Home → Administration Manual for Libraries → Patron Notices → Mobile Phone Setup

7.2. Mobile Phone Setup

Last Updated 11/09/2023

User Settings

In Evergreen, hold available and overdue notices are capable of being delivered by SMS text messages. This feature must be enabled by the patron and is not guaranteed to work for all telecommunication companies.

A patron's user settings determine the destination for their SMS notices. When a patron creates a new hold, that hold's sms notify information is filled in automatically with whatever they've entered in to their Default SMS/Text Number field. Your hold notices can be set up so that they will not be sent if the SMS checkbox under User settings is unchecked. This is not the default behavior of our SMS notices and can not currently be enabled on overdue notices. 

Default Notices

Currently, hold notices and 3 day courtesy notices are available for each system in the consortium. Each system may customize their messaging and features as needed by submitting a ticket. The character limit for a single SMS message is 160 characters. Depending on the network, support for concatenation and segmentation can rebuild messages up to 1600 characters.

Hold Available

the standard behavior of this notice is to use the default sender and not your bounced email address. Submit a ticket if you'd like us to use your bounced email address instead, this can be very useful for finding problems. By default, this notice does not respect the SMS checkbox in the User Settings Hold Notices form. Submit a ticket if you'd like us to add this behavior to your notice.

Please note that this notice retrieves its sms number and carrier from the hold record, not from the user's settings. This means that if a user updates their settings after the hold has been placed, their holds still maintain their old information. 

From: [ default_sender ]
To: [ sms_notify@sms_carrier ]
Subject: [ number of holds ] hold(s) ready

[ Repeat for every hold ]
[bib record content][ patron first name ] : [ title ] @ [ pickup lib ]

[ end repeat ]
Held items must be collected within 7 days.
DO NOT REPLY TO THIS TEXT

3 Day Courtesy Notice (pre-overdue)

Please note that this notice does not respect the SMS checkbox in the User Settings Hold Notices form. This feature can not be enabled as it was only intended to affect hold notices. 

From: [ your bounced email address ]
To: [ sms_number@sms_carrier ]
Subject: Library Materials Due Soon

You have items due soon:

[ Repeat for every item due ]
     [ copy_details ]
     [ title ] by [ author ] due on [ due_date (m-d-Y)]

     DO NOT REPLY TO THIS TEXT

[ end repeat ]

Mobile Carriers

SMS notices are sent as emails from the NC Cardinal web servers to a special email address called an SMS gateway. Each telecom company defines their own SMS gateway that we have set up in Evergreen. 

Active Mobile Phone Carriers in NC Cardinal

Inactive Mobile Phone Carriers in NC Cardinal

These carriers have been disabled because they did not operate in North Carolina or were defunct, and also had no active users in our system. They can enabled as needed.