 Welcome back to the post-learn session. Hope you all had a jolly meal. Okay, so the next presentation is a very interesting one Enhancement to school portal is the name of the next project under the mentorship of Prof. Supratik Good afternoon to one and all present here. My name is Meghna and this is my teammate Arushi So we are here to deliver a short presentation on building in SMS and WhatsApp Basically an extension to the communication portal for our schools in IIT Bombay So before we begin our presentation, we just like to extend our thanks and gratitude to D.B. Pataksar to Abhinash sir for providing us with this opportunity to undertake this project We would also like to thank Professor Supratik who has been our mentor and also Praveen sir and Mayur sir without his assistance Our project would remain incomplete So let me first paint a picture for you guys. What's happening right now is we have a fully deployed Communication portal so like any other communication portal This is basically a platform which allows parents of the students studying in the three schools in IIT Bombay to interact with the school authorities so the current mechanism for Notifying the parents about any new postings on the portal is only through email So this is where our problem statement kicks in Basically, this is a live project, right? So we have received suggestions and feedback from the parents of the students and email is not exactly the most suitable option So in order to make This accessible to everyone we have decided to explore the options of SMS and WhatsApp SMS basically for mobile phones which do not have internet or which are not smartphones and for WhatsApp for Parents who have smartphones who are more tech savvy and they want to make it easier rather than logging into the portal So I'm going to talk about SMS and Arushi about WhatsApp So we all know what an SMS is short message service 160 characters text messages. We don't use it anymore But it is the most prevalent method of communication. But how does this really work? Now if you have a sender and you have a recipient if both belong to the same network provider Basically, your SMS goes through what is known as an SMS center this SMS center routes your SMS messages from the sender to the receiver but We have a lot of network providers and each network provider is affiliated with his own SMS center So how do two different SMS centers communicate because they're naturally running on different protocols to enable Inter-SMS center communication. We have what is known as an SMS gateway So you've got your sender the SMS center an SMS gateway and SMS sender and a receiver So this SMS gateway is the bridge between two SMS centers So this is the feature that we're trying to exploit here Because we want to send SMS messages from our portal on a PC to a handset device So the solution is to have a tie-up with a service provider Who can provide as a direct connection to this SMS gateway and therefore forward our messages to the recipient So what are these SMS service providers SMS service providers are third parties? Which have bought bulk SMSes from network providers and then they break it into fragments and then they resell it So basically like a broker or a reseller So there were two options we could explore in our research one was free sites Basically, these are sites wherein you have an online form you fill in the credentials Which would be your mobile number and message and then with a security check or a capture you can send your message But this was not really a suitable option for our portal because These sites continuously change the URL so that No one can automate filling the form so we could not really avail the free site option So we went for paid services So there are a lot of Indian origin SMS service providers and we narrowed the five down The three main criteria we were looking at was naturally cost the validity as well as the customer service So after getting in touch with each of their teams and then using their demo versions and testing it with our portal We have zero down on spring edge option number four So the reason why we chose spring edge is unlike most other services They do not have a expiry stamp on their messages So what usually happens is most other SMS service providers say that your messages get expired after a year or after two years So all of our remaining SMS is in our bank would be rendered useless But spring edge has unlimited validity and it is also price efficient. So that is why we decided to go with spring edge And she will be talking about what we did the research about what's up Good afternoon everybody. I'm here to talk about what's up and the issues we faced while implementing this thing So basically what's up has the legal issues. It doesn't allow you to send bulk SMS is and or any kind of automation with it It is illegal. So we basically had to figure out a way in which in the legal a circle We could do something to automate this message sending thing We went ahead with the option of chat APIs, but we later like what but we later figured out that it was it was banned And it was blocked then we went ahead with the option of apps recording keystroke So that it would record our message and then send it later But with this thing again, we had the problem of a person again typing a message Manually and then typing the number. So the problem was if a person had to do this He could as well type it on a WhatsApp phone. So why to use this app? So we rejected this option Third was the sites like was a me and what's a bulk message sender as what's a bulk message in the sender name suggests Since it's a bulk message sender. It's illegal and was a me was it had a plug-in of dollar twenty nine dollars So it was basically it had to be implemented with our chat With our communication portal But neither was neither did it seem to legal or nor did they reply the people did not reply So we couldn't go ahead with this option and there was the last option of the using official WhatsApp website we had to figure out a way of Using forms to pass on the message as well as number to the WhatsApp web But again this thing since what's up strictly prevents all kind