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Getting started with Auron SMS Server

The Auron SMS Server is an incredibly versatile product. This guide aims to help you to get started with the Auron SMS Server.

We’ll cover the following:

Setting up your connections

The first thing you may want to do is to setup connections to your device(s) or providers. Those connections are called channels.

Some of the channels connect you to a specific provider. Other channels represent a specific connection protocol and apply to multiple providers.

For example, you can use the Twilio channel for an express setup with Twilio or the HTTP SMS channel to connect to any provider with an HTTP API.

Choosing your integration options

The best way to integrate depends on your use case as well as what 3rd party software you want to integrate.

We’ll list the most common options with their most common use cases:

  • HTTP API. This is an easy way to integrate directly from your website or from a different platform;
  • Local API. This API is useful when your integration exists locally on the Auron SMS Server PC;
  • Database integration. You can send by inserting new records and receive through a simple select statement;
  • File channel. In case you want a file in a (shared) folder to trigger an action or be send as a message;
  • E-Mail, SMS or WhatsApp. Some alerting software supports E-mail but doesn’t support WhatsApp.

For the HTTP and Local API we include a lot of examples as well. You can browse them from the Auron SMS Server Manager after installation but they’re also on GitHub.

Start sending messages

If you’ve already integrated with any of the above options you’ll already know a couple of ways to send messages.

Here are some additional options:

  • Bulk Wizard / Campaigns. Campaigns can send messages from any data source. You can also customize and call campaigns through the HTTP and local API;
  • From the manager. This is an easy way to send your first test message or to troubleshoot your triggers and channels;
  • From the Web Messenger. This way you can send messages through your company channels from anywhere using your browser.

Campaigns can run from triggers as well. Which makes them a very flexible way of sending to a group of people.

Automatic message processing

You can create triggers to automatically process messages. Triggers can run on incoming messages but also on other message states such as failure or success.

This means that it’s easy to automatically forward or reply to messages as well as to create automatic fallback actions and more.

A lot of common trigger types are built-in and are very easy to setup. After setting up a built-in trigger you can use it as-is or customize them. It’s also possible to create new triggers from scratch.

Trigger scripts can use one of the following languages:

  • JavaScript;
  • VBScript;
  • SQL Script.

JavaScript and VBScript triggers use the Local API to interact with messages and create new messages. SQL Script messages run on the database.

Configuring routing and blocking rules

Use routing rules to automatically choose an outgoing channel for your message. If you don’t select a channel the routing rules apply.

Some examples where routing is useful:

  • Selecting a channel by country or region of the phone number;
  • Proportionally spread messages across channels;
  • Select channels by congestion rate.

Find a complete guide to the possibilities and how to configure routing here.

Blocking rules can stop outgoing messages.

Some examples of when blocking rules are useful:

  • Prevent sending to expensive regions;
  • Stop a message based on message content;
  • Prevent endless looping.

Setting up message views

Message views allow for a customized look at your message data. By default there are views available for every message type.

By creating a new message view you can select which messages you want to look at. But you can also change the color scheme to highlight some messages or gray out others.

Enable message archiving

By archiving regularly you can keep the Auron SMS Server fast. You can choose when archiving should happen but you can also choose what should happen with archived data.

You can archive to the current database or to a different database. It often makes sense to archive to a different database on a different drive. Since the archive database can get big and the current message database should stay fast.

Find more information about archiving here.

Further reading

So far you’ve seen an overview of the most important features of the Auron SMS Server. However, this knowledge-base has a lot more information that’s useful to get the most out of this product.

A quick guide: