Africa’s Talking SMS Aggregator

Integration for sending and receiving SMS

As of v3.6.0, SMS messages can be sent and received using the Africa’s Talking service.

Africa’s Talking configuration

First generate a long unique key to use as the cht-api-key.

Log on to the Africa’s Talking Dashboard and configure your callback URLs as follows.

  • Delivery Reports: https://<hostname>/api/v1/sms/africastalking/delivery-reports?key=<cht-api-key>
  • Incoming Messages: https://<hostname>/api/v1/sms/africastalking/incoming-messages?key=<cht-api-key>

Then generate an “API Key” (we’ll refer to this as the at-api-key) and save this in your CHT Core configuration covered below.

CHT Core configuration

API keys

The Africa’s Talking integration uses the CHT Credentials service to retrieve the API keys using the IDs africastalking.com:incoming and africastalking.com:outgoing. Use the CHT credentials API to securely store the credentials.

App settings

Update your app settings as follows.

{
  "sms": {
    "outgoing_service": "africas-talking",
    "reply_to": "<africa's talking shortcode>",
    "africas_talking": {
      "username": "<africa's talking username>"
    }
  }
}

Testing

To test your integration, set your “username” to “sandbox”, log in to Africa’s Talking, and go to the Sandbox app.


Building > Reference > app_settings.json > .sms

SMS Settings: Instructions and schema for defining SMS settings

Building > Quick Guides > Forms > App Form SMS

Trigger calls and SMS from within the form, or send an SMS once submitted.

Building > Quick Guides > Messaging > SMS States

Overview of the possible states of SMS messages

Building > Quick Guides > Messaging > Message Loops

How to avoid messaging loops

Building > Quick Guides > Messaging > Contact IDs

Using unique short codes to identify places and people via messaging