Sending SMS with OnLocation

Ways to use SMS

SMS provides an easy way to communicate with people at your location. There are a range of OnLocation features that support sending SMS, including:

• Visitor arrival notifications
• Instant messages
• Trigger notifications
• Induction course invitations and expiry notifications
• Sending copies of signed waivers
• Kiosk notifications
• SOS notifications
• Panic alarm notifications
• Inviting employees or contractors to use OnLocation Mobile or OnSentry
• Verifying people’s safety using OnEvac

SMS notification examples

Visitor arrival	Induction invite	OnLocation Mobile invite

SMS credits

Unlike email or push notifications, there is a charge to send SMS. Every OnLocation pricing plan contains an annual allowance of SMS credits. Each time you send an SMS, you’ll use at least one SMS credit.

One SMS credit is used for every 160 characters included in a message. This includes any text in the footer. All SMS automatically include a standard footer of (Sent by [YOUR ORGANIZATION NAME] - do not reply). This is a requirement by carriers to reduce spam. If your message contains 180 characters, you’ll use two SMS credits. 

Messages with one or more non-GSM characters (non-Latin characters) are sent using UCS-2 encoding and are charged per 70 characters. For example, sending a message with 200 characters that includes a non-GSM character would cost three SMS credits.

Most SMS in OnLocation use default text that can't be customized or reduced. If you're concerned about the number of credits you're using, email or OnLocation Mobile push notifications might be a better option for your organization. 

SMS billing

Once you’ve used the number of SMS credits that your pricing plan allocates, you can purchase additional SMS credit packs by contacting our Support team. A pack consists of 1000 SMS credits.

SMS charges differ between countries. The current rates excluding tax are:

If you exceed your SMS allocation without purchasing additional SMS packs, you will be invoiced the outstanding amount when your OnLocation subscription renews.

Check your SMS use

Users with the Reports Manager role can use the Notification Summary Report to monitor SMS use.

To access the report:

1. Go to Reporting > Notification Summary.
2. Click on the relevant month.
   
   
3. The Notification Report for the selected month will open. Open the report filters and change the Notification Method filter to SMS, then use the other filters to customize the information. Click Search.
   
   
4. Check the list of notifications. The number of credits used to send each notification is listed in the Credits Used column.
   
   
5. Click View Info next to the notification. A detailed view will open, it includes the following:  
   
   - Date and time sent
   - Notification type
   - Recipient phone number
   - Timestamp of when it was sent to the carrier network
   - Timestamp of when it was sent to the SMS network
   - Timestamp of when it was sent to the mobile device
6. Click Close.