Receive and respond to text notifications

You can receive text messages from xMatters on text phones and pagers, and respond to the notifications if your device is capable.

One-way pager

If you have been notified via a one-way pager, you must call into xMatters to respond. For more information, see Call in to retrieve alerts.

Text phone or two-way pager

If you are notified via a text-enabled (SMS) phone or two-way pager, the instructions and response options will be listed within the message itself.

Most SMS responses do not include support for additional annotations or notes. Keep your responses short, and limited to the options described in the notification.

SMS validity period

Undelivered SMS notifications stay active for two hours, after which they're marked as expired and discarded. This is to address inherent issues with the technology, such as the inability to see when a message was actually sent. This way you don't receive notifications that are outdated and no longer need your attention (for example, when reconnecting after a long flight or after a provider outage). We recommend adding a backup device such as email, phone, or the xMatters mobile app to cover these gaps with SMS.

Receive long texts as a single message

The maximum length of a text message is 160 characters. SMS messages longer than this are split into multiple texts, which may break embedded links or URLs that are included in the message.

To receive long texts as a single message, you can enable multimedia messages (MMS) on your device. Confirm with your provider that they support MMS, and then check that it's enabled in your device settings.

Example text notifications and responses

Alerts may appear differently on your device, and the message for your alert may have been formatted by your xMatters Administrator to include different options and display features.