Custom application for sending SMS with Bitrix24 from Avivi

SMS, or the service of short text messages from a mobile operator, is still very popular among entrepreneurs around the world and is needed to achieve specific business tasks. Text messages have two big advantages: they don't require an internet connection to receive them, and it's much harder to miss an SMS than any other notification because every mobile phone has a separate section for these messages. But even without this, you can find many applications for SMS. Bitrix24 allows you to send such messages directly from the CRM lead card if there is integration with a service that provides SMS services. But what to do when the terms of service and Bitrix24 do not allow you to work as you want? The only correct solution is to create your own extension for the system.

Prerequisites of the task

This is exactly what happened to our customers from the United States of America. At the time of our acquaintance, their Portal was already integrated with the popular Twilio service. However, the peculiarities of the company's business processes dictated its own conditions, according to which SMS messages for customers should be sent from another number or from another service. Of course, with the use of on-premise Bitrix24, this issue could be solved more easily and quickly. But our clients were in no hurry to leave cloud-based Bitrix24, and therefore solutions had to be sought for the specific conditions of the technical task.

Another important point was actually the integration with Twilio: its settings already provided for receiving and sending SMS only through this service. The integration also performed an important function: it created leads from incoming SMS messages in CRM. But using your own phone number, other than the one offered by Twilio, is practically impossible. There is a procedure by which you can send a request to this service to enter an arbitrary phone number into its database. But consideration of such an application lasts for months, and the result does not always satisfy the client's needs. Thus, the conclusion became obvious: it is necessary to create an additional solution that will allow our customers to freely send SMS messages whenever they want and from the number they want.

What can a custom application do?

Since our team was dealing with cloud-based Bitrix24, the only possible solution in this situation is to create our own application. This program must interact with another service for working with SMS, which provides the opportunity to use the desired phone number. With this decision, another well-known company Zadarma, which provides telecommunication services around the world, was chosen.

First, Bitrix24 customers were integrated with Zadarma. The finished solution is already available in Bitrix24.Marketplace, but it also needs additional settings by the integrator. Next, Avivi specialists set about creating a custom application. The technical task did not involve special solutions in terms of design, and the UX was reduced to just a few needs: entering the desired number, entering and sending a text, as well as monitoring the balance of funds on the Zadarma account. So the application interface was assembled from simple, but clear and practical library elements of the popular Bootstrap library.

So, a new item appeared in the left menu of the Customer Portal — "Send SMS From", which opens a slider with a new application. Our company took on the solution of software hosting issues: since the customers use cloud-based Bitrix24, they did not have their own server needed for the application to work. By the way, the development is quite small and takes only 110 kB, which is approximately equal to the size of an ordinary employee's CV. But this allows employees to send an SMS to the right client at any time. So, the task is completed.

Conclusions

Bitrix24 gives businesses almost complete freedom of action. Where it is not possible to achieve what you want with regular functionality, you can always create a custom solution, because the system is extremely flexible. The application from Avivi is a clear confirmation of this. Our team is always ready to help everyone who wants to connect their business with Bitrix24 and make this platform a full-fledged tool for work and prosperity. So if you have a task that requires writing new code, contact us and we'll help.