SMS Notifier Template 1.0
1. Introduction
An SMS notifier service allows a URC client to send Short Message Service (SMS) messages through a service exposed on a URC target. The service abstracts away the details of the underlying mobile network connection, exposing a simple set of variables and commands that controllers can present in any modality the user prefers. The template is the SMS counterpart of the email notifier template and shares its general design: a controller composes a message, hands it to the service, and waits for confirmation that the message has been accepted by the underlying transport.
The SMS notifier is particularly useful in deployments where the URC target has access to a mobile network gateway but the controller does not. A wall-mounted URC controller in an assisted living apartment, for example, may have no direct cellular connection but can drive an SMS notifier service running on a cellular-equipped hub elsewhere in the building. The same controller can drive both the email notifier and the SMS notifier with substantially the same user interface, lowering the cognitive load on users who would otherwise have to learn two different applications.
2. Conformance
A service conforms to this specification if either of the following is true. First, the service’s user interface socket inherits from the template socket provided in section 3 of this document. Second, the service’s user interface socket description has all of the following characteristics:
- The socket description references the template socket through the Dublin Core
sourceelement<dc:source>. - The socket description contains all sets of the template socket in an unmodified form.
- All mandatory variables and commands defined by the template are present, with the cardinalities and data types specified by the template.
- Optional elements that the service implements are present in the form defined by the template.
3. Master Documents
The master documents for this template comprise the User Interface Socket Description in XML, the Resource Property file describing the template metadata, and the example Atomic Resources used in controller-rendered presentations. The master documents are stored in the openURC Resource Server and may be retrieved using the operations defined in Resource Server HTTP Interface 1.0.
The socket description defines two input variables for composing an SMS message: recipient (a single mobile phone number in E.164 format) and message (a text string of up to 160 characters for single-segment messages, or longer for multi-segment messages where supported). It defines a single command, send, which submits the message to the underlying SMS gateway. The socket description defines two notifications: sent, which fires when the message is accepted by the gateway, and error, which fires when the message cannot be sent and carries an error code identifying the failure mode (invalid recipient, gateway unreachable, message too long, or insufficient credit).
4. References
- [ISO/IEC 24752-1] — ISO/IEC 24752-1:2014, Information Technology — User Interfaces — Universal Remote Console — Part 1: Framework.
- [ISO/IEC 24752-2] — ISO/IEC 24752-2:2014, Part 2: User Interface Socket Description.
- [ISO/IEC 24752-4] — ISO/IEC 24752-4:2014, Part 4: Target Description.
- [ISO/IEC 24752-5] — ISO/IEC 24752-5:2014, Part 5: Resource Description.
- [RES-SERV-HTTP] — Resource Server HTTP Interface 1.0, openURC Alliance, March 2014.
- [E.164] — ITU-T Recommendation E.164, The international public telecommunication numbering plan.