2

I went through the AWS pinpoint documentation for checking delivery status of sent SMS message. But, I couldn't find any batter way than streaming SMS Event to either Amazon Kinesis Data Streams or Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose then sending data to Amazon S3 bucket or Amazon Redshift database and only after that to the application.
Here, my requirement is to send just verification code and get the delivery status of SMS message. Is there any better way of achieving this? Because the way I mentioned above is too lengthy and costly. Any help will be appreciated.

BDB
  • 429
  • 3
  • 16
  • Hey! Did u find a good way here to get the delivery status? – mihaa123 Dec 27 '20 at 12:30
  • 1
    @mihaa123 Yes, there is a way to directly read from Kinesis data streams itself. Since, my requirement was to just read status but not do any further data processing, that shortest way fulfilled my requirement. – BDB Dec 27 '20 at 16:05

1 Answers1

0

sendMessages() API returns status of SMS. It is assumed that this API may not instantly return send status as SMS may not get delivered instantly.

But since "callback", it takes time to return, works Asynchronously.

What is the status it is returning? refer to: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaScriptSDK/latest/AWS/Pinpoint.html#sendMessages-property

In callback, json "data" returned has "MessageResponse" has field "Result" has field "DeliveryStatus" which has possible values as below:

  • "SUCCESSFUL"
  • "THROTTLED"
  • "TEMPORARY_FAILURE"
  • "PERMANENT_FAILURE"
  • "UNKNOWN_FAILURE"
  • "OPT_OUT"
  • "DUPLICATE"

Why is status update through Kinesis, then S3 buckets, then Analytics is needed? Actually not needed. With Kinesis you get more detailed information.

On hard pressing simpler ways, AWS expert mentioned use Lamda service to directly send to some "Queue" (possibly another AMZ product) or call HTTP end point through Lamda service. All these services are costly and cost other resources too. "Total Cost of Ownership" just grows or these guys are "up-selling" more products.

I want to send transactional SMS. That's it. I need to know if SMS was delivered or not. That's it. But you end spending for Kinesis (how ever small or large cost), for S3, for Analytics Services, associated EC2, EBS everything.

I discussed hard with AMZ Architect, who settled to, with Kinesis you can directly poll and get status if you configure Pinpoint with Kinesis. So I get SMS event updates ALSO through Kinesis, which are "similar" to what you get by calling getMessages() API.

In SMS event stream directly through Kinesis, you get "event_type" value as

  • "_SMS.BUFFERED"
  • "_SMS.SUCCESS"
  • "_SMS.FAILURE"
  • "_SMS.OPTOUT"

reference: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/pinpoint/latest/developerguide/event-streams-data-sms.html

And value of "record_status" field you get

  • "SUCCESSFUL"
  • "DELIVERED"
  • "PENDING"
  • "INVALID"
  • "UNREACHABLE"
  • "UNKNOWN"
  • "BLOCKED"
  • "CARRIER_UNREACHABLE"
  • "SPAM"
  • "INVALID_MESSAGE"
  • "CARRIER_BLOCKED"
  • "TTL_EXPIRED"
  • "MAX_PRICE_EXCEEDED"

Some of these status code may be irrelevant to your case. e.g. "TTL_EXPIRED" is possible value if you are sending "delayed" SMS.

Kinesis, delivered more detailed, but may not be practically useful.

If you exceed your max SMS cost Quota with Kinesis, you get the reason. With sendMessages() API you won't. But you can check SMS quota through APIs.

refer to: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaScriptSDK/latest/AWS/ServiceQuotas.html#getServiceQuota-property

I strongly believe, if sending "Transactional" SMS which are by nature priority delivered, you don't need Kinesis.

Amazon is overselling by entangling services into composite solutions, in some cases. Anyways, they are not wrong, Pinpoint is "Marketing" product to do Campaigns, User Journey and Conversion Analysis. Which is bigger business case for Amazon that "just sending SMS". You may not get best advise for your Usecase, so negotiate hard to save your $s.

Yogesh Ugale
  • 1
  • 1