SMS Notifications

OPLIN offers a service that allows Ohio public libraries to deliver library notices to patrons as text messages. Libraries can email ILS notices to OPLIN's SMS gateway, and OPLIN will deliver the notice to patrons as native SMS.

• OPLIN's SMS services uses a registered 10DLC (10 digit long code).
• This service is free of charge to Ohio public libraries.
• To comply with federal law, libraries may only use OPLIN's SMS gateway to send notifications for which patrons have opted in, such as ILS notices. Sending marketing messages to all patron numbers on file is not permitted. 

Prerequisites:

• Your Integrated Library System (ILS) must be capable of sending patron notices via email.
• Add a delimiter string to your ILS's email notice templates to mark the start of the 152-character SMS message.
• Notify OPLIN of the IP address of the server that sends the ILS email notifications, or use OPLIN's authenticated SMTP relay.

Procedure

Invite patrons to opt-in to receiving ILS notices via text message. Normal charges for text messages from the patron's provider will apply.

If the patron opts-in, add an email address to their patron records in the ILS as<cellphone_number>@sms.oplin.org.

Example

If the patron wishes to receive notifications at their cell phone number 614-123-4567, add the email address

6141234567@sms.oplin.org

in an email field of their patron record. Notifications will now be sent to their cell phone via OPLIN's SMS gateway.

Provide OPLIN with a staff email address to receive weekly reports of SMS delivered. The report will list any deliver errors, and information about how to resolve the delivery error. 

If your library would like to receive replies patrons send to library texts, provide OPLIN with an email address to receive the texted replies from patron numbers. 

The OPLIN SMS system accepts notices 24 hours a day, but only delivers text messages to patrons between 9 AM and 9 PM, to comply with federal law. Any notices generated outside the window will be held in the queue for delivery at 9:00 a.m. EST.

Message format

All notifications sent to patrons' cell phones will be limited to 152 characters, which is the maximum length of a single text message, so your standard notification language must include all important information (library name, phone number, etc.) within those 152 characters.

The OPLIN SMS system uses *** as its delimiter to determine what text from your regular email messages will be sent to people's cell phones.

• If you send an email to the system and no occurrence of *** is found, the system will discard the email.
• If you send an email with one occurrence of *** the system uses that as the beginning of your 152 character message.
• If the system finds two or more occurrences of *** it uses whatever you have between the first pair as your text message, taking the first 152 characters of that snippet.

Good examples of notices we've seen:
 

***This is a reminder from the UAPL that 1 item(s) will soon be due. Please return or renew them by their due date. Visit www.ualibrary.org for more information.***
 

***You have items ready to pick up at the Lane Libraries.***
 

***Your hold is available from the Lakewood Public Library. It will be held for 10 days. Call 216-226-8275 for more information.***

The Microsoft SMTP daemon typically uses an encoding for plain text that can cause "=" to appear at the end of lines. The OPLIN SMS system automatically strips those unwanted characters from your message.

The system also strips out any carriage returns or new-line codes that may be embedded in your message, so your message is formatted for optimum cell phone display.

The system automatically handles any base64 encoded email.

Service objectives:

• Incident Response: OPLIN staff will respond within one hour to malfunctions of sending notifications to cell phones during regular business hours Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., excluding State of Ohio holidays; contact us through the OPLIN Support site.
• Incident Resolution: OPLIN staff will either resolve the incident within 4 business hours or will open an incident ticket with the messaging vendor(s) and work collaboratively toward resolving the incident within the timeframe specified in the vendor's agreed service objective.

Questions?

Contact OPLIN Support.

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Error Codes and Resolution