SMSCs.

The configuration dialog for the Now SMS E-Mail Gateway is shown below.

The Now SMS E-Mail Gateway is designed to run as a service on a PC running Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows NT.

Once you have configured the settings defined in this document, check the “Run as a Service” box to install the Now SMS E-Mail Gateway service. Installing the gateway as a service causes it to be automatically loaded each time the PC is restarted.

When the service is running, the “Service” page of the configuration dialog, will display information about the active service:

“Status” will indicate how long the service has been running.

“SMTP Status” will report “OK” if the service is available to accept SMTP e-mail messages, or “ERROR” if another application is using the SMTP port, and the gateway is unable to receive messages.

“SMPP Status” will report “Connected” if the service has an active connection to the SMS Messaging Center, “Not Connected” during initial startup or connection re-establishment, or “ERROR” if the service is unable to connect to the configuring messaging center.

“SMS Sent” displays the number of SMS messages sent by the gateway.

“SMS Received” displays the number of SMS messages received by the gateway.

The “Start” and “Stop” buttons can be used to start and stop the service, respectively. Uncheck the “Run as a Service” box to remove the service.

The Now SMS E-Mail Gateway sends and receives SMS messages using an SMPP (Short Message Peer-to-Peer) protocol connection to an SMSC (Short Message Service Center).

Configuration details for the SMPP connection are supplied on the “SMPP” page of the configuration dialog:

“SMPP Version” specifies the version of the SMPP protocol to use. The gateway supports “v3.3” and “v3.4”.

“Server Host Name” specifies the TCP/IP address or host name of the SMPP server.

“Port” specifies the TCP/IP port on the SMPP server to which the gateway should connect.

“User Name” specifies the user name (sometimes called System ID) for the gateway to use when connecting to the SMPP server.

“Password” specifies the password for the gateway to use when connecting to the SMPP server.

“Address Range” is a parameter used primarily when receiving messages. Set this field only if instructed to do so by your SMPP service provider.

“System Type” is an optional login parameter that should be set only if required by the SMPP server. The SMPP system administrator will provide this value, which when required, is usually a short text string.

The “Primary Sender Address” and “Additional Sender Addresses” fields specify SMS phone numbers (or SMSC short codes) associated with the gateway. The gateway always expects to receive commands, or requests to send a new message (other than a reply) to a new e-mail address, addressed to the “Primary Sender Address”. When 20 or more total sender addresses are supplied, the gateway will rotate through the “Additional Sender Addresses” and change the sending address each time it forwards an e-mail message to an SMS user. If the SMS user replies to the message, the gateway looks to see to which of the gateway phone numbers the message was sent, and it knows what e-mail recipient to which to direct the reply, based on the last message sent via that particular sender address.

If less than 20 total sender addresses are supplied, the gateway will send all messages using the “Primary Sender Address” field. Each message sent through the gateway to an SMS recipient will start with the text “ID: xx”, where “xx” is 2 numeric digits between 00 and 99 inclusive. For the recipient to reply to a recipient, they must begin their reply with the “xx” code of the message to which they are replying.

After making any changes to the configuration settings, you must click the “Apply” button to save your changes.

E-Mail Connectivity parameters are defined on the “E-Mail” page of the configuration dialog:

SMS messages can be sent to and received from, standard internet e-mail accounts. To support this functionality, the gateway provides message format conversions between SMS and SMTP. The gateway receives messages from SMS via the SMPP connection described in the previous section. To accept messages from internet e-mail accounts, the gateway contains an integrated SMTP server.

The PC that is running the gateway might have other mail services installed. For this reason, the gateway allows you to specify which of the available IP addresses on the current PC should be used by the gateway. The “IP Address” prompt displays the available IP addresses on the current PC. To make the gateway service available via any address on the current PC, select “(all available)”, otherwise select a specific IP address.

“Host Name” specifies the local host name or IP address of the computer that is running the e-mail gateway. The name or address specified here will be used only when connecting to the SMTP relay host.

“Domain Name for SMS E-Mail” specifies the SMTP domain name that is associated with users defined to the gateway. When SMS users exchange e-mail messages with internet recipients, this is the SMTP domain name associated with the SMS users. Note that the gateway acts as an e-mail server, and you will need to configure DNS for this domain name so that internet mail sent to this domain name is properly routed to the PC running the gateway.

When an SMS user sends a message to an SMTP recipient, the gateway requires an “SMTP Relay Host” to transfer the message to the correct internet mail server for the intended recipient. Please define an appropriate SMTP mail server in your network that will perform this SMTP message relay capability.

SMS messages have a limit of 160 characters per message, or when a message includes characters (such as Chinese text) that cannot be represented by the standard GSM character set, only 70 Unicode characters per message. The gateway can use concatenated SMS messages to enable the sending of longer messages. Specify the maximum number of SMS messages to be used to deliver an e-mail message in the “Max SMS Messages per E-Mail” field.

