Viewing Message Logs

Viewing Message Logs

Message logs give you all the information around messages, calls and sessions sent or received from your organization’s account. These logs are valuable as they provide an organization wide perspective on all communication activity on the Echo platform for your account.

Message Log Statuses

General Message status

A general status is a real-time indication of how a message, call or session went. This statuses indicates if the message, call or session is currently being processed, has been sent out or failed to go out from Echo platform. 
These status are:
  1. Blocked - The message, call or session out on hold as your account may have insufficient balance to send out the messages(for prepaid accounts) or you may have hit your daily spending limits (for post paid accounts)
  2. Requested - The initial request to the service provider asking them to send out your message, call or session(s).
  3. Complete - The service provider received the initial request, validated it and has sent the message, call or session(s) out.
  4. Failed - The service provider received the initial request, but validation for the request failed and they are not going to send this message, call or session.
What is the difference between a general message log status vs an SMS delivery status? 
A message log status indicates the Echo platform and our service providers handled the message, call or session(s). A delivery status is when the mobile network operator (MNO) tells us if the message was at all delivered or not. Once they receive this confirmation, they, in turn, pass it to us.

SMS Delivery Status

More often than not, mobile network operators have a delivery notification mechanism where they share updates if a message was delivered or not. These delivery notifications vary by country, and if available, they are updated in real time.
The following are used to track the delivery status of an SMS:
  1. Failed Delivery status indicates that the message has been successfully sent out from the Echo platform but the Mobile network Operator(MNO) has confirmed that they could not deliver the message to the subscriber. This may be because of a network issue, the phone is off or the MNO has terminated the service of that phone number.
  2. Delivery Pending status indicates that the message has been successfully sent out from the Echo platform but the Mobile network Operator(MNO) has not given any confirmation whether they were able to deliver the message or not.
  3. Delivery Unknown status means that the message has been successfully sent out from the Echo platform but the Mobile network Operator(MNO) has  tried to reach the contact but the reason is not clear why the number is unreachable. The Mobile network Operator(MNO) then proceeds to retry the message depending on their validity policy after which if they are still unable to reach the number they discard the message.
  4. Delivery Successful indicates that the message has been successfully sent out from the Echo platform and the Mobile Network Operator(the MNO) has given us confirmation that the message has been delivered to the subscriber/contact.
Delivery of messages is one beyond the scope of the service we provide here at Echo Mobile since this is affected by a number of factors that are beyond our control, that is, quality of Service being provided by MNO in different areas and the contact's phone being powered. If you have any questions or queries on SMS Delivery Status, feel free to reach out to us at support@echomobile.org.

Voice Calls

A voice status is a real-time indication of how a call went. When a call is started until when it ends, the message logs breaks down each hop or flow of an voice call (message out, dialing, terminate, connected and session completed)
The only voice hop that will show you a status is Session completed as this is when our service providers tell what happened with a call. For cleaner and simpler voice call reporting, use a survey results export or a notice message log export

These voice status are:
  1. Pending:  Call placed, but no reply yet from our service provider.
  2. Completed:  Call connected to the contact’s phone.
  3. No_answer: The mobile network operator (MNO) contacted the phone, but the contact did not pick up.
  4. User_busy: The mobile network operator (MNO) contacted the phone, but the phone was busy or the contact declined the call.
  5. Subscriber_absent: The mobile network operator (MNO) was not able to contact the phone in question, perhaps a contact's phone is switched off, out of range or they are in a poor coverage area.
  6. Gateway_unavailable: The platform was unable to contact the mobile network operator (MNO)’s gateway, or their initial response was completely invalid for some reason. The call may or may not have been placed.
  7. Failed_unknown_reason: The platform received a status update from the mobile network operator (MNO)’s gateway, but it was not one of the statuses we expected. The call may or may not have been connected.

USSD Sessions

A USSD status is a real-time indication of how a USSD session went. When a contact first dials a USSD code until when it is completed or terminated, the message logs breaks down each hop or flow of a USSD session (initiated and terminated).

Search Messages

For the search option, you can search messages by status, by direction , By phone number and filter by date. To perform a search on Message Log, do the following:
  1. On the top navigation bar , click on your organization menu
  2. Click on Message log.
  3. The Message Logs of outgoing and incoming messages for the organization's account will be listed.
  4. Click on "Search Messages"
  5. Select the Filter By Option
  6. Select the Filter Value
  7. Select the desired date filters
  8. Click on "Apply Filters" to perform the search
  9. To switch or combine different filter options, you can click on "Clear Filters then select other filter options

Export Messages

You can be able to generate a report of  all incoming and outgoing messages, calls or sessions from your organization's account by channel. This would be a system-wide export that you filter and generate by date.

Here are some key columns found within the export
  1. Date: This is the date the message, call or USSD session was sent, received or started.
  2. Phone: This is the contact who received the message, call or USSD session.    
  3. Status: This the general status is a real-time indication of how a message, call or session went.       
  4. Channel: This is the channel i.e SMS, Voice or USSD.
  5. Survey/Notice: This is the survey or notice that the message, call or session is tied to.  If this is blank, this is inbox or outbox message.   
  6. Delivery Status(DS): This is the  SMS delivery status.    
  7. DS Update Date: This is the date and time the mobile network operators (MNOs) updated the delivery status.    
  8. Call Status (IVR): This is the voice call status.    
  9. Duration (IVR Seconds): This shows the duration of the voice call in seconds.    
  10. Group: This shows the current group of a contact.    
  11. Character Count: The character count tracks the number of characters sent or received in messages via an SMS channel (short code or mask).    
  12. SMS Count: The SMS count shows you how many SMS messages were sent or received based on the character count. A message with over 160 characters is sent in more than one SMS message, since an SMS message has a 160 character limit.
To export message logs, do the following:
  1. On the top navigation bar , click on your organization menu
  2. Click on Message log
  3. The Message Logs of outgoing and incoming messages for the organization's account will be listed.
  4. Click on Export Messages
  5. From Additional Options & Filters, you can either select all messages, filter by direction or filter by channel.
  6. Click on Start, enter your preferred date for the report. 
  7. Click on End, enter your preferred date for the report.
  8. Click on Generate to export your report. The spreadsheet generated will contain all the communication sent out for that period. From the spreadsheet, you can filter the data to get what you need.

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