fmSMS FileMaker 18 Platform Compatibility Update

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We’re pleased to report that fmSMS v3 is compatible with the FileMaker 18 Platform that was released today. There is one issue that you may encounter related to the installation of plug-ins in FileMaker Pro 18 Advanced depending on the version of the BaseElements plug-in that you have currently installed.

When opening fmSMS in FileMaker Pro 18 Advanced for the first time you will likely encounter one of the following dialog boxes:

There is a new feature in FileMaker Pro 18 Advanced related to the installation of plug-ins: FileMaker Pro 18 Advanced now notifies you when a plug-in has not been digitally signed by its developer. If Set Error Capture is on when the script runs that attempts to install the plug-in you will see the first dialog box, otherwise you will see the 2nd dialog box.

The Get(LastExternalErrorDetail) function has also changed in FileMaker Pro 18 Advanced and now returns information when plug-ins don’t install or load. For example it will return the following immediately after the Install Plug-In File script step has been performed when attempting to install a plug-in has not been digitally signed by its developer:

Plug-in not digitally signed [filemac:/Macintosh HD/Users/andrewduncan/Library/Application Support/FileMaker/FileMaker Pro Advanced/18.0/Extensions/BaseElements.fmplugin/]

If you see the 2nd dialog box you can simply tick the “Always load this plug-in” checkbox, then click the Load Plug-in button to permanently install the plugin and never receive a warning again each time FileMaker Pro 18 Advanced opens. If you would like to update to a digitally signed version of the plug-in we’ve created a simple FileMaker Pro file that you can download here to install a digitally signed version of the BaseElements plug-in. Just download the file, open with FileMaker Pro 18 Advanced and click the Install button to get the digitally signed version of the BaseElements plug-in – Windows users running the 32bit version of FileMaker Pro 18 Advanced will need to tick the “Always load this plug-in” checkbox, then click the Load Plug-in button as we don’t have a signed 32bit version of the plug-in yet but hope to have this shortly.

If you’re already using v4.0.5 or higher of the BaseElements plug-in you will not need to do anything as that version has already been digitally signed.

Apart from the issue installing the plug-in for the first time we haven’t encountered any issues so far in our testing and have been able to:

  • send single SMS messages successfully
  • send bulk messages successfully
  • check Account balances successfully
  • check the Status of sent Messages successfully
  • receive incoming messages/replies via the PHP API

If you encounter any issues with fmSMS v3 and the FileMaker 18 Platform please let us know.

fmSMS Now Supports New Quiubas SMS API

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fmSMS now supports the new Quiubas SMS API. Quiubas originally started as an SMS Gateway delivering to Mexico and now delivers to other countries in Latin America, including:

  • Argentina
  • Bolivia
  • Brazil
  • Chile
  • Colombia
  • Costa Rica
  • Cuba
  • Dominican Republic
  • Ecuador
  • El Salvador
  • Guadalupe
  • Guatemala
  • Haiti
  • Honduras
  • Martinique
  • Mexico
  • Nicaragua
  • Panama
  • Paraguay
  • Peru
  • Puerto Rico
  • Uruguay
  • Venezuela

You can download a trial version of fmSMS to test with the Quiubas SMS Gateway from here – please get in touch if you have any questions about using fmSMS and the Quiubas SMS Gateway

Databuzz 2018 End of Year Xmas Sale – Everything 20% Off

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It’s time for the Databuzz End of Year Xmas Sale – all fmSMS Licenses are now 20% Off. Use the coupon XMAS2018 at checkout on any purchase and the 20% discount will be applied to your order.

The sale runs until the end of the day on January 04, 2019 (Australian Eastern Daylight Time). Click here to start shopping.

All our prices are in Australian dollars – if you’re purchasing from outside of Australia you’ll also get to take advantage of the low Australia dollar (1 Australian Dollar equals approximately 0.72 US Dollars).

The sale also applies to all the products on the main Databuzz website, including:

Click here to view these products on the main Databuzz web store.

 

Twilio’s 7 Best Practices for SMS & Text Marketing

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If you’re not sure about the benefits and power of SMS Marketing we recommend having a read of Twilio’s 7 Best Practices for SMS & Text Marketing. It contains some great information and statistics about the benefits of SMS Marketing, including:

  • The open rate for a SMS is nearly 98% while it’s 20 to 30% for email
  • Over 95% of SMS messages received are opened and read
  • 90% of all text messages are read within 3 seconds

While you’re on the Twilio website we also recommend the following articles:

fmSMS Now Supports Mitto SMS Gateway

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fmSMS has been updated to support the Mitto SMS Gateway. Mitto have offices in Switzerland, Germany, the United Kingdom, Serbia and the United States with global coverage.

You can download a trial version of fmSMS to test with the Mitto SMS Gateway from here – please get in touch if you have any questions about using fmSMS and the Mitto SMS Gateway.

Telstra Retires v1 SMS API

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In 2015 Telstra launched a beta of their SMS Messaging API (v1) and fmSMS was one of the first commercial solutions to support the Telstra API. Last year Telstra released v2 of the Messaging API with many new features including the provisioning of dedicated numbers and Webhooks. At the same time Telstra announced that they were deprecating the v1 SMS API and that it would be be switched off at the end of May, 2018.