of automation neither did the official what's a WhatsApp team reply So we couldn't go ahead with this option So the only idea we thought of was to have a dedicated Android phone for this purpose It could have a sort of an app which just sits over the OS of the Android phone And it should regularly pull the server to get the message as well as a number after it gets a message It can contact the WhatsApp It can basically interface with the WhatsApp on the phone and then like a UI testing Mechanism it can send the message to the parents, but this requires In-depth knowledge of OS and we are still we were still studying and discovering it So basically since what's up had many legal issues and the automation thing was kind of not possible We went ahead with the bulk SMS thing since SMS also does not require online Net connections, so it was easy for all the society also cycle people use it And the challenges we faced with this was what's up basically had the legal issues And since you're working with a live project the customers were regularly updating their suggestions and they were giving their requirements So we had to cope up with them and implement it regarding our site And then the secondly what we learned was Android programming both of us are new to Android So we started with Android studio and learned and developed basic apps So it was a very nice experience to work on a live project now. Let's show a demo of Okay, so during the first presentation here all of you have seen how the KG school IP Bombay site looks So we just want to walk you through the modifications that we have made First we will go to the log-in site So this is more of a techno legal issue because once it comes to parents posting content on the website and forwarding it via SMS to users We naturally have to put up disclaimers regarding the fact that they need to be responsible for the content that is going on to this website Every new user has to be approved by the admins. So we'll just show you with a pre-approved User ID just like to show you how we comment on a post. So these are all the public discussions So when you navigate to a specific discussion, we have a counter variable because every SMS is restricted to 160 characters So we don't let the user type more than that and we request them to break the message into two if they really have a Need for it to extend 160. So once they hit the submit button We basically have our script running which calls the third-party API that is spring edge and we also at the same time simultaneously Update a log file so that we can keep track of the SMS's that have been sent So we would show you the log file, but then we would have to log into the server for that, but we can show you Sample which we've created yesterday So this is a simple log file which has the details of the numbers to which our SMS has been forwarded to and the date and timestamp Thank you Couple of questions. Do you know that there's a hardware piece? Okay, that comes in which I can take my SIM card and put it and that can send the SMS. I don't need the bulk of message service Yes, sir, but we want to automate it and run it whenever we want The whole purpose is that We are posting a comment on the website and it goes to the third no sending an SMS for sending an SMS There's a hardware device which costs about three thousand. It can host about I think some at least three to four SIM cards Okay, and then it has got a interface to the PC and you can send whatever SMS you want You don't have to work with a bulk website Okay, so that would have solved a lot of your problem. It's cost hardly three thousand rupees or something No, it's a hardware device which plugs on to your PC Okay, you can say It's not a question cheap you don't have to do anything else Okay, it was directly programmable You can send I mean the other question I had was why 150 restriction Because the SMS has to be sent so sir said that we had to have this restriction of 160 So that it could be also sent with SMS. Normally if it is more this But he did not want it Yesterday so this you're sending sending SMS what we're receiving If you're gone for that hardware box option Since it has got your own this thing it can receive and you can access it. That is why that is better You're purchased one. I think you're not using it But he can get he had found this out because we wanted to send SMS you're not implemented I think you purchased it Why you didn't implement WhatsApp? So that they had many legal issues basically they did not want anybody to automate They want a person to manually open the but you are going to write an Android app. No, is that legal or illegal? That is working with a dedicated phone. So we think it should be legal There's been a lot of debate, but it we can't say with a hundred percent assurance that it is legal But it's probably the most legal option we have at hand and that's not something we could pursue without being sure So we are we put it at bay But we explored multiple options and that's probably the most It's legal business who who is declared What's up, what's up documentation the WhatsApp site what's upside because they have been working on their own spin-off for bulk SMS Which they plan to then tell and you know, so that's why they don't want any There have been a lot of APS which work and have been recently banned Because they're working on they've been blocked because they're working on Until the time they block your Android, okay Yes, sir, but the algorithms are very efficient because In case you send end up sending your message to a number, which is not registered on what's up Then immediately your account gets blocked if you send more than almost four to five Messages for fixed time again, it gets I don't know how what's up will ever realize that this phone is sending automatic They are very fancy algorithms. So I mean we have not be a any fancy algorithm I will ensure that I'll send one WhatsApp message every five seconds. I Can delay my sending Already when we send bulk email we delay it. Yes, so that is possible. But again, it's not allowed by what's up. They don't And there will be inconsistencies not a risk Professor Supratik like your work