Detailed documentation for sections covered in this tutorial can be found at:

• Customers
• SMPP accounts
• Account balances
• Services
• Customer endpoints
• txtConsole Portal

A customer is the organisation you bill and credit. One or more SMPP accounts belong to that customer and are what their applications (or txtConsole) use to send and receive SMS. Each SMPP account uses a service, which supplies the pricing plan and routing profile.

Customer account creation

The fastest way to add a customer and their first SMPP account is the Quick Create Customer+SMPP wizard.

Quick Create Customer+SMPP

Go to the Customers section of the SSG Admin Portal and click Quick Create Customer+SMPP.

Quick Create Customer+SMPP

Customer page

Enter the Organisation name and select the Country.

Set Initial credit and Currency:

• Choose a currency (GBP, USD, EUR, and others) for a monetary balance.
• Choose None for an SMS-credit balance. The credit value is then the number of messages the customer can submit.

Click Next.

Contact page

Enter the contact Name, Email and Mobile (international MSISDN, for example +447700900123).

The email address is used if you later choose to send the SMPP account details to the customer.

Click Next.

SMPP page

Select the Service this account will use. The service determines pricing and routing.

Optionally enter CUG Mobiles — a comma-separated list of MSISDNs. If you later enable Use CUG on the account, the customer can send only to those numbers (useful for trials and testing).

Choose whether to Email SMPP account configuration to the customer contact.

Click Setup.

A dialog confirms the customer, SMPP account and (if selected) the email that was sent. Click OK.

The new customer appears in the Customers table. Double-click the row or click Edit to open the customer dialog.

Customer dialog

Each customer record has these tabs:

• Company — organisation details
• Billing — VAT / sales tax ID, account code, payment terms, invoice email and postal address
• Balance — current balance, audit trail and balance warning thresholds
• Other — Management API ID
• Contacts — people at the customer
• SMPP — SMPP accounts
• Invoices — invoices raised
• Reporting — SMS traffic by SMPP account
• Notes — free-text notes (for example “issue new SMPP account”)

Complete the Billing tab before you raise invoices:

• VAT reg no — shown on invoices
• Account code — short unique code (for example ABCCORP331) used on invoices and for matching to your accounting system
• Payment terms (days) — used to calculate the invoice due date (for example 30)
• Send invoices to (email) — one or more addresses, comma-separated
• Send invoices to (physical) — postal address as a JSON array, for example {"11-15 Thistle Street","Edinburgh","EH2 1DF","Scotland, UK"}

Click Save.

Create customer without the wizard

Click New customer in the Customers section, complete the Company and Billing tabs, then add an SMPP account as described below.

Archive a customer

When an account is no longer required, use Archive. The customer and all of their SMPP accounts become unusable and are removed from the rest of the portal.

Create customer SMPP account

Quick Create SMPP (existing customer)

Go to Customers > SMPP accounts and click Quick Create SMPP.

Quick Create SMPP

1. Select the existing organisation.
2. Click Next.
3. Select the Service.
4. Optionally enter CUG Mobiles.
5. Choose whether to email the configuration to the customer contact.
6. Click Setup.

Create SMPP account manually

In Customers > SMPP accounts, click Create SMPP account.

On the Main tab:

• Select the Customer.
• Enter a Name and Short name (short name is used in widgets and diagrams).
• Note the System ID and Password (customise via Support if required).
• Select the Service.
• Check Binding enabled and Submit enabled so the customer can connect and send.
• Check Monitor if the account should appear on the Dashboard.
• Check Use CUG only if the account must be restricted to the CUG list.

On the Parameters tab set at least:

• Submit limit (TPS) — allowed submit rate. For txtConsole customers use at least 500 TPS because txtConsole submits in bursts.
• EnquireLink interval (s) — set 0 to stop the SSG sending enquire_link PDUs to the customer.
• Default source address — used by txtConsole and when the customer submits an empty or unacceptable source address.

On the Security tab, optionally restrict Allowed IP(s) using curly brackets, for example {194.247.82.100,194.247.82.105}. Connections from any other address are rejected.

Click Save.

Row actions on an SMPP account include SMPP Client (send a test message), Regenerate Password, Email Config and Archive.

What to give the customer

Provide at least:

• System ID and password
• Hosts and ports from Customer endpoints
  • port 2775 for SMPP
  • port 8775 for SMPP over TLS
• The Submit limit (TPS) you configured

Test the account

1. In Customers > SMPP accounts, click SMPP Client for the new account.
2. Click Connect.
3. Enter a mobile number and click Submit.
4. Watch the log for the submit response and, if receipts are enabled, the delivery receipt.
5. In the Dashboard, open Message lookup, search for the mobile number, and expand the message.

If you are still using the preconfigured SMSC Simulator, the message will not be delivered to a real handset. See Quick start.

Account balances

Balances sit on the customer, not on each SMPP account. Every SMPP account of that customer draws from the same balance.

View balances in Billing > Account balances or on the Balance tab of the customer record.

• Currency None — SMS credits. Each successful submit deducts one credit.
• A real currency — monetary balance (beta). Each successful submit deducts the price for the destination. If no price exists, the message is rejected and no message ID is issued.

The balance is reduced only when the platform accepts the message and returns a message ID.

Add or remove credit

1. Go to Billing > Account balances.
2. In Pending Changes, click Add balance change.
3. Select the customer.
4. Enter a positive amount to increase the balance, or a negative amount to reduce it.
5. Enter a description (for example a payment reference or “credits for testing”).
6. Click Save.

The change is applied within about one minute. It then moves to Changes Audit Trail, with the portal user who made the change.

Use Change type to switch Prepay / Postpay, and Change currency to change the balance currency. The full history is under Period audit trail.

Low balance warnings

On the customer Balance tab, set upper and lower thresholds. Emails can be sent to the customer and/or internally when the balance crosses those thresholds.

Reporting

Customer traffic can be reviewed in several places:

• Customer dialog Reporting tab — volume by SMPP account
• SMPP account dialog Reporting tab — MO and MT graph for that account
• Reports > Customers — volume by customer, country, network, revenue, errors, SMSC and margin
• Dashboard — live volume, delivery state, revenue and cost widgets
• Status > Message lookup — individual messages

Export tables with the Excel toolbar control where it is shown.

Troubleshooting

If the issue remains, contact Support with the command status, a packet capture if available, and screenshots of Routing > Analyser and the routing editor for the account's routing profile.