If you are using fmSMS with the v1 Telstra SMS API you can download the latest version of fmSMS which was updated last year to support the v2 API. You can get more information about the v2 Telstra Messaging API here.

fmSMS and the FileMaker 17 Platform

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We’re pleased to report that fmSMS v3 is compatible with the FileMaker 17 Platform that was released today. We haven’t encountered any issues so far in our testing and have been able to:

  • send single SMS messages successfully
  • send bulk messages successfully
  • check Account balances successfully
  • check the Status of sent Messages successfully

If you encounter any issues with fmSMS v3 and the FileMaker 17 Platform please let us know.

Databuzz 2017 End of Year Xmas Sale – Everything 20% Off

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It’s time for the Databuzz End of Year Xmas Sale – All fmSMS Licenses are now 20% Off. The sale runs until the end of the day on the 31st December, 2017 (Australian Eastern Daylight Time).

All our prices are in Australian dollars – if you’re purchasing from outside of Australia you’ll also get to take advantage of the low Australia dollar (1 Australian Dollar equals approximately 0.75 US Dollars).

Discounts are applied automatically – no coupons required! Click here to start shopping.

The sale also applies to all the products on the main Databuzz website, including:

Click here to view these products on the main Databuzz web store.

 

fmSMS Updated for Telstra Messaging API v2

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Back in 2015 Telstra launched a beta of their SMS Messaging API and fmSMS was one of the first commercial solutions to support the Telstra API. Telstra have recently released v2 of their Messaging API which includes a number of new features including:

  • dedicated number: you can provision an Australian mobile number for your account via the API
  • send SMS and MMS messages
  • receive messages to your dedicated number
  • delivery status: query the delivery status of your messages
  • callbacks: automatic notifications of message delivery status to a callback URL
  • alphanumeric sender ID support
  • concatenation: send messages up to 1900 characters long and Telstra will automatically segment and reassemble them
  • scheduled delivery: delay the delivery of submitted messages

Now that the Messaging API is out of beta there are a number of plans to choose from. You can start with a free trial which includes 1000 free messages and a dedicated mobile number. They also have a PAYG plan with no fixed term contract and messages are 6c per message, as well as an Enterprise plan.

You can download a trial version of fmSMS to test the Telstra SMS API using their Free Trial. When you purchase fmSMS you get the PHP files to use for automatic delivery status updates and automatic replies into fmSMS. Please contact us if you have any questions about fmSMS and the Telstra Messaging API.

fmSMS and FileMaker Cloud

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FileMaker Cloud, FileMaker Inc’s cloud-based platform for managing and running custom apps, was officially launched one year ago this month. FileMaker Cloud gives you the simplicity and performance of the FileMaker Platform without spending time and resources deploying and maintaining a server

FileMaker Cloud runs on the Amazon Web Services Cloud (AWS) and was originally only available for customers in the United States and Canada (AWS Regions of Oregon and N. Virginia). This was extended to Europe, the Middle East and Africa in March 2017 (AWS regions of Ireland and Frankfurt) and Japan, Canada and Australia in July 2017 (AWS regions of Sydney, Canada and Tokyo).

There are a number of important differences between FileMaker Cloud and the traditional version of FileMaker Server for Mac/Windows – it’s worth remembering that FileMaker Cloud is not FileMaker Server as not all FileMaker Server features are available in FileMaker Cloud. FileMaker have a comparison between FileMaker Server and FileMaker Cloud that outlines the differences in various categories – some of the features of FileMaker Server not currently available in FileMaker Cloud that have implications for fmSMS include:

  • Custom Web Publishing with PHP and XML
  • Scheduled Scripts in the FileMaker Server Admin Console

There are no issues using a FileMaker Cloud hosted version of fmSMS and the FileMaker Pro client application to send messages as all communication with the SMS Gateway when sending messages is handled by FileMaker Pro. We’re currently working on support for using Perform Script on Server – this requires a new Linux version of the plug-in to run under FileMaker Cloud which runs on CentOS Linux.

We’re currently testing this and hope to have an update shortly. Please note that server side schedule scripts are not currently supported on FileMaker Cloud – you will have to use Perform Script on Server for any server side script operations. Perform Script on Server is used by FileMaker Go and FileMaker WebDirect clients when accessing a hosted version of FileMaker Server to send messages. Now that FileMaker Pro v16 includes native support for JSON and cURL we will be able to use native functions to communicate with the SMS Gateways without requiring a FileMaker plug-in, so FileMaker Go and FileMaker WebDirect clients will be able to send messages directly without having to perform server side scripts that required a plug-in to be installed on FileMaker Server.

For receiving incoming messages/replies most of the SMS Gateways push incoming messages to a PHP file running on your FileMaker Server/Web Server. This uses the Custom Web Publishing with PHP feature of FileMaker Server – FileMaker Cloud does not support Custom Web Publishing so you will not be able to use the FileMaker Cloud to receive incoming messages using the supplied PHP pages. Some SMS Gateways do allow you to ‘poll’ periodically for new messages and download these from the SMS Gateway – see our Getting Started guide for further details.

We’re also investigating using the new FileMaker Data API to receive incoming messages – this is currently offered as a trial version with FileMaker Server v16 and is not currently available with FileMaker Cloud, so we will most likely wait until FileMaker Inc. release the shipping version and have finalised the licensing model and included this with FileMaker Cloud.