Almost everything in Furcata is built from five objects. Understanding how they relate makes the rest of the documentation much easier to follow.
Accounts
An account is the workspace everything else belongs to. It carries your business details, your compliance information, your users and your numbers. Users have a role within an account, and some roles can act across accounts.
Account status
- Draft — the account is still being configured.
- Active — the account is fully operational.
- Paused — sending from the account queue is stopped.
- Inactive — the account is not currently in use.
- Suspended — the account was suspended by the platform.
- Review — the account is pending compliance review.
Account type
Accounts are typed as business, government or non-profit. The type influences the compliance information the account has to provide.
Services
A service is a single sending effort. There are two kinds: a messaging service, which sends campaigns to contacts, and a feed service, which publishes content.
A messaging service holds, in one place:
- The contacts it targets, and the language their messages are written in.
- The templates it can send, and the language those are written in.
- The area codes it covers, and any VIP numbers treated separately.
- A frequency: once, a specific date, or daily.
- A start and end time, and a send limit for the run.
- A status that decides whether it is running.
The limit caps how many messages a run may send. For a daily service it is the daily cap; for a one-off service it is the total for that single run.
Contacts
A contact is one person you can message. Contacts are identified by their phone number and can carry a first name, last name, email, an external id from your own system, a note and a subscription state.
A contact who has unsubscribed keeps their record but cannot be messaged: the composer is replaced by a notice that the contact will not receive any messages from you.
Messages
A message is one item of communication, in one direction. Outbound messages are ones you send; inbound messages are ones contacts send to you.
Messages carry a channel type, a status, a unit count and, once processed, a cost.
Channels
- SMS — a text message.
- MMS — a text message with media attached.
- WhatsApp — a message sent over WhatsApp.
- Call — a phone call or robocall, including voice and voicemail.
Numbers
A number is the phone number you send from and receive on. Numbers are owned by the account and are typed by how they are allocated.
- Local and national numbers are tied to an area.
- Toll-free numbers are not tied to an area.
- Mobile and short code numbers are allocated differently again.
A number is either active or removed.
How the pieces fit together
An account owns services and numbers. A service targets contacts and sends templates. Each template produces messages, and each message is sent from a number and tracked against a contact.