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Questions frequently asked about CommCare Messaging. |
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For any SMS pricing questions in general, please refer to https://dimagi.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/commcarepublic/pages/2143950358/CommCare+Pricing+FAQs#Fees-for-SMS
I’m using 2-way SMS to send surveys to my program participants. Will they be charged for SMSes?
Yes. When using either the pre-configured gateways that CommCare has, or when using your own Android gateway set up with Telerivet, when responding to SMS surveys, clients will incur normal messaging fees. This is something that the project team should consider when deciding whether or not to use 2-way messaging. Note: some projects who use 2-way SMS offer their project participants vouchers or phone credit as a part of their participation in the project to help off set this cost.
I don’t want my participants to incur messaging fees. Can we have have a toll-free gateway?
CommCare does not have any pre-configured toll-free gateways. In order to set up a toll-free SMS gateway, an organization would have to connect their own Commercial SMS Gateways. This would require the organization to:
contract with a local telecom who sets up the toll-free short code and gateway
contract with a CommCare Provider or other technical provider to connect the gateway to CommCare
This is a fairly complex process, both technically and from a contracting perspective. For this reason, many partners who use CommCare opt to “reimburse” their project participants for SMS fees in other ways (with vouchers for phone credit, additional cash in their cash distribution, etc).
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SMS Troubleshooting
In what ways does CommCare Messaging most often break?
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CommCare Messaging does not support USSD
USSD stands for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data.
If your project requires USSD, consider using a system like Telerivet. Telerivet's USSD Expansion pack enables you to send USSD requests and receive replies via Telerivet, allowing you to check and recharge your phone's balance and interact with mobile banking services.
How do I specify a language for sending messages?
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Answer: The "Custom Immediate" schedule type is a custom schedule where the events are defined by waiting a certain number of minutes after the last event. This use case has caused some confusion, especially when used with a repeating schedule, so it's use is discouraged and support for this use case is limited. As a result, you can create new alerts of this type but there are some parts of it that will not be editable. You can still edit the message content that is sent, however. If you need a custom schedule type, consider using the Custom Daily schedule which is a much more robust custom schedule type and allows editing of events.
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SMS Reminders
How do I reference a case property in an sms reminder?
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