Internet Texting Account


In the early days of PC and Mobile Operating Systems SMS (Short Message Service) messages, now commonly known as Texting, were free and easy apps often part of the operating system or easily added to it.

Unfortunately experience proved this, like many Internet services, could be readily abused and severe restrictions now exist.

Yet by its nature JwC's entire purpose is to keep in easy touch with all Congregation publishers.


NOTE: To enforce supplying your Country's Internal Phone Code (required for texting with some services), you cannot perform certain other operations until you specify it in Settings | Addressing.


Several Internet services exist to guarantee responsible texting abilities across a variety of device types,

These fall into 2 types:


1. An existing cellular-capable mobile device allows such a service to tie-in to its own messaging service.

    The Internet service originates messages as if from the phone number of that device.

    This option requires a specific device has a current cellular carrier and phone number.

    Other mobile devices owned by the same person will not be able to originate SMS messages and will not have copies of them unless theit numbers are included in group messages.


2. The Internet service itself rents a phone number in behalf of a user and performs SMS operations for that user via a browser or service connection (such as JwC provides).

     Thus all devices of the owner can originate texts via the same service, but none will have copies of those texts UNLESS their numbers are included in group messages OR

     If the Internet service provides both sending and receiving SMS capabilities, then all devices, cellular or not, can both originate and see copies of SMS messages.

     Generally there is a very small additional charge per message sent, but charges can rapidly accumulate and the ongoing total charge monitored frequently.


JwC supports the rental of a Send-Only texting phone number and allows copies to be sent to one user cellular device.

This keeps service costs low and assures texting works the same on all JwC versions.


However, if your mobile device already has texting capabilities and you chose to forego this option, JwC will try to use that capability you already have.

As JwC cannot anticipate how that will work on any non-Apple device, results can vary greatly.


Currently JwC supports only the Twilio texting service and requires you supply three items furnished you when you rent a Twilio number for permanent (non-trial) use.

(As of this date, Twilio is the only such service I could locate that can be supported on all versions of JwC. If others are located, they may be added later as options.)

After entry of all, the Account can be verified by sending a short text to any phone the user possesses.



Note that the previously-entered Access Code and Token are never redisplayed, although they can both re-entered,

These values are encrypted on entry and only unencrypted on contacting Twilio to send a tansmission.


Note carefully: All Twilio texts are sent separately; even if, to the user, it appears he will be sending a "group" message.

In JwC, though, there is no true group messaging, and recipients must not respond to the sending number, but rather to a number tied to one of your devices.

This makes all communication  appear "private" to recipients, even though many may receive the same message almost simultaneously.

For that reason, as shown on the Texting tab, an optional Texting signature can be suffixed to every Twilio message.

This signsature should include the number to which responses ought to be sent.