Inbound SMS does NOT appear in any extension's message-store

Quick update, I spoke with technical support. They mentioned users are having issues with the Business SMS Booster and this may have caused the issue.

This seems to track with my understanding as well since I was able to receive inbound SMS via the message-store prior to adding the Business SMS Booster.

They have removed the SMS Booster Add-on from my account and I’m still working with support to resolve the missing inbound records.

Update to the update.. I hope this saves someone from wasting time figuring this out. This was technical support’s response after escalation:

“Your case has been escalated to Dev Support T2.

The Message Store API and Subscriptions do not work if the Shared Inbox feature is enabled for Company/CQ numbers. If you require the Shared Inbox feature, you would need to use the new Threaded APIs. These APIs are not publicly available yet, however, we can share them privately.  

If you do not require the Shared Inbox feature, we can disable the backend flag for your company, and the Message Store APIs should work.”

Since it is not documented anywhere, I spent hours upon hours trying to figure this out. Very disappointed that RingCentral would release new features without documenting or disclaiming any of the logistical implications publicly in developer documentation, RC knowledge base, or otherwise anywhere in the admin portal.

When purchasing the Business SMS Booster license and enabling team inbox, there should be disclaimers.

When assigning the Business SMS Booster license to a user, there should be disclaimers.

When enabling the Shared Inbox feature, there should be disclaimers.

Thankfully there’s some light at the end of the tunnel here…

Yes, the cause was absolutely be cause of the shared inbox enabling via the SMS Booster license. It’s not backward compatible with SMS v1.0 API and the backward compatibility is not yet implemented.

To be honest, since you set only 1 SMS recipient for your Company site and call queue, I don’t know why you need the SMS Booster license. It is useful and meant for multiple SMS recipients.

If the support team already removed the SMS Booster license and disable the shared inbox for your account, then SMS should work with SMS v1.0 API. However, the notification filter you listed above will not work with call queue number. Try these SMS event filters:

let eventFilters = [
"/restapi/v1.0/account/~/extension/{extId-106}/message-store/instant?type=SMS", // filter for ext 106
"/restapi/v1.0/account/~/extension/~/message-store/instant?type=SMS", // filter for ext 101 own number and main company number
"/restapi/v1.0/account/~/extension/~/shared-sms" // filter for call queue number
]

Provided that the extension 101 is a super admin user, and the app is authenticated with the ext 101 JWT (login credentials)

Subscribe to those events, you will be able to receive inbound message notifications from all the phone numbers owned by or assigned to the specified users.

To read the call queue message store, you need to call this endpoint. Also provided that the app is authenticated by the user extension who is selected as the SMS recipient for a call queue.

let endpoint = "/restapi/v1.0/account/~/extension/~/message-store?owner=Shared&ownerExtensionType=Department"

For the main company number (or company number), read the message store using the standard API with the selected SMS recipient extension Id. E.g.

let endpoint = '/restapi/v1.0/account/~/extension/~/message-store'

Hi PhongVu,

Thanks for the reply. I absolutely do not need the SMS Booster add-on, you’re right. I made the mistake of assuming the SMS Booster would be 1 $25/mo add-on for the entire account, giving every user access (seemed like good value) and considering the TCR registered number is not a user extension, but the main company number, it sounded like a good idea to give all real user extensions access to the inbox.

It was only after purchasing the add-on, and following the steps to set it up that I discovered we would need to purchase one license for each user, and by then my 3p integrations for inbound had stopped working anyways.

I appreciate the example SMS filter events correctly. That said, I will not be using my own code in production, instead, I intend to use the ABR RingCentral SMS extension for Zoho.

I built and deployed my own endpoint simply so that I could actually test the APIs and figure out what was going on in the back-end since nobody from customer support seemed know. It was only after doing this that I was able to provide enough specificity to customer service for them to direct me to the correct support channel.

Expensive lesson learned at ~15 hours in troubleshooting, calls and development, but alas I’ve finally got the info I need.

I will be removing the Shared Inbox flag and we’ll either use ABR extension via Zoho to allow users to read/send/receive skipping the RC App/UI all together, or switch back to our old SMS provider.