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Quick start

In about 15 minutes, you send a test alarm by SMS and acknowledge it by replying. Everything here uses Africa's Talking's free sandbox, so nothing costs money and nothing reaches a real phone. The messages appear in a phone simulator in your browser instead.

You need an administrator login to an Ignition gateway, 8.1.33 or later in the 8.1 line or 8.3.3 or later in the 8.3 line, and access to the Designer.

1. Open a sandbox account​

  1. Register at account.africastalking.com and confirm your email address. The account comes with a ready-made sandbox app, whose username is always sandbox.
  2. Open the sandbox app and go to Settings > API Key. Generate a key and keep it to hand. A new key can take a few minutes to start working.
  3. Go to SMS > Short Codes and create a short code for testing. Replies only reach Arifa through a shortcode.
The Africa's Talking dashboard for the sandbox app, showing the app name Sandbox and the username sandbox, with Launch Simulator in the menu.
The sandbox app's dashboard. Launch Simulator is in the menu on the left.

2. Install Arifa​

Download the .modl file for your Ignition line from the releases page. In the gateway, go to Config > System > Modules and choose Install or Upgrade a Module (on 8.3, Platform > System > Modules and Install or Upgrade Module +), and select the file. Compare the certificate thumbprint with the one in Install and verify before you accept.

3. Create a profile with Live off​

Go to Config > Alarming > Notification and choose Create new Alarm Notification Profile (on 8.3, Services > Alarming > Notification and Create Profile +), pick Arifa SMS, and enter:

SettingValue
Usernamesandbox
API KeyThe sandbox key. On 8.1, type it into both boxes labelled Password. On 8.3, choose Embedded and type it
LiveOff
Sender IDThe test shortcode from step 1
Allow Acknowledgement by SMS ReplyOn
Reply KeywordNEDAMA

Leave everything else blank and save. The profile's status should read Running. Every setting is explained in Profile settings.

4. Open the simulator and add yourself as a user​

  1. In the sandbox dashboard, choose Launch Simulator and enter a Kenyan mobile number. Any number will do: nothing is sent to it.

    The Africa's Talking phone simulator open in a browser, with an empty Messages screen and a Start Chat button.
    The simulator, ready to receive messages.

  2. In Ignition, give a user a contact of type SMS with the same number, written as 07..., 01... or +254....

  3. Create an on-call roster with that user.

5. Send a test alarm​

  1. Create a memory tag of type Boolean with an alarm on it, and an alarm pipeline with a Notification block. On the block, choose your Arifa SMS profile and your roster, and set Test Mode to No. Point the tag's alarm at the pipeline. Connect to an alarm shows each step.
  2. Set the tag to True.
An Ignition alarm status table with one alarm, ArifaTest/Test, priority High, in the state Active, Unacknowledged.
The test alarm in Ignition, active and not yet acknowledged.

Within a few seconds the simulator shows the alarm text, ending with a line such as Reply NEDAMA 4821 to ack. The gateway log (on 8.1, Status > Diagnostics > Logs; on 8.3, Diagnostics > Logs, at <gateway address>/app/diagnostics/logs), searched for Arifa, shows a line starting SMS accepted for 1 recipient.

If nothing arrives, set Test Mode to Yes and trigger the alarm again: the log then shows what would have been sent. See Troubleshooting.

6. Acknowledge it by reply​

In the simulator, reply with the keyword and the four-digit code from your message, for example NEDAMA 4821.

Within about 15 seconds, the gateway log shows Acknowledged by SMS reply from ..., and the alarm shows as acknowledged in Ignition, by the user whose phone replied.

To move on to real SMS, see Africa's Talking setup.

Done when: the alarm shows as acknowledged in Ignition after your reply from the simulator.