Your Frontline workspace features a Mock Phone which you can use to test the functionality in your workspace without needing to connect and send real SMS messages.
Messages that are sent through this phone will show up in your Inbox, update the Mock Contact and will also trigger Activities in your workspace, just like a real inbound SMS would.
No real SMS messages are actually created, however, which means you do not need to spend money on SMSs or time creating an SMS Connection to test your Activities and check out Frontline. Both Mock inbound SMS messages and replies that you send to the Mock number +699699699 (either directly using the Send SMS box or through your Activities) will be shown in the Mock Phone as an SMS conversation.
Launching the mock phone
In the bottom-right of the screen, there is a button that launches the Mock Phone. Before you interact with and Mock SMS you will see some help text introducing the feature:
Because the phone appears over the top of the app's other content, when you are not using the Mock phone you can hide it by clicking the close X or the Hide link below the phone's message composer.
(L-R) The initial view of the Mock Phone; The conversation view on the Mock Phone, here the user creates a Mock inbound SMS "book" which triggered a Mock outbound SMS reply from a booking Activity.
Creating inbound Mock SMS
When the mock phone is displayed, you can use the message composer on the phone to type in a message to be sent as you would if the phone was a real phone in your hand. Send by hitting Enter.
The messages you send here using the Mock phone will all appear in your Frontline workspace as SMS messages from the default Mock phone number +699699699.
Mock SMS messages appear with their envelopes slightly greyed out so that they appear separate to real SMS messages. Above you can see the difference between a real and a Mock SMS within an Inbox.
Receiving outbound Mock SMS
You can also send messages directly to the Mock Phone so that the Mock Contact receives the message.
All messages sent from you or your Activities in your Frontline workspace to the dummy phone number will appear in the Mock Phone's conversation view. Messages received on your Mock phone are only displayed when you have the phone open, and can also be viewed on the Mock Contact's record in the People section.
**Testing Activities using Mock Phone**
Because your Frontline workspace's Activities are triggered by Mock SMS in the same way that real SMS do, the Mock Phone provides a quick and cheap way to test new Activities and updates.
All message replies will appear in the Mock phone's conversation view so you can use this to view all of the outcomes of automated workflows that you have set up.
Note that any Activity forwarding SMS to other phone numbers, or via outbound API requests to external services, will behave in the exact same way as it would when a real SMS is received.
Test your activities on your own phone
You can now test your activities on your actual phone.
You will notice the test your activities signpost in your activity page if you have less than 3 activities
or in the activity detail page below your charts if you have any.
Click on the Start here button. You will be prompted to either insert your phone number if you want to receive the link through SMS or you can click on Email link if you prefer to receive the mock phone link through your email.
You can also view the generated link by clicking View link.
Once you have received the link open the link from your email or SMS inbox. Your default browser will be opened with the mock phone shown.
You can now enter the activity keyword to test your activity.
The close mock phone button will log you out and take you to the login page.
The link will expire once visited, that means you cannot revisit the link after it has been opened and you will have to log in to create a new link.
Note: Only share your mock phone link with people you trust and super admins should not share their mock phone links.
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