Sending messages to subscribers who used JOIN command.

[Joel]

I noticed that in addition to using the Zeep Mobile Panel, new
subscribers can also subscribe by sending a JOIN sms message. This is
convenient and I worked out an easier way for my members to sign up
this way.

However, it does not seem that once you've subscribed someone this way
that you are able to send them an individual message. I assumed that
for user_id I would just use +1[phone number] or just [phone number]
since that is what Zeep sends back as the uid. Neither of those
work. When I try to send this way, the server responds with:

Subscription with (user_id: [phone number]) does not have an active
subscription for your application.

Any work arounds?

If not, is Zeep planning on adding this functionality? It would seem
to be necessary if we're going to use the JOIN command at all.

Thanks!

[bdg]

You shouldnt have to do anything different - if they sign up via the
panel or they sign up using the JOIN command the notification comes
back to you as SUBSCRIPTION_UPDATE
So whatever your callback url is set to do w/ SUBSCRIPTION_UPDATE is
what should happen.

Do you have the callback url just taking the phone number it passes
back as the ID? or are you changing it?

[Joel]

The problem isn't with the callback URL, that works just fine. The
problem is that when I later want to send messages to the subscriber
through the SMS API using the send_message URL, I am unable to do so
because there is apparently no user name associated with the
subscription. As noted:

Subscription with (user_id: [phone number]) does not have an active
subscription for your application.

The only possible user_id that could be associated with the subscriber
would be the phone number, since there is no place in the JOIN SMS
message for a user name to be specified.

Yes, on the callback URL, Zeep returns the subscriber's phone number
as both the "uid" and the "min".

The only thing I can do with the callback URL is to take the phone
number that is passed back. There really is no other option and I'm
not changing anything.

[bdg]

just to clarify,
in the response that you get from zeep saying:

Subscription with (user_id: [phone number]) does not have an active
subscription for your application.

Does it literally say [phone number]
or does it actually have the digits of the phone number?

> > back as the ID? or are you changing it?- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[bdg]

Not sure if it is related or not but I was doing some testing to try
and duplicate what was happening
I used to be able to send messages to even those users that used JOIN
instead of the panel but I cant anymore
The only difference is I get the following error
The subscrtiption specified is not active or is blocking access from
your application.
Not

Subscription with (user_id: [phone number]) does not have an active
subscription for your application.

But, I did find that
The variable for the uid is not being passed in the response for MO
messages. I get it on subscription updates from both the panel and
the JOIN command but when I receive an MO or an unsubscribed user
message the uid comes though as $uid.
I sent a message through the zeep site but its hit or miss with
responses from there.

> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

[Joel]

Where I've put [phone number] Zeep puts the actual phone number. So
examples of two formats I've tried:

Subscription with (user_id: 14245551234) does not have an active
subscription for your application.

I also tried:

Subscription with (user_id: +14245551234) does not have an active
subscription for your application.

[Joel]

> But, I did find that
> The variable for the uid is not being passed in the response for MO
> messages.

This is very unfortunate. Ideally, we'd have both issues addressed.
We need to be able to message subscribers using the phone number (as
opposed to being limited only to user_id) via the send_message API and
we also need to have the phone number passed back in MO events.

This would make the SMS JOIN feature very useful. Without this... it
seems to make the feature just a little bit pointless. As far as I
can tell, the only thing I could use it for presently is to send out
blast messages.

I like the SMS JOIN feature because I was able to work out something a
little more secure using it. I set up a form where the user first
enters their telephone number. The number is then stored (on my site)
and they are then taken to a page with instructions asking them to
send the JOIN message. As soon as it's received, the page updates and
lets them know that the phone number has been registered to their
account on my site.

If I were to just use the Zeep Panel as is, it would be vulnerable to
exploits to some degree. I don't know if anyone has thought about
this, but all you'd need is something like web monkey and you could
change the username in the Zeep panel and then you'd be able to
subscribe yourself as any username you'd like. Then depending upon
what features the site is equipped with (blog updates? password
retrieval?) the account name that was arbitrarily chosen could be
exposed to various mischievous things.

