Sending SMS/Email as soon as a Runner Finishes the Race

[NovaRace India]

Hi All,

Is there a webhook mechanism which I can make use to send SMS to runners who finishes the Race with his Finish time? I know there is a default email feature available, but I have a requirement to send SMS and custom email to runners from our domain. Please advise.

[Vesa Suomalainen]

Check this thread: https://groups.google.com/a/webscorer.com/g/webscorer-users-group/c/5r2onbdeRfw

You’d run LIVE results, then use the Webscorer JSON API to get the finish time, and then use either the WhatsApp API (or an SMS messaging service that operates in India) to send the finisher message. Requires a bit of programming.

The reason we have not attempted to do this is because sending SMS messages costs extra (email is free) and some countries have policies that require recipients to opt-in.

[NovaRace India]

Thanks, I'll check it out.

[Tanvir Ahmed]

After thinking about this, I spent the whole day coding a small software to do this, it uses my local SMS gateway provider, and sends SMS when a racer crosses the finish line, provided that the API JSON data is updated automatically by the timing software. I have tested it and it is working fine, since I am not a professional software developer, the Local SMS  Gateway configuration is hard coded, if you want to use your local SMS service provider you need to make slight change to the code, currently is send SMS by matching BIB number to a phone number that is on a CSV file, which fileld of the JSON data you want to send also depends on the code, currently is send 

Name, BIB Number, Event Name,, and Time with a congratulation msg. 

If you need something like this, please email me directly so I can get your SMS Gateway information and test if it is possible in your configuration or not, It does need a live internet connection to connect to the SMS Gateway Server.

[Vesa Suomalainen]

On the Webscorer start list file, you can include the phone number in one of the “Info x” columns:

Info 1

Info 2

Info 3

Info 4

Info 5

This data (plus the email column) are posted to the results as part of the race data, but is accessible only by the organizer via the various download files & JSON API.

To get access to these "private" fields from the JSON API, add &apipriv=1 as follows:

https://www.webscorer.com/json/race?raceid=r&apiid=n&apipriv=1

[Bubilo Chiban]

Exactly as Vesa explained, I enter the runner’s phone number into the “info 1” field.

Then, using a simple web request, I fetch the JSON data provided by Webscorer and send a WhatsApp message using a web service called UltraMSG, which costs about $39 USD per month.

Programming knowledge is required, but the same approach can be applied to send messages via WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS, or other services, using any provider offering API access.

The only issue with WhatsApp is that you need to be cautious about potential line cancellations—avoid sending excessive messages or content that could be considered spam.

[Tim Mockford]

You can use google sheets to take the data in via the API and the sheet SMS integration to send via SMS. Fairly cheap and being google sheets all server side

[Matt Goda]

Tim, 

Do you use an Apps Script in Google Sheets to do this?  

Can you share a sample of the script you use?

[Tim Mockford]

Hi Matt,

Sorry for delay. Yes I do. I've attached an excel version of the sheets file I use (will need importing to sheets to work). Plus the two scripts as text files, will need saving as Send_Emails_at_Finish.gs and JSONimport.gs in apps scripts to work.