This method uses a UK based SMS gateway and most likely not suitable for international use
Two years ago I wrote how you could have a free SMS voting using intelliSoftware SMS Gateway service. This recipe automatically forwarded text messages from the IntelliSoftware SMS gateway to a blogger account using posting via email. Votes were then extracted from messages from the blogs RSS feed using some PHP code on my server.
Last year a modified version of this was used to collect votes for the poster competition at eAssessment Scotland 2011. I was recently asked if the recipe would still work for this year’s conference. It does but I thought I could make it better.
The main change is to directly ingest SMS messages into a Google Spreadsheet (using 30 lines of code) which makes it easier for manipulation and presentation. The method for doing this is relatively simple because the IntelliSoftware gateway has a HTTP interface and you can also use Google Spreadsheets as a Database – INSERT with Apps Script form POST/GET submit method.
If you would like to do this yourself here’s how:
- Signup for an account at intelliSoftware (it’s free!)
- Open a copy of this Google Spreadsheet template (also free)
- File > Manage Versions and enter any description you like and Save New Version
- Run > setUp (you’ll need to do this twice – 1st time to grant acces to Script Properties)
- Publish > Deploy as web app and click update and copy the service url
- Open your IntelliSoftware control panel
- Click on Forwarding and change, tick ‘Enable incoming message forwarding’ and change forwarding type to http
- Copy the web app url into the address field and click Save
To receive messages tell users to send a text message to 07786 XXX XXX with ‘xyz and their message’ (where 07786 XXX XXX is the mobile number found in the Trial Service section and xyz is your username created with intelliSoftware).
In the example template I show how you can parse messages to generate a response graph. You might also want to look at how I’ve used a Google Form for Hacking stuff together with Google Spreadsheets: A simple electronic voting system, at the very basic level you’ve got a free SMS textwall to play with. If you do come up with any interesting mashups please leave a note in the comments :)
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