RCS Bot Provisioning

Before you can send RCS messages, you need to register your company brand with the mobile network operators.

Your bot must be provisioned by OpenMarket and registered and certified by network operators. On average, the processing time from registering your bot to implementing in production can take about 2-3 weeks. This time can vary, however, depending on the network operator, if you have to make any revisions to your registration or conversation flow, or if you need to provision any new originators.

Step 1: Complete the registration forms

The RCS forms consolidate all the information required by the network operators that support RCS. A Customer Success Manager from OpenMarket will help you complete the forms, which are available online.

Here's a summary of the information to have on hand when you start:

  • Countries you wish to reach: OpenMarket RCS can reach numerous countries. For a list see our RCS Global Coverage Map.
  • Bot identification details These define your bot and include Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, company logo, and color scheme. You're required to provide links to Terms and Conditions and your privacy policies.
    • Your logo must be a small bot image that points to the thumbnail at a URL. The size cannot exceed 224x224, inclusive of any whitespace on the sides. You can use OpenMarket's CMS to store your image using our Media Upload API.
  • Brand contact information: This will be the information on the contact within the company representing the brand in the RCS message. This person will be contacted to provide authorization for OpenMarket to register the bot on their behalf. Must be a director level or above.
  • Use case description, conversation flow, opt-in and opt-out handling: How do you plan on using your bot? How will users opt in or out of messages?
  • Traffic estimates: This helps us to determine what kind of message traffic you're expecting. This can include whether you're expecting traffic to spike at certain times of the day, how many messages you plan to send each day, or how many users you expect to message each day.
  • Bot capabilities: Select which RCS capabilities you'll be using. For a description of the current capabilities see “Deciding which RCS capabilities to use” in Getting Started with RCS.
  • SMS fallback: SMS fallback is used when your RCS message cannot be delivered because the device is not RCS-capable. In this case a regular SMS message is sent to the phone instead. SMS messages are delivered via an originator, so this will need to be configured for your account. The time required for this depends on whether you're using a new or existing originator (existing will take less time), and which countries you're sending messages to.

Step 2: OpenMarket completes provisioning and registers your bot with the requested network operators

During this step we create the service ID that uniquely identifies your bot. We register your bot with all of the network operators you've requested. While this is happening, the test phone numbers you provided will be whitelisted. You can start sending test messages approximately 10 business days after submitting your forms to OpenMarket. Whitelisting is required for messages to be delivered to your test mobile devices. For a list of the supported RCS devices, see Testing your RCS messages.

Phone models are continually being added. If unsure, contact your Customer Success Manager to verify whether a model is RCS-capable.

Note: 10 days is an average time; however, this time could vary.

Prepare for certification

During the testing period you should also start preparing for certification. Network operators have varying certification requirements and processes. We’ll help you prepare for all certification requirements regardless of the network operator and we will coordinate this effort on your behalf. Be prepared to submit the requested items when your development is deemed complete; though, in some cases, some operators might want a coordinated session to review the conversation flow. When you're developing your conversation flow, you should provide either triggering events, screen shots, or video mockups of the proposed RCS conversation, as well as brand approval/authorization letters per network provider.

For certification you must:

  1. Ensure that the bot you described in the form is what you built.
  2. Ensure that any suggestion, action, and/or link works.
  3. Handle unrecognized user responses. For example, this might be if a user responds with a term that is not recognized.
  4. Ensure that no personally identifiable or other potentially sensitive information is passed.
  5. Validate that opt-out works.

Examples of triggering events:

  1. Visit a website and enter a device phone number, which initiates a message to be sent to the device.
  2. Send a keyword to an originator (e.g., short code), which triggers the sending of an RCS message to the device.
  3. Start a user-initiated conversation with a special RCS keyword, which then triggers the sending an RCS message.

Step 3: Network operators certify your bot

The certification process takes about 10 days, but could take longer depending on the network operator.

Step 4: Certification is complete. Your bot goes live!

Once the conversation flow is approved by the network operator, your bot is promoted to a production/live status. If the network operator does not approve your flow, you'll need to rework it and then inform your Customer Success Manager when you're ready to resume the certification process.

Once certified, whitelisting is removed from your account as this is no longer required. Your bot can now be sent to any RCS-capable device. If you've implemented SMS fallback, then a failover SMS message is sent to any phone that is not RCS-capable.