Disclaimer: The blog post which is herewith referred to is not my post and is for example purpose only.


I just came across a blog post here that explains the features of the subject mentioned above.

My question is: How does it work?

The Problem Statement Explained:

Let's say I have a (text) file stored on my hosted web server. I want to forward it to an email address. I am not having any access to the Internet at the moment and want to do that via an SMS from my mobile. How can I achieve this service/facility?

As explained in the blog pointed to, the users would need to send an SMS to a special number with a specific command such as:

and the file/CV would be delivered to the recipient's email ID.


What are the things that need to be taken care of to achieve this functionality?

Or is it done by the Mobile Operator/Service Provider who is providing the Special Number and then will perform the specified action?

Any insight on the problem?

Hi devUnix,

It appears to me as some job search portal. From what I can understand from their post is that your resume is already uploaded on their site. So basically you already have an active account thee with your resume. They are providing "Naukri ExpressCV" not sure what that is but appears like a paid service under which you will be able to forward resume to the recruiter. Here is how it works:

1. This site have your account with them with your details in.
2. This site has your resume with them.
3. When you sms on the number mentioned they get an instruction to forward your resume (which they have) to destined email address.

This is the best I can comprehend from that post.

Hi!

Thanks for your reply!


Your 3rd point is what I want to do on my website. Suppose my website is www.example.com and I have my company's profile stored on it. Let's say the profile resides in a simple text file: profile.txt

I want to forward it to your email ID via an SMS from my mobile.

That is what I want to achieve and am not sure on how to do that.

Side Note on the Job Portal Referred to:

The example blog from the job portal does exactly what I mentioned above. It's not a paid service. You pay for the SMS Charge only and it is up to your Mobile Service Provider / Carrier or Operator how much it charges for an SMS. It's sometimes negligible or just as much as a 1 or 2 minutes call would cost. In India, usually mobile operators charge INR 3 for an SMS sent to a Special Number (which is usually of a fewer digits than a mobile number).


The Question Reiterated: I am not asking about the functionality (sending your file/CV via an SMS to an Email Address) the said job portal is providing - rather how it is doing it.

@devUnix from my understanding of the problem, what you want is an sms to email service. Setting up an email server is a "free as in beer" service while an sms service needs a provider (that is not usually free as in beer). So unless you already have a provider that will allow api calls to their server from your email server, you cannot have it set up similar to Naukri.

If you already have a provider for the sms service, you will need to refer to their api documentation to see how to break up your resumes on the server to the appropriate message body (i.e. FROM, TO, SUBJECT, MESSAGE_BODY and ATTACHMENT fields).

Perhaps my reply is not appropriate (or perhaps I've not understood your question correctly)... kindly excuse me if that is the case.

You got it!

An alternative to an SMS gateway is to use a cell phone or equivalent such as a GPRS modem attached to the computer (USB or Bluetooth) and use something like gnokii to periodically read any SMS messages from the phone.

As I see it - the issues needed to take care on setting up such a service are:

(a) The server should be able to recognise incoming SMS phone numbers belonging to specific accounts on the server
(b) Needs to verify number with number on resume (i.e. some minimal parsing of document required for validation for security and also means for urging users to update document)
(c) parse sms to identify recipient email id
(d) server side code then takes the recipient email id (SEND TO), pulls in email id of account (FROM) (preferably parsed from document or at least from account settings), adds attachment of the doc and sends the email with some pre-decided body (either updated via user preferences or default settings)
(e) notifies sender via sms that the email has been successfully sent (or failure notice)

assuming a large user base, gnokii or phone based system might just not meet the bandwidth requirement.

Alright. Never had a setup like that so difficult to comment but here is what I think:

1. They have seperate server setup which will receive the sms.
2. This server which receive the sms contains a user database of name, number and email.
3. When this server receives an sms from a number which matches its database it inturn send an email to naurkri.com portal.
4. This email is what triggers the auto forward of your resume from naukri.com.

The logic here is naukri.com is not an email portal instead a job portal. So they might have configured auto-forwarding rules on their servers to trigger an email when they receive an email from their sms server (email to mobile number matching part is already done at sms receiving server).

As eosbuddy said they must have dedicated server for incoming messages.

The thing that is bothering me is they did not mention that you should send sms from your registered mobile number in that link or I might have just overlooked it.

Another thing they mentioned that the recruiter will receive email from my registered email address. This part is confusing me because when the email reaches the destination what if destination domain performs a reverse lookup for that email id. I am pretty sure that if you have got a gmail.com id you just can't relay the email from their mail server.

So basically if it is working as they said then I would say it also involves tie ups with other companies to work that way.

2 members found this post helpful.

Perhaps, the workaround is to have the companies that post the job to have a local account and to deliver the emails locally (that way, the FROM address could be spoofed).

Spoofing FROM addresses is not a major challenge.

Yes, it is required that only the registered number be used for sending the SMS. Rated for your contribution to the post! Thanks!

catkin and eosbuddy: Thanks for your contribution as well!

Do we need a tie up with a Mobile Operator to provide us a Special Number? Well, that asserts yes. But would they do anything special from their end too? How about the SMS Server? Would it be on our end or on the Mobile Operator's end? Since it is us who are keeping the user information such as Registered Mobile Number and Email ID. When the sender's mobile number is found in our database we can easily look up the his/her email id for the "From:" field. The "To:" field would already be present in the SMS.

@devUnix:

>>Do we need a tie up with a Mobile Operator to provide us a Special Number? Well, that asserts yes. But would they do
>>anything special from their end too? How about the SMS Server?

I would believe, it depends on the service you take up ... google gives a number of providers:

(a), (b) and (c)

(UPDATE: please google search for sms gateway software, sms gateway software open source for appropriate results, my links above aren't working correctly - apologies).

Again, what I would expect is that:

(customer sms) -> hits your provider -> redirects email to your server -> sends out email

When sending out if you require the email to be sent from xyz@gmail.com, then as T3RM1NVT0R mentioned, you will need a tie up with gmail. Alternatively (consequently, avoiding a tie up with third parties) instead of sending out email, you can send email locally to an account owned by the job company and use the from address of xyz@gmail.com normally (so when they reply to the email, the reply will go out of the server).

The support you get from your sms provdider depends on their TOS - but what you might want to consider is something that complies with regulations in India (that way as a startup you don't get into trouble with authorities).

Hopefully this helps.

It seems gnokii is meant for a Mobile Phone Devices (primarily Nokia mobile phones). So, how it cannot be of any use as we need to configure a Linux Server and not a Mobile Phone to handle incoming SMSes from registered users.

Checked out some docs and general information on gnokii at:

http://gnokii.org/faq.shtml

eosbuddy:

(customer sms) -> hits your provider -> redirects email to your server -> sends out email


That is exactly what one of my colleagues explained. My current organisation is involved in MMS traffic handling. Let me see if I can get any information from it. The developers are my colleagues so I will see if they can be of any help on it.

Side Note:

We all use this kind of service at some time, for examples: You send a request to your mobile operator to send you your e-bill to your email id; you apply for a job from your mobile phone by sending an SMS "Apply <Job ID>" to your job portal's number they have provided you with; and so on.