Comments on: Creating SMS Fill-in form?

Question: Creating SMS Fill-in form?

bokononito — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 23:26:45 -0800

Can an SMS be formatted/created in such a way that when it reaches the cell phone it looks like a fill-in form?

For example, I'd like to be able to send someone an SMS with the question "How old are you?" and when the message is open I want it to show a field into which the user would be able to input their answer and hit send.
is that possible?

By: misteraitch

misteraitch — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 23:51:42 -0800

I don't think so: regular SMS is 'limited by the constraints of the signalling protocol to precisely 140 bytes (140 bytes = 140 * 8 bits = 1120 bits). In practice, this translates to either 160 7-bit characters, 140 8-bit characters, or 70 16-bit characters.'

By: cillit bang

cillit bang — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 04:33:05 -0800

SMS isn't programmable in this way. You could send them a link to a WAP page and hope they have it set up on their phone, but really you just need to work within the system as is.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 04:34:28 -0800

No, not at all possible

By: Ookseer

Ookseer — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 04:38:26 -0800

SMS is not a mark-up language. You could send something like XHTML in the body of it, but I don't believe there are any phones that would render it correctly.

Even most American cell phone email clients don't do well with HTML email. The closest you could get would to SMS a URL and make a Mobile Compatible microsite.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 08:40:56 -0800

Hell, my phone doesn't even show line breaks properly.

By: bokononito

bokononito — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 10:32:04 -0800

Hmmm... what led me to believe this is somehow possible is that on my Nokia phone I get special messages - when someone sends me an application, or when i request "configuration settings" from my mobile provider. So, if it is possible to send these types of messages, how come not the fill-in form?

By: mrg

mrg — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 11:14:18 -0800

most of the time, such messages come over the data part of the cellular network (GPRS or whatever depending on what kind of phone you have) or as a specially-formatted packet to the phone. they don't go over SMS. you might want to look at MMS instead - MMS is there for sending rich media stuff (think picture messaging/ringtones and all that jibjab) and might have the features you want.

By: disillusioned

disillusioned — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 12:04:25 -0800

Effectively, you'd have to send a standalone program over MMS, and then prompt the user to install it. That program would have to include all the form fields you want and a mechanism for using your phone's GPRS to communicate back with the server in question.

Short answer: not at all possible over SMS. Is there an easy way for you to parse the information?

A contest I was running accepted entries over SMS. The SMS system would ping back any user submitting an entry saying "Thanks for your entry! Please enter a1 if you are 18-24, b2 if you are 25-35, c3 if you are 36-45 or d4 if you are 46+ to confirm your entry."
The system then took whatever response they sent and recorded it appropriately.

By: reklaw

reklaw — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 14:35:44 -0800

Why not just send "how old are you?" and then they send back "20" or whatever. Where's the need for a form?