The 9 FrontlineSMS Activities below have for 10 years provided our messaging community with the powerful tools to save money, reach more people and scale their projects. They are introduced below each with a link to more detailed descriptions. All Frontline subscriptions include use so check them out with a free trial if you haven't already!
The Classic Activities selection grid in a workspace at https://cloud.frontlinesms.com
1. Autoreply to SMS
The simplest and often most powerful activity. This activity allows you to reply to all received SMS with a pre-set reply. You can use the contact’s name in the reply, and importantly you can restrict the SMS to only be sent in reply to incoming SMS that start with or contain certain keyword(s). Example: If you run a Coffee Shop and customer sends a message containing or starting with the keyword mocha, then the system automatically replies to the customer with the price of the Mocha; Mocha is $20.
2. Autoreply to Missed Call (requires FrontlineSync connection)
New as of July 2014, this works in the same way as above but without the option of keyword. Hugely powerful when thinking about getting new users engaging with the system for the first time. Example: When the system receives a missed call it automatically sends the user a message like: HELLO, INTRO
3. Autoforward SMS
Another simple activity, when an SMS arrives, optionally check its content for keywords and based on that forward the content of the SMS to a list of predetermined recipients. This can be useful for managing certain messages without needing to check in to the Frontline workspace. Example: More powerful auto reply, URGENT, EMERGENCY
4. Autoforward Missed Call (requires FrontlineSync connection):
As with the autoforwarding of SMS this activity sends out a message to a set of recipients when a Missed Call is received. Of course there is no message to forward so the contents of the message would refer to the fact that a Missed Call has been received, and can include the name of the caller if that is known.
5. Subscribe to Group via SMS
Managing subscriptions to groups is something that benefits from being automated. If users are adding and removing themselves from groups as they need then all you need to worry about is using those groups in whatever processes you are running. Simply use the group members as they are when you need them and trust everything is up to date! Incoming SMS can be checked for keywords set by you that perform the particular join or leave group action. Add top-level keywords to allow the management of more than one set of groups/subscriptions. Example: newsletter, working this week. Users get to join and leave a group by simply sending a given keyword; i.e a user can just send the word join to a given group and they are subscribed to the group and and if they wish to leave the group they can just send exit and they are unsubscribed from the group.
6. Flash to Join (requires FrontlineSync connection)
Set up a group management subscription service based purely on free flash calls! Simply decide whether a registered Missed Call subscribes (adds) a user to a group, unsubscribes (removes) them or simply toggles their membership. This can be used in combination with an SMS subscription make the process easier for participants. Example: Flash to Join
7. Poll; run a simple survey
Our most complex Activity allows you to run simple survey type ‘poll’ questions. Find out which one of a set of options your participants vote for! Run a multiple choice survey with any number of options and aliases for each option. Set top level keyword to enable the running of multiple surveys. Use in combination with Autoreply Activities to thank participants and/or link them to another question. Example: Multiple choice question. Use Case: You could be running a hand washing survey; The multiple choice question could be: How often do you wash your hands? The answers that could then be polled could be: Never, Always, Often. Then you could analyze the responses from the poll.
8. Forward to URL
This Activity enables you to set up an outbound API integration from your Frontline workspace to an external web application. This type of set up pushes your incoming SMS data to the integrated web application. A common web service used with this type of Activity is Ushahidi's Crowd map service.
9. Send SMS from a Web Service
This Activity enables you to set up an inbound API integration from an external web service to your Frontline workspace. This set up pulls SMSs from the integrated web application to your Frontline workspace and queues then to be sent out to the designated Contacts or groups.
10. Contact Data updates via SMS
This Activity allows your contacts to update their own contact field. This can be simply done when your contacts send an SMS with a keyword followed by the information they wish set.
11. SMS to Email Notifications
This Activity allows you to send an email notification when a sender sends in an incoming message matching the keyword.
12. AutoTag SMS
This activity allows you to actively organize your messages based on the message content. It works by applying a tag name to similar messages that match the keyword you've selected.
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