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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://plivo.com/docs/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

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Overview

This guide shows how to conduct an SMS survey. Surveys can help businesses with market research. Using SMS for surveys lets organizations process input quickly and efficiently. You can conduct SMS surveys either by using our PHLO visual workflow builder or our APIs. Follow the instructions in one of the tabs below.
Here’s how to use Plivo APIs to create surveys using SMS text messages — sending questions and collecting answers.

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How it works

Outbound-SMS Flow

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Prerequisites

To get started, you need a Plivo account — sign up with your work email address if you don’t have one already. To receive incoming messages, you must have a Plivo phone number that supports SMS; you can rent numbers from the Numbers page of the Plivo console or by using the Numbers API. If this is your first time using Plivo APIs, follow our instructions to set up a Ruby development environment.

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Create a Rails controller

Change to the project directory and run this command.
$ rails generate controller Plivo sms
This command generates a controller named plivo_controller in the app/controllers/ directory and a respective view in the app/views/plivo directory. We can delete the view as we don’t need it.
$ rm app/views/plivo/sms.html.erb

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Create the survey application

Edit app/controllers/plivo_controller.rb and paste into it this code.
include Plivo
include Plivo::Exceptions
include Plivo::XML

class PlivoController < ApplicationController
	protect_from_forgery with: :null_session # disbale CSRF
	def send_survey
		api = RestClient.new("<auth_id>","<auth_token>")
		response = api.messages.create(
			src:'<sender_id>',
			dst:'<destination_number>',
			text:'Did you find out all the information you needed? Please reply "Yes" or "No"'
		)
		render json: response.to_s
	end

	def survey_response
		from_number = params[:From]
		to_number = params[:To]
		text = params[:Text]
		puts "From: #{from_number}, To: #{to_number}, Text: #{text}"
		if text.downcase == "yes"
			message_body = "Thank you for your feedback"
		elsif text.downcase=="no"
			message_body = "We apologize for the inconvenience. A representative will contact you to assist you"
		else
			message_body = "Response received was #{text}, which is invalid. Please reply with either Yes or No"
		end
		response = Response.new
		params = {
			src: to_number,
			dst: from_number,
		}
		response.addMessage(message_body, params)
		xml = PlivoXML.new(response)
		puts xml.to_xml
		render xml: xml.to_xml
	end
end
Replace the auth placeholders with your authentication credentials from the Plivo console. Replace the phone number placeholders with actual phone numbers in E.164 format (for example, +12025551234). In countries other than the US and Canada you can use a sender ID for the message source. You must have a Plivo phone number to send messages to the US or Canada; you can buy a Plivo number from Phone Numbers > Buy Numbers on the Plivo console or via the Numbers API.

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Add a route

Edit config/routes.rb and change the line
Rails.application.routes.draw do
  get 'plivo/sms' 
end
to
Rails.application.routes.draw do
  post 'plivo/send_survey/' => 'plivo#send_survey'
  post 'plivo/survey_response/' => 'plivo#survey_response'
end

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Test

Save the file and run it.
$ rails server