If you send more than 250,000 one-way SMS messages per month to India and other markets using Unica Campaign or Acoustic Campaign, a high-volume send using an FTP server will work for you. It is secure and easily trackable – the next day, you will receive a daily report. This process does not use Acoustic Campaign and does not generate SMS universal behaviors.

Send bulk SMS messages with Karix file-based process

1. Generate an input file of your data from Unica Campaign. Use a pipe "|" delimiter to extract the file.
2. Give your file a unique name and upload it to an FTP server (your own, Acoustic's or Karix's) accessible to the Karix platform.
3. To indicate file transfer is complete, place a .done file extension for Karix application to pick the file for processing. For example, sample_file_1.done if the file placed is sample_file_1.csv. The system can process multiple files in parallel.
4. When the file is processed on the FTP server, Karix moves it to the separate PROCESSED folder.
5. The Karix platform retrieves the file from the FTP server, processes the file, and then sends outgoing SMS messages.
6. The next day, the Karix platform uploads a new CSV or ZIP file that captured the send results from the previous day.
7. You can get your SMS messages summary by running a script in Unica Campaign and then retrieving the file from the FTP server or by using the Karix reporting portal.

Important notes about bulk send using Karix

• Use different FTP paths for transactional, promotional, or tran-scrub account types. For each use case, a separate Karix account credential is associated with the FTP path.
• FTP Folder Structure is: IN, PROCESSED, INVALID, OUT
• Karix has 1 minute polling interval to poll for new files on FTP/SFTP server.
• Once a file is placed in the FTP server, it is processed immediately, with no possibility to schedule or cancel the send. In case you want to cancel the SMS send, contact our support team.

Input file

Input file requirements

Input file can be one of two formats: English-only text message or unicode, which supports all regional Indian languages and Chinese characters. You can either generate a single CSV with one worksheet or a ZIP file with a single CSV file of the same structure (the ZIP will not work for the unicode format). The file should contain either plain or unicode data – if you include a plain message in a unicode file, the system will convert it into unicode.

• The file can include up to 5 million rows and one SMS message per row.
• You can personalize each outgoing message.
• Use two pipe chars—back to-back—for optional fields that are not specified.
• Upload the unicode message file with suffix –uni, e.g. test file33-uni.csv.
• Each file can only contain one service type. For example, you can include promotional service types in one file and include ILDO service types in another file. To support additional service types, create a new account type for each service type.
• Use Karix Visualize for URL shortening and tracking. Visualize links tags can be included the message text (same file can have multiple links; same message can also have multiple links). Visualize links are defined in Karix portal. The link ID is included as Visualize Tag in the FTP file, e.g. [~VL-1234~]. The Visualize (VL) ID should be in same format.

File processor specifications for the input file

• If the specified Sender ID or the code is not pre-provisioned on the Karix gateway, then the specific outgoing SMS message text is rejected.
• For provisioned tran-scrub/promotional accounts, if you are initiating a file-based send that occurs during the late evening, like 8:30 PM IST, some messages might go into the block-out time where they are not processed.
• Based on the account configuration setting, these messages are sent the next day or are immediately purged.
• Breaks in the message text need to be indicated by a special character like tilde ~ - configure the special character as part of the account setting.
• Campaign ID is used in Karix SMS reporting to pull campaign-level reports.
• If an error occurs when the system parses the input file, Karix rejects only the invalid records and processes the rest of the file.
• The FTP processor supports parallel processing of files so small campaigns are not affected during a large send out.
• Email notifications are supported during file processing events like file received, file pickup, file invalid, file processed, file campaign send out completed.

Output file

Send date/time format for the output file

• Time zone: IST
• YYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss where:
  • YYYY: four-digit year
  • MM: two-digit month (01=January, etc.)
  • hh: two-digit hour (00-23, AM/PM not allowed)
  • mm: two-digit minute (00-59)
  • ss: two-digit second (00-59)

Output file specifications

You can choose to receive an output file in CSV or ZIP format. The ZIP format will contain a single CSV file that has one worksheet. Acoustic Provisioning will communicate your choice to Karix.

All output files that contain delivery reports are placed the next day (T+1 day) containing the previous day (T Day) traffic reports for that specific account. Each day represents the duration of 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM IST. You may see a second output file on the following day (T+2), depending on when the message was delivered to the end user.

Note: Karix does not get 100% delivery notifications within a span of 8 hours. Based on past observations, on average there might be 1-5% missing delivery notifications.

Place the result delivery notifications file on the FTP Server with one of the configurations below (on a Karix provisioned account level):

• No matter how many files you place on the FTP server on a given day, the results for these sends are consolidated into a single file and made available the next day.
• Each input file placed on the FTP server has a corresponding output file that contains the delivery notifications placed on the FTP server.

You can configure the time when the output file is placed in the FTP location.