Voip.ms can communicate SMS with Zoiper, but ONLY if the contact initiated the SMS in the past

Question

My Voip.ms account is set up to send and receive SMS as SIP MESSAGE.

When I send a message from a cell phone TO Zoiper, it receives it, and I can answer. If I save this history to a new contact, I can even continue to communicate with this contact via SMS, and new messages to that number go to that contact's message history.

However, if I set up a different contact from scratch, give it the same number, same accounts in Advanced, and the rest exactly the same (except for the name of course) then I CANNOT send SMS to it, ever. It gives error 404, every time. When I set up the account and presence to "Contact Service Account" it doesn't even let me type in the message, but when I set it to the actual account name, it does let me try to send, but it does not succeed in sending.

I will look into your Sqlite database, to find out what exactly is different between those two contacts, but likely the UI for contact setup is not touching the relevant data, so it prevents the user from setting up the SMS capability for any contact except one set up starting from SMS history.

Any suggestions?

Comments

I want to know too.

Please advise.

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The actual solution:

Voip.ms needs for SMS numbers to be without any extra characters, like this example: 2505551212. If you put in (250) 555-1212 it will not work. This is what is automatically set up if you start by receiving SMS from their side. But if not, you can still make it work.

I recommend for you to set up your SMS contacts with two phone numbers: one regular for calling, the other for SMS. The SMS number needs to be in the field named "Cell" and have presence account set explicitly to SIP account URI where SMS are sent. You need to click "Advanced" to add this field.

Of course, you can simply use "Cell" fields only, but if you import your contacts with parentheses and dashes, you will have to edit them out in each case. The right Presence URI still has to be put in.

Works for me - your mileage may vary.

Answer 1

You have probably not set your contacts correctly for messaging. 

Make sure to set the phone number under the "ipPhone" contact field.

See this guide for more details: https://www.zoiper.com/en/support/home/article/209/How_to_use_IM_%28chat%29_and_Presence_with_Zoiper_5#windows