SMS Console UI Revamp Provides Better Debugging

Our goal at Plivo is to simplify business communications, and that philosophy applies not only to building and deploying software but also to tracking and debugging. We aim to give our developers best-in-class debugging tools so they can spot and fix bugs faster. We just rolled out a major update that includes feature updates to help developers debug applications.

New information on SMS logs

Based on input from our customers and an internal system audit, we’ve added information on SMS logs to unify data related to your text messages. Here are some of the most noticeable changes:

Destination country: We’ve added a new field that displays a two-character country code for each message destination. When you hover on the two-character code, the complete country name is displayed. This helps you quickly identify potential text misroutes that may be caused by missing country codes or incorrect destination number formatting.  

SMS error reason: We’ve added an Error Reason column that lets you quickly identify the cause of failed incoming or outgoing SMS messages, whether it’s from carrier errors or message callback errors. You can also filter logs based on destination or message state, giving you a telescopic view that helps you detect issues.

Carrier surcharge: Carriers in certain countries charge a passthrough fee to receive MT (Mobile Terminated) and MO (Mobile Originated) messages. Now you can hover on the information icon next to the SMS charge to display this information.

Subaccount filter: You can now filter the SMS logs in your account by subaccount to help pinpoint issues that affect a particular end user segment.

Downloadable information: New information on message detail records (MDR) joins all the existing information downloaded in the form of CSV files in your account.

More visibility on each text message

This upgrade includes an all-new SMS detail page. Click on the timestamp for a text message under SMS logs and you’re transported to a detailed information window that’s specific to the text message. Here are the highlights from the page.

Message text body: The fully formatted message body is now clearly displayed in the debug UI. You no longer need to dig through server logs to retrieve the message.

Number-based filter: Click on the source number or destination number related to a text message to be redirected to SMS logs with that number set as a filter. You can filter all messages that originated from or terminated to the number in question.

SMS callback attempts: All HTTP callback requests made by Plivo to your endpoint in relation to the SMS are now listed in the Debug UI.

Message state transition visualizer

We’ve added an image that visually represents message state transitions, along with the time delay between states. It helps you get complete visibility into the lifecycle of a message. Metrics such as time spent in the queue help identify bottlenecks in your SMS traffic pipeline.

In this example we can see that the message was in the queue for 497 milliseconds and was delivered to the recipient two seconds after leaving the Plivo system.

Accessing the new UI

To access the new features, go to the Messages > Logs page of the Plivo console.