Setting up SharePoint to work with an SMS Provider

One cool thing to demo with SharePoint 2010 is the new SMS Alerting feature. For instance, this sort of thing is good at the exec level if they need to be alerted when a new ASX Bulletin is released… or when the sales figures for last month are published. The service works the same way as a normal email alert does, but if SMS Services are enabled at the web app level or the Farm level, you can elect to be notified by SMS instead.

Pop someone’s SMS in, change a document, continue your sales patter and 30 seconds or so later they hear the all-too-familiar “beep-beep… beep-beep” on their phone. Then, if you are demoing a publically accessible site they can even click on the link provided and open up the relevant document. Ever so sweet!

Problems…
Sometimes, new functionality comes with new issues.

1. If you set up the SMS Service properties in Central Admin at the Farm level, then decide they’d be better at the Web App level, then remove them from the web app and try to configure them at the farm level again it does not work. For some reason there’s a piece of UI logic in the Subscription alert page that baulks at this scenario. The workaround is to configure it at the Web app level again.
2. Setting it up requires the use of Powershell – it’s far from a “switch it on and go” type of feature… but it doesn’t tell you what’s missing, it just says that it “had a problem Connecting”.

   
   

3. You are subject to the same constraints as normal email alerting, so make sure you set the timer job to run every minute (you can do this thru the Central Admin UI now) otherwise in demoland it will take an eternity.

The Powershell steps required are:

Save the ROOT certificate from your service provider’s website (in my provider’s case https://www.redoxygen.net/, that's the one called "Go Daddy Class 2 Certification Authority").

 

Open the SharePoint PowerShell Console

 

and run the following Powershell script:
$cert = Get-PfxCertificate <PathToYourSavedCertificateFile>
New-SPTrustedRootAuthority -Name <AnyNameYouWant> -Certificate $cert

 

Then it works. The guidelines I followed are on this Technet Article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee428323.aspx

Of course, if the provider is not handling the web service call correctly you will be able to configure the SMS alerting but will prevent you from successfully send an SMS. The best way to fix this is to have a look at the actual messages the Timer Service is generating – check this article out to find out how to do it.