[luke.pa...@gmail.com]

Hi Guys, we're putting together a todo list for upcoming
improvements / fixes.

To summarize, here are the problems with the JOIN command:

1) You're not able to send messages to users who subscribed with the
JOIN command (using their number as the user_id)
2) On MO events from users who subscribed via the JOIN command, "uid"
isn't being set to their phone number

Can you guys confirm these?

Thanks,
Luke

[Simon Wex]

Also, if you guys could send me (si...@simonwex.com) the MIN of any phones that subscribed via JOIN and aren't receiving MT messages it would be greatly appreciated.

-Simon

[Jared Hatfield]

I just signed up for Zeep and this seems to be the exact problem that
I am having. Is there any solution? I am really excited to use this
service, but not being able to send messages to people that subscribe
using the JOIN message on their phone makes it unusable for me.

Thanks,

Jared

On Nov 19 2009, 2:07 pm, "l...@zeepmobile.com"

<luke.pachol...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Guys, we're putting together a todo list for upcoming
> improvements / fixes.
>
> To summarize, here are the problems with the JOIN command:
>

> 1) You'renotable to send messages to users who subscribed with the

> JOIN command (using their number as the user_id)
> 2) On MO events from users who subscribed via the JOIN command, "uid"
> isn't being set to their phone number
>
> Can you guys confirm these?
>
> Thanks,
> Luke
>
> On Oct 8, 7:11 pm, Joel <joel.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > > But, I did find that

> > > The variable for the uid isnotbeing passed in the response for MO

> > >Notsure if it is related ornotbut I was doing some testing to try

> > > and duplicate what was happening
> > > I used to be able to send messages to even those users that used JOIN
> > > instead of the panel but I cant anymore
> > > The only difference is I get the following error
> > > Thesubscrtiptionspecifiedisnotactiveor isblockingaccessfrom
> > >yourapplication.
> > >Not
> > > Subscription with (user_id: [phone number]) doesnothave anactive
> > > subscription foryourapplication.
>

> > > But, I did find that

> > > The variable for the uid isnotbeing passed in the response for MO

> > > > >notchanging anything.

>
> > > > > On Oct 7, 11:04 am, bdg <birddogsgara...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > You shouldnt have to do anything different - if they sign up via the
> > > > > > panel or they sign up using the JOIN command the notification comes
> > > > > > back to you as SUBSCRIPTION_UPDATE

> > > > > > So whateveryourcallback url is set to do w/ SUBSCRIPTION_UPDATE is

[JohnDubya]

Luke, those are definitely the problems I have now encountered. I just
signed up recently to see if Zeep would work for us, but with these
problems, we cannot use Zeep. Is there a way I can find out if these
have been fixed or if there is a workaround please? We'd love to use
Zeep, but it may not be feasible without these necessary fixes.
Thanks!

--
John

[JohnDubya]

Hmm, are there any devs here? I don't mean to bug...just trying one
last time to see if Zeep is going to be able to send texts to people
who use the JOIN command.

--
John

[Simon Wex]

Yup, I'm still after a MIN for a subscription that used the JOIN
command. I was unable to reproduce the problem, so some help would be
greatly appreciated.

You can send the MIN to my email at si...@zeepmobile.com.

-Simon

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[JohnDubya]

Awesome, thanks, Simon. I sent you the MIN via e-mail a little while
ago. It was the one from which I texted the JOIN command to your
shortcode with our keyword in it.

--
John

[Simon Wex]

Thanks John, I got it. I'll look into it this afternoon.

- Simon.

[John W.]

That's great, thank you! I'm in my office for another hour or so, and I'll be in tomorrow 9am to 6pm CST if you need further information from me.

--
John

[morcth]

Would be great if you guys could get this working soon. Signing up
from the web form and signing up from the JOIN command gets saved
differently in your databases and it just makes it impossible to send
an individual message to anyone that signed up with the JOIN command.

On Jan 14, 5:11 pm, Simon Wex <si...@simonwex.com> wrote:
> Thanks John, I got it. I'll look into it this afternoon.
>
> - Simon.
>

[Simon Wex]

So this is what I think is happening guys...

