For Client Support: Basic guidelines & settings to apply when using the Inst8 SMS Gateway integration
Use a dedicated device
While it's ok to use your own Android device and sim card when testing the solution on a trial account. You will want to use a dedicated phone and sim card if you are going to be using Inst8 for sending & receiving messages to your customers through our HighLevel integration. This will ensure that only prospect or customer text messages are routed into HighLevel conversations and not all personal traffic and notifications.
Ensure Service is running
After you have installed and connected our mobile application, make sure to start the service on your device by pressing the "play" button. Once started the application will continue to run in the background and always be ready to relay messages between HighLevel and the Inst8 SMS gateway. Please ensure that you have no battery saver settings configured on the phone that might restrict the app or put it to sleep when not in use. If you see a high volume of pending messages in our SMS Gateway it is likely that the service is not running on your phone.
turn Off RCS on the Device
You should disable RCS on the connected phone to ensure all inbound messages are received into the Gateway and your HighLevel account. RCS is like iMessage on iPhone. If both the sending and receiving handsets have it switched on. The mobile device will attempt to send the message over the Wi-Fi/4G network instead of the GSM network. Thus bypassing the Inst8 SMS Gateway. Replies that are received via RCS will not register in HighLevel. All messages will go through to iPhone regardless of RCS because iPhones do not utilise RCS yet.
Bulk Sending
Please ensure that you use the Drip feature within the automations/workflow in HighLevel for bulk message sending. This ensures that you do not overload the sim card sending queue and trigger a provider block. Every country/mobile provider has different limits on the number of messages you can send per day. Most US providers will limit you to between 100-150 messages. You should drip outbound messages according to your providers threshold. To avoid sim blocks we recommend a rate of 1 message per minute. Our system now allows you to attach more than 1 device to your HL sub-account, this will then split the sending between the attached devices and increase your sending capacity.
Multi Device/Multi Sim Sending
This feature allows you to attach multiple devices to a single sub-account and multiple sim cards. It provides the ability to evenly split the outbound messages between all connected devices, in order to send higher volumes of messages in countries with lower mobile provider limits. The system has a contact/number binding feature which binds the contact to the number they reply to so all follow up messages to the contact come from the same number. To configure multiple devices, ensure that the devices/sim cards you want to use are connected to your account in the Gateway. Then use the HighLevel Connection Page to link them to the sub-account. Note: Each SIM card needs to be unique to a sub-account.
App Menu - Access Denied
You will get an Access Denied error in the mobile app when you try to browse the menu. This is normal. We had to lock down the app for Agency’s as it would normally show messages from all devices linked to their main Inst8 gateway account. You can only view the device dashboard in the app for all other details you need to access your Gateway account from a browser.
Prevent duplicate contacts
Check your sub-account settings to prevent duplicate contacts. We have had a few customer ask about duplicate contacts being created from inbound SMS's. Please check your sub-account settings --> Business Profile to ensure that "Allow Duplicate Contact" is OFF with phone and email selected. This will ensure that clients who text you for the first time are not re-created as a new contact in the sub-account.