“Default Country Code” specifies the default country code for users of the gateway. When a default country code is supplied, e-mail will be routed to recipients whether or not it includes the country code.

When “Remove Country Code from E-Mail addresses” is checked, outbound e-mail addresses for messages sent by SMS users via e-mail will not include the country code. When this box is not checked, outbound e-mail addresses will include the country code.

User accounts may be explicitly defined to the gateway, or it is also possible to allow users to register for the gateway by sending an SMS message to the “Primary Sender Address” configured for the gateway. This type of registration via SMS is supported when the “Auto Register new accounts” box is checked. An optional “Register Keyword” can also be required for registration. When a keyword is defined, the gateway will only auto-register accounts when they start with this keyword. When a keyword is not defined, the gateway will auto-register an account when any SMS message is received addressed to the “Primary Sender Address”.

Message receiving limits can limit the number of messages that SMS recipients are allowed to receive via the gateway. Limits can be defined for messages per day, and messages per month. A default set of limits is applied to any accounts that do not have their own limits defined. To enable limits, check “Enable Message Receiving limits on user accounts”.

After making any changes to the configuration settings, you must click the “Apply” button to save your changes.

The “Users” page of the configuration dialog allows you to add, delete, edit and view information about user accounts defined to the gateway.

Use the “Add” button to add a new account, use the “Edit” button to edit an existing account, or use the “Delete” button to delete one or more selected accounts.

The Add and Edit dialogs allow you to define information about the account.

In most configurations, user phone numbers should be entered in international format (e.g., +XXyyyyyy, where XX is the country code).

The “Full Name” field is used when messages are sent through the gateway to e-mail recipients. Users can set this value by sending the command “SET FULLNAME Full Name” via SMS to the primary sender address of the gateway.

The “Reply Address Override” field is used to override the e-mail address used when this account sends an e-mail message. By default, any e-mail sent through the gateway will be sent with a return address of phonenumber@smsgatewaydomain. However, if a user is forwarding e-mail messages to the gateway, it is possible for the user to configure a different reply e-mail address for messages sent through the gateway using the Reply Address Override field. Users can set this value by sending the command “SET ADDRESS user@domain” via SMS to the primary sender address of the gateway.

Message receiving limits can limit the number of messages that SMS recipients are allowed to receive via the gateway. Limits can be defined for messages per day, and messages per month. A default set of limits is applied to any accounts that do not have their own limits defined. To define limits other than the default for the current account, uncheck the “Use Default Message Receiving Limits for this user” box, and define the limits that you wish to be placed only on this account. If the checkbox is not available to be checked, this indicates that no receiving limits are currently defined, and you must return to the “E-Mail” page of the configuration dialog to enable limits.

The “Stats” button on the “Users” dialog page, displays information about the number of messages sent and received by the highlighted account. For example:

Log files named SMSEMAIL-yyyymmdd.LOG (where yyyy is the current year, mm is the current month, and dd is the current day of the month) are maintained in the gateway directory, detailing message sending and receiving activity.

The “Serial #” page of the configuration dialog is used to manage serial numbers associated with the product.

When you purchase a serial number, you will receive a serial number, user count, and authorization code that must be entered on this dialog.

SMS Users interact with the gateway by sending SMS messages to the phone number defined as the “Primary Sender Address” of the gateway on the “SMPP” page of the configuration dialog.

Sending an SMS Message to an E-Mail Recipient
To send an SMS message to an e-mail recipient, the user includes the e-mail address of the intended recipient as the beginning text of the SMS message.

For example: bob@waterworld.com This is a test message

Receiving an E-Mail Message via SMS
When an SMS recipient receives an e-mail message via SMS, if the gateway is configured with less than 20 phone numbers, the received message will appear similar to the following:

ID: 04 FM: Bob Jones SB: Done deal! MSG: WaterWorld called to place the order.

Replying to an E-Mail Message via SMS
To reply to this message, the recipient must include the “ID #” of the message in the reply in order to tell the gateway which message is being replied to and to allow the gateway to direct the message to the correct e-mail recipient, for example:

04 Good work Bob!

When 20 or more phone numbers are configured for the gateway, this ID # is not included, and recipients reply directly to the message.

If a reply code is required, and the gateway receives an SMS message that does not include a valid code, the gateway will return an error message to the sender informing them that they must include a reply code when replying to a message.

Help Command
Sending an SMS message to the gateway that starts with the text “HELP” causes the gateway to respond with a message that provides some help in using the gateway.

Set Command
The SET command can be used to set user configuration parameters. Valid SET commands include “SET FULLNAME Full Name” to set the full name associated with the user account, and “SET ADDRESS user@domain” to set a return address for messages sent by the SMS user to e-mail recipients.

The gateway includes several messages that are sent via SMS in response to user commands or error situations.