When a user registers with the MIN "(415)867-5309" the system
normalizes it (and all other MINs) to the E.164 format.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.164

This means that: "(415)867-5309" becomes "+14158675309"

This also means that the user id is then set to: "+14158675309". After
the JOIN command is received inbound, we'll send your callback url the
following event:

{"event"=>"SUBSCRIPTION_UPDATE", "uid"=>"+14158675309",
"sms_prefix"=>"surfsup", "app_id"=>"4027", "min"=>"+14158675309",
"short_code"=>"88147"}

(shown in ruby hash)

This means that if you want to then send the user an MT, you'll have
to use the value of the "uid" from the event, not the original MIN.

I hope this clears things up, I'll be looking at the docs tomorrow to
see if I can supplement them with this information.

Cheers, Simon.

Simon Wex
CTO and Co-Founder
Zeep
http://zeepmobile.com
http://zeepmedia.com

[JohnDubya]

Simon,

Here's an update on my situation. I used another coworker's cell phone
to text the JOIN command. He then correctly received a text in
response saying he had subscribed. And your system correctly used the
callback URL to my site and sent me an e-mail with the coworker's cell
phone number. When I sent a request to your system using cURL through
PHP with the user_id of this E.164 formatted cell number, I got this
response:

"The subscrtiption specified is not active or is blocking access from
your application."

Am I still doing something wrong here, or is that message signifying
something wrong on the system's side? Thanks for your help!

--
John

[brycec]

I'm not entirely sure what this means. I'm having the same problem as
everyone else but I'm definitely not using a MIN like (123)456-7890 as
the user id in my post data. Simply the uid that was given originally
from the subscription event. What exactly is the solution to this
problem?

On Jan 14, 9:04 pm, Simon Wex <si...@simonwex.com> wrote:
> So this is what I think is happening guys...
>
> When a user registers with the MIN "(415)867-5309" the system
> normalizes it (and all other MINs) to the E.164 format.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.164
>
> This means that: "(415)867-5309" becomes "+14158675309"
>
> This also means that the user id is then set to: "+14158675309". After
> the JOIN command is received inbound, we'll send your callback url the
> following event:
>
> {"event"=>"SUBSCRIPTION_UPDATE", "uid"=>"+14158675309",
> "sms_prefix"=>"surfsup", "app_id"=>"4027", "min"=>"+14158675309",
> "short_code"=>"88147"}
>
> (shown in ruby hash)
>
> This means that if you want to then send the user an MT, you'll have
> to use the value of the "uid" from the event, not the original MIN.
>
> I hope this clears things up, I'll be looking at the docs tomorrow to
> see if I can supplement them with this information.
>
> Cheers, Simon.
>
> Simon Wex
> CTO and Co-Founder

> Zeephttp://zeepmobile.comhttp://zeepmedia.com

[JohnDubya]

Simon, can I take it from your previous message that you successfully
sent a text message to a number that subscribed through the JOIN
command? I keep trying to send a text to a subscribed cell number with
the format of "+1xxxxxxxxxx", but it still doesn't work. It just keeps
saying "The subscrtiption specified is not active or is blocking
access from your application." What can we do?

--
John

[Scott Robertson]

Hi John,

Simon's out today, but as I understand it you just need to urlencode
the +1xxxxxxxxxx. In other words ensure you're posting
'%2B1xxxxxxxxxx' instead of '+1xxxxxxxxxx'. My guess is your http
library is converting the '+' to a space rather than '%2B1'

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--
Scott Robertson
CEO and Co-Founder

[JohnDubya]

Scott, thank you so much! That was the fix. Up to you guys, of course,
but I would add that to the documentation. I probably would not have
realized that it needed encoded.

For future reference for PHP developers, you can use the PHP function
rawurlencode() to do this. So you could put a string together like
this:

$parameters = 'user_id=' . rawurlencode('+15551239876') . '&body=' .
rawurlencode('The content of the text message goes here.');

Thanks a ton, guys!

--
John