SMS

Sender ID

The name or number that a message appears to come from. You can set your own custom Sender ID for your outgoing messages, which can be up to 16 digits long or up to 11 characters when including letters. For more information, please refer to our support article on Sender ID.

Country Code / International Prefix / MSISDN
A country code or international prefix is a country specific number that goes at the start of your full mobile number. These are especially important when sending messages internationally. To convert your number to international format, remove any ‘0’ in front of your number and add your country code from the list of country prefix numbers/dialing codes. For Australian numbers, this country code is 61, so 04xx xxx xxx becomes 614xx xxx xxx.

Bulk Messages
Bulk messaging is any large volume of messages being sent at once to different recipient. PUSHTech enables many SMS or Email to be sent at one time.

Unicode
Unicode refers to a standardised way of transmitting a larger set of characters (letters and symbols) than would otherwise be possible. Unicode characters include a very large number of letters and symbol, including the written scripts for many languages. However, compared to the way letters and numbers are normally encoded in SMS, Unicode characters use more data and so shorten the number of characters you can include in a single SMS. For further information about Unicode and SMS, please see the article on Unicode.

SMS Merge
SMS Merge is a feature which allows many customised messages to be created automatically and sent by SMS, based on a list of information. For example, SMS can be customised to include a recipient’s name, or any other specified information. For information on how to achieve this, see the knowledgebase article on using SMS Merge.

Opt outs
Opt outs, or opt-out requests/messages, are any message that allows a message recipient to request they no longer receive promotions messages to their mobile handset. Opt outs are an important part of complying with relevant anti-spam legislation. For information on how you can manage opt-outs using PUSH, please see the full article on opt out management.

CSV File
A comma separated value file, or CSV file for short, is a specially formatted file which allows different software to import and export information in a uniform way. A CSV file will generally contain rows for each new bit of information, and a number of values separated by commas in each row. These files can be used to upload contacts or send an SMS merge.

Delivery Receipt
A delivery receipt (sometimes abbreviated as DLR) is a piece of information that is provided by carriers once an SMS/MMS has been received at the destination handset. Once delivery has been successful, carriers notify PUSHTech with the delivery receipt, which will then update your message status to Delivered. To learn more about message statuses, please refer to the article on delivery receipts and status messages.

Multipart Messages
SMS messages are limited to 160 standard characters in length for a single message which is determined by industry standards. To address this issue, many handsets are able to receive multipart messages, which are made up of more than one SMS and are stitched together when received by the handset. A small piece of data is needed to join messages, each multipart message may contain up to 153 characters each. See the article Why is my message split into multiple parts? [1/2] for more information.

Short Code
Short codes are mobile numbers that are much shorter than a standard mobile service number. These messages can be used to receive inbound SMS. Messages to these numbers are only possible from within the same country they are registered (that is, they will only work for domestic SMS traffic).

Push Notifications

Device ID

Device IDs identify devices with transient registration IDs, such as Windows devices. These identifiers are version 4 UUIDs, and are 36 characters long, including dashes.

Alias

All devices can be assigned an alias as an alternate method of identifying the device. Good examples of aliases include a User ID from another server or a hash of an email address. Aliases are not unique, so one alias can map to all devices that a user owns; for instance, if one user owns an iPhone and an iPad, the same alias can be assigned to both of those devices.

Apple Push Notification System

APNS

APNS is Apple’s push notification infrastructure for iOS (and now Mac OS X) devices, and is available for apps distributed through the App Store.

Application key

The application key is the unique identifier for your application, and is used to authenticate the application for API calls.

Application secret

A secret used to authorize requests for low-security API calls. This secret is intended to be embedded inside a mobile application, and as such is limited it what it can do. See also master secret.autobadgeAPNS uses simple numbers for badge values;

autobadge is an PUSHTech™ feature to track badge numbers in our servers, so push calls can contain instructions to increment the badge value (e.g., “+1”). See badge.

Automated Message

PUSHTech product name for the set of rules and conditions which, when met, will trigger a push notification or Rich App Page or both. It is useful to think of an Automated Message not as one message, but as an “order form” for messages that will occur only when the required conditions are met.

Badge

One of the three main APNS push features, including alert and sound. The badge is the number shown on the iOS icon, such as for unread messages.broadcastA broadcast push uses the PUSHTech API to send to all opted-in push users at once, across all platform for which your app is enabled. A common use case for broadcast push is a breaking news story.

Channel
channel ID

A Channel is a way to address and identify an installation of your application on a device. A channel is used in place of a push address like a device token, so that an app can reference an installation regardless of whether a push address is available, and so it will remain the same even if the push address changes. These identifiers are version 4 UUIDs, and are 36 characters long, including dashes.

Cloud to Device Messaging
C2DM

C2DM is a push notification transport system for Android devices. It has been deprecated by Google in favor of GCM since June 2012.

Device token

An identifier for the Apple Push Notification System for iOS devices. Each application installation that has push available has a device token, and device tokens are only valid for the appropriate APNS environment – one for development, and one for production (ad hoc or App Store builds). The tokens are 64 hexadecimal characters.

Direct Open

An app open that occurs when a user interacts with a notification to open an app

Expiry

Delivery expiration, also commonly referred to as TTL, as either absolute ISO UTC timestamp, or number of seconds from now. When the delivery platform supports it, a value of zero (0) indicates that the message should be delivered immediately and never stored for later attempts.

GeoJSON

a format for encoding a variety of geographic data structures. See geojson.org

Google Cloud Messaging
GCM

Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) is the transport method that PUSHTech employs for notification to Android devices. It is the latest offering from Google for push notifications, and has replaced the now-deprecated Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM).Influenced OpenApp open attributed to a notification within a 12-hour window of it being sentISO 8601international standard covering the exchange of date- and time-related data.

Master secret
application master secret

This secret can be used as the API password for any API call, and can do anything – guard it carefully, and never embed it in an application you distribute to users.

Push Response Rate

The number of influenced opens over the number of total push messages sent.

Push Sends

Total number of pushes sent to users.

Quiet Time

Feature of the PUSH API that allows users to silence notifications during specified times.

Rich Push Response

RateTotal number of Rich Message views over the number of Rich Messages sent.

Rich Push Sends

Total number of Rich Pushes sent to users.

Rich Push User ID

Unique identifier for a rich push user.

Tag

Tags can be used as ways to easily group different device tokens. Good examples of tags are entertainment, for users that want breaking entertainment news, orteam:1234 for a particular online gaming team. Each device can have multiple tags, and each tag can represent millions of devices.

Unique Views

Unique count of users who view the delivered rich message.

UTC

Coordinated Universal Time. Equivalent to GMT without daylight savings.

UUID

Universally unique identifier.