​​Skyward introduces visual notifications to SMS Monitoring System

Broadening the NOC expertise, Skyward continues to enhance its SMS Monitoring System with new features. One of the recently introduced improvements is a visual notifications feature that helps to promptly identify the cause of alerts and handle known issues in no time.

SMS Monitoring System is a solution developed by Skyward for SMS traffic monitoring. It integrates with the infrastructure of SMS aggregators and A2P SMS providers and is used by Skyward’s NOC engineers to ensure high quality of SMS routes. When an alert is triggered, SMS Monitoring System issues a notification containing the information necessary for a preliminary analysis.

The parameters visualized for every carrier include:

• messages per second (MPS)
• SMS attempts
• delays in SMS delivery
• SMS delivery status breakdown (Figure 1)

Each of the four diagrams reflects value changes happening every other minute for the past hour, hence – the metrics may be compared with average values over time. This allows NOC engineers to distinguish critical issues from known issues such as configuration fault, system overload, or spam traffic that can be handled without further research.

Another advantage the new feature brings to the SMS Monitoring System is detailed statistics on routes and vendors (Figure 2). Values above the threshold are in bold and values below the threshold are highlighted in red. After a quick glance at the table, a NOC engineer can detect the routes affected by the issue and the vendors interfering with the traffic quality. With this in mind, the engineer quickly locates the cause of the issue without performing a deeper research in the system. As a result, the alert is handled faster.

Since SMS Monitoring System has been developed internally, modifying it is relatively easy. When we need to add a new feature, we design and code it ourselves. This is what I did with the visual notification extension. In spite of its rather plain interface typical for HTML, it is regarded as an indispensable tool by each member of our NOC team.

— Artem Varakin, Chief Information Officer at Skyward

For reference

SMS Monitoring System is a proprietary solution by Skyward. It was specifically designed for SMS aggregators and A2P SMS providers, regardless of their size. The key purpose of the system is to provide proactive SMS traffic control to guarantee its quality and increase business margin. Learn more

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