The type and amount of characters you can use in an SMS message is dependent on the data coding scheme that is in place. ClearSCADA supports two data coding schemes for SMS messages:
- GSM for characters included in the GSM 03.38 standard. These characters include the basic Latin characters used in languages such as English. GSM does not include the characters required in some non-Latin based languages, such as Russian and Chinese.
- UCS-2 for characters included in the UTF-16/UCS-2 standard. This extended character set includes Latin characters and many other characters such as those required in Cyrillic languages.
GSM is supported by many SMS devices and allows up to 160 characters per SMS message.
UCS-2 is only supported by some SMS devices and has a limit of 70 characters per SMS message. This limit is due to the two byte representation of each UCS-2 character.
If you need more information about the characters supported in the data coding schemes, refer to:
- The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (www.etsi.org) for GSM
- The Unicode Consortium (www.unicode.org) for UCS-2.
When you configure an SMS Pager Service, you need to choose the appropriate type of data coding for your needs:
- If you use a Latin based language such as English, Spanish, French or German, you should leave the Data Coding Scheme setting as GSM (the default setting).
- If you use a non-Latin based language, you should set the Data Coding Scheme to UCS-2. This will allow you to use the non-Latin characters required in your language, but will reduce the amount of characters you can use in each SMS message. You also need to adjust the Maximum Message Length to 70 or less as the default Maximum Message Length of 160 is inappropriate for UCS-2.
For information on the commands that have to be supported by your GSM modem, see SMS - Short Message Service.
To define the Data Coding Scheme for an SMS service:
- Display the Pager Service Form and then select the SMS Service tab.
- Choose the required setting from the Data Coding Scheme combo box:
- GSM—You can use many of the characters included in the GSM 03.38 standard in your SMS messages. The maximum number of characters per message is 160.
The characters that are included in GSM 03.38 but which cannot be used in ClearSCADA SMS messages are:
Symbol
Description
Greek Capital Xi
No symbol
Form Feed
Circumflex accent
Left brace
Right brace
Reverse solidus
Left square bracket
Tilde
Right square bracket
Vertical sign
Euro sign
- GSM—You can use many of the characters included in the GSM 03.38 standard in your SMS messages. The maximum number of characters per message is 160.
- UCS-2—You can use any of the characters in the UTF-16/UCS-2 standard in your SMS messages. The maximum number of characters per message is 70.
NOTE: If you select UCS-2, you also need to change the Maximum Message Length setting to 70 or less (see Define the Maximum Message Length Properties for a Pager Service).