It is possible to override the default text of these messages by creating one or more of the following files in the gateway installation directory:

WELCOME.MSG
Message is sent to new users when they register via SMS using the auto-register function.

Default text: You have registered with the e-mail gateway, the e-mail address for your phone is %s, reply with text HELP for more info.

%s is replaced with the e-mail address for the phone via the SMS gateway (e.g., phonenumber @ domain).

ERROR.MSG
Message is sent when a message is received whose format is not understood by the gateway. For example, a binary message.

Default text: The format of your message was not understood by this gateway.

NOTREGISTERED.MSG
Message is sent when a request is received from a user that is not defined to the gateway, and auto-register is not enabled, or no more accounts can be registered due to licensing restrictions.

Default text: Your phone is not registered with this gateway.

NOCODE.MSG
Message is sent when a message is received by the gateway that does not start with: a valid reply code for an existing message; an e-mail address; or a valid gateway command.

Default text: Your message was not sent. To reply to an e-mail message, begin reply with the original message ID ## (e.g., 00), or begin the message with an e-mail address.

NORECIP.MSG
Message is sent when a message is received by the primary address of the gateway that does not start with an e-mail address or valid gateway command.

Default text: Your message was not sent. To send a message to an e-mail recipient, begin the message with the e-mail address of the intended recipient.

SETHELP.MSG
Message is sent when a SET command is received, but the subcommand (e.g., FULLNAME or ADDRESS) is not defined to the system.

Default text: Valid SET commands: "SET NAME Full Name" to set your e-mail full name; "SET ADDRESS user@domain.name" to set your reply address for messages sent from SMS.

SETSUCCESS.MSG
Message is sent in response to a valid SET command.

Default text: Successfully processed command: %s

The %s is replaced with the text of the original SET command received by the gateway.

HELP.MSG
Message is sent in response to a HELP command. This message is used when more than 20 sender addresses are defined to the gateway and reply codes do not need to be used when replying to messages.

Default text: E-Mail Gateway HELP: The e-mail address for your phone is %s. To send a message to an e-mail recipient, begin the SMS message text with the e-mail address of the intended recipient. To reply to an e-mail message received via SMS, simply use the SMS reply function in your phone. For configuration options, reply to this message with SET.

The %s is replaced with the e-mail address for the phone via the gateway.

HELPREPLYWITHCODE.MSG
Message is sent in response to a HELP command. This message is used when less than 20 sender addresses are defined to the gateway and reply codes need to be used when replying to messages.

Default text: E-Mail Gateway HELP: The e-mail address for your phone is %s. To send a message to an e-mail recipient, begin the SMS message text with the e-mail address of the intended recipient. To reply to an e-mail message received via SMS, begin your reply text with the message ID ## (e.g., 00) of the message to which you are replying. For configuration options, reply to this message with SET.

The %s is replaced with the e-mail address for the phone via the gateway.

The Now SMS/MMS Gateway includes an SMPP server. The Now SMS E-Mail Gateway can connect to this SMPP server to send and receive messages. This may be desirable to use the Now SMS E-Mail Gateway in a configuration with GSM modems, or a type of SMSC connection other than SMPP (e.g., UCP/EMI). This may also be desirable to share a downstream SMPP connection with a Now SMS/MMS Gateway, rather than allocating an additional SMPP connection at the downstream server.

The SMPP Server is enabled in the Now SMS/MMS Gateway on the “Web” page of the configuration dialog of that product.

To enable the SMPP server, check “Enable SMPP Server” and define a “Port number for SMPP Server”.

The Now SMS/MMS Gateway will listen for SMPP connections on the port specified, and can support multiple SMPP clients connecting to the defined port.

Remember to click “Apply” after making any changes.

You will also need to define user accounts on the Now SMS/MMS Gateway to define an account that can login to the SMPP Server. These accounts are defined on the “SMS Users” page of the configuration dialog. Add a new user account, or edit an existing user account to allow SMPP login. An example of this dialog is shown below:

Check “Enable SMPP Login for this user” to allow the account to login to the Now SMS/MMS Gateway via SMPP.

To route messages received by the Now SMS/MMS Gateway to this account via SMPP, check “Route received messages to user via SMPP”, and define the recipient addresses that are to be routed to the Now SMS E-mail Gateway. When the Now SMS/MMS Gateway receives a message that matches one of the recipient addresses defined here, it will queue the message for this user account to pick up using the SMPP protocol. The Recipient address list can include multiple addresses separated by a comma (,) and can include wildcard characters (for example, “*” is considered to match all addresses, or “+44*” would match all recipient addresses that start with +44).

If the Now SMS/MMS Gateway is connected to an SMSC, it receives this recipient address from the SMSC when it receives a message. If the Now SMS/MMS Gateway is connected to one or more GSM modems, this will be the phone number of the GSM modem over which the message was received. You must define the phone number for the GSM modem by highlighting the modem in the list on the “SMSC” page of the configuration dialog, and clicking the “Properties” option.