Getting Started

Quick Start

A quick start guide to get a simple One-off "hello world" mobile service up and running in minutes.

If you don't already have an account with the Zong Developer Network then Signup now

Account creation

Step 1 - You will be asked to enter an email address used both for login and account validation. A nickname to be used when you post in the forums and contribute in the wiki and finally your login password.

Step 2 - Requires you to enter the typical account holder details. Entering valid data here is important especially regarding your mobile phone number since it will be used to activate services.

Step 3 - Read and agree to our terms and conditions, moving to the next step will trigger an activation email to be sent to the email account you have registered. The email contains a link you need to follow in order to activate your account. Until activation is complete you will not get access to your API key.

Step 4 - Account creation process is complete, you are now ready to login and create your first service.

Service creation

Step 1 - Starts the setup process of your very first service. Give your service a good name and description, then choose an appropriate service type. For this example we will select a One-off service and we won't be using sessions. Audience type offers two choices, all audience and adult. Take note that when choosing Adult content, you might not get access to all countries since carriers in certain countries do not allow adult services to run on their networks. Finally choose a category which best relates to your service for example INFO.

Step 2 - You define your callback handlers, for One-off services you have two.

The Transaction Handler is mandatory so enter a valid URL pointing to a server you have access to to create a script in your preferred programming language.

For example. http://testapps.zong.com/oneoff.php

We will not define a delivery handler since for this example we don't need to receive delivery reports.

Step 3 - The final step before service activation is to define the first market for your service. You can choose one of any of the listed countries (some countries may not be displayed due to your audience selection). Service shortcode, available price-points and content types will vary on a per country basis.

If you don't see a country in the list for which you would like to provide service, let us know at info (at) zong (dot) com

Note: German and Irish markets require some manual steps to be carried out by our support team so they will not be available for use right away.

Now choose a unique keyword for the market you selected for your service, the keyword is a little like a domain name and identifies your service for the selected shortcode. All messages sent to this shortcode/keyword combination will be routed to your service. You can check the availability of the keyword, if its already taken then you need to try another or try using a different shortcode if possible. If a keyword is flagged as premium then you will need to purchase this keyword before you can use it.

For the US market you will have to go through an additional step (Step 4) to select the service flow which best matches the way you plan your service to work. When you create a service and none of the proposed flows closely match the way your service will work, please contact our sales team at sales (at) zong (dot) com, to help you through the certification process.

Going live; clicking next will trigger the sending of a pincode via text message to the mobile number you entered. If you entered an incorrect mobile number you can enter your correct number again and trigger a resend of the pincode.

Please enter the pincode you received and click go live, then be a little patient as Zong provisions your service with all the selected carriers.

Congratulations!! You have successfully created a single market service. You can of course add additional markets to your service at a later stage.

Please allow up to 15 minutes for the system to provision your keyword before proceeding to testing

Creating the handler

Below is a simple example of "hello world" handler written in PHP. This handler simply echos back the inbound text message at zero charge to the mobile consumer (setting reverse_charge="true" would will charge the mobile consumer at the selected premium rate).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<one_off_response fragmentable="false" reverse_charged="true" >
  <text_content>
    Response --> <? echo $_GET['text']; ?>
  </text_content>
</one_off_response>

Service testing

Services can be tested in two ways, using a normal mobile phone with a SIM card for the country you would like to test or using our email based text message simulator, to learn more about the simulator go [here]