Relevant Links
Echelon Companies page: https://text-reg.realgeeks.com/admin/resources/companies
- Echelon Login:
Username: admin
Password: popcorn-ensnare-fiancee
Twilio Subaccount Search: https://console.twilio.com/us1/account/manage-account/subaccounts
A2P registration link for clients: https://www.realgeeks.com/a2p10dlc
Internal A2P support doc: https://support.realgeeks.com/hc/en-us/articles/15636144977683-Twilio-A2P-10DLC-Registration-Process-Internal-
Client facing A2P support doc: https://support.realgeeks.com/hc/en-us/articles/18257474018195
Best Practices
- Echelon is a system built to facilitate registering clients for A2P messaging automatically. It’s a useful tool, but Twilio should be the source of truth if any conflicts arise. Twilio should be the first stop when investigating rejections, or a client’s registration status.
- Whenever you help a client with their registration, check to see if their TFN registration has started. If not, make sure to start it in Echelon so that the client can use their TFN while their local number registration is in progress.
- When a client calls about a rejected registration, one of the first things to check is if they registered with the correct business type. Many agents are sole proprietors and cause issues with their registration by adding a bad business number or their SSN to their submission. If you think they registered incorrectly, ask them if their real estate business is registered under an EIN (or business number for Canada clients), or if they file taxes with their SSN. If they file using their SSN, they should be registered as a sole proprietor with no EIN.
- If you are helping a sole proprietor client with their registration and you notice that their business number looks like an SSN, ask the client if they entered their SSN as part of the registration. If they did, edit the submission to remove the SSN.
- If you are helping a client with their registration, and the campaign is approved while the ticket is still open, it is generally a good idea to remove the TFN from the client’s CRM as long as their local number is working. TFNs are generally subject to more strict regulations than local numbers and the client will likely have a better experience texting with a local number. Before doing this, tell the client that if they have any active conversations with leads via the TFN, they might want to notify their leads that they are switching numbers to avoid confusion.
- Once a client has registered for A2P messaging, do not remove their local numbers or disable texting if they intend to use local numbers in the future. Doing so will cause undelivered texts once the local numbers are added back to the system because the local number will have to go through another registration process in the background.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What does the full A2P registration process look like on our side of things?
A: First, the client submits their registration to us. Then, we submit the information to Twilio to kick off the process. Echelon will automatically start most Brand registrations after the client submits their information, but sole proprietors with no EIN will need to have their Brand registrations submitted to Twilio by hand.
After the brand is approved, Echelon will automatically start the Campaign registration, even for sole proprietors with no EIN. Once the Campaign is approved, the client will receive an automated email letting them know that they can start using their texting number.
Check out the support article on the registration process for more technical details: https://support.realgeeks.com/hc/en-us/articles/15636144977683-Twilio-A2P-10DLC-Registration-Process-Internal-
Q: How do I check if a client submitted their registration?
A: Search for the client’s UUID in the Submissions section of Echelon. If there are no results, try the client’s domain instead. If there are no results for either, then you can check the client’s text message settings to verify if texting is enabled and if they still need to complete their registration.
Please note that the registration status in the LM Superusers view is not accurate and will always show that the client is registered. You’ll need to log in as the admin to see the true status.
Q: How do I check the progress of a client’s registration?
A: In the client’s subaccount in Twilio, navigate as follows:
Develop > Messaging > Regulatory Compliance
You can then click into the Brand and Campaign sections for details on the registration.
If either is still in progress, our current ETA for the registration to complete is 1-2 weeks from the date of submission.
Q: How long will it take for my client’s registration to complete?
A: The current estimate is 1-2 weeks from the date that the brand registration was submitted.
The only measure of progress that we have is if the brand registration has been approved or not. The brand will be processed in less than a day in most cases, so if a client has been waiting for weeks with the brand registration still in progress, there’s probably something wrong.
We are at the mercy of Twilio when it comes to the length of time it takes to register a campaign. If a client asks us to speed up the registration and we’re still waiting on the campaign, there is nothing we can do short of submitting a ticket to Twilio in extreme cases.
Q: How do I start a brand registration for a client in Echelon?
A: If the client has an EIN (or Business Number for Canada clients), you can start the registration in Echelon. Search for the client’s UUID in Companies. If you can’t find any results, check Submissions instead.
If the UUID shows in Submissions but not Companies, we’ll need to link the submission to the client’s company to proceed. You can link a submission to a client’s company by using the Link To Company action at the top right of the submission detail page.
Once the submission is linked to the company, check the box to the left of the submission on the company detail page, and click Actions. Then click Start Registration. Once you click Yes, you’ll know if the registration was started successfully by a green confirmation message at the bottom right.
Q: How do I start a campaign registration for a client in Echelon?
A: Echelon is set up to automatically start campaign registrations for all registration types once the brand is approved. However, you can still start a campaign registration manually if you need to resubmit a campaign, or if Echelon didn’t kick off the campaign automatically.
To start the campaign registration, go to the company detail page by searching Companies for the client’s UUID. Click the checkbox on the left next to the client’s approved brand, and click Actions above the brand. Then, click Start Campaign Registration and click Yes to confirm. If any issues are starting the registration, you’ll see an error message pop up at the bottom right with some information on what caused the error.
Q: What should I do if a client’s brand or campaign is rejected?
You can view the reason for rejection by clicking into the brand or campaign attached to the client’s subaccount. For now, if you need help with a rejection message, reach out to the A2P heroes with Twilio’s reason for rejection and we can help. We will be working on another document with common rejection messages in the near future.
Q: How do I start a TFN registration for a client in Echelon?
A: Go to the client’s company detail page in Echelon. Then, click Actions at the top right of the page and click Register Toll-Free Numbers. If there are any issues, you’ll get an error message with more details on the bottom right of the page.
Q: How can I tell if a TFN is registered?
A: In the client’s subaccount in Twilio, navigate as follows:
Develop > Phone Numbers > Manage > Active Numbers
You should see the client’s texting numbers here. If the TFN is registered, there won’t be any text next to it. If the registration is in progress, it will say “Toll-Free Verification In Progress”. If the registration has not been started, it will say “Toll-Free Verification Required”.
Q: I can’t find a client’s submission in Echelon. What should I do?
A: Try searching Submissions for the client’s UUID first, and if that doesn’t work, try searching for the client’s domain. Sometimes searching for a submission returns a result that looks like a blank box. This is a valid submission, but it’s showing blank because it has not been linked to the company.
If your search returns nothing at all, check the client’s text messaging settings in the CRM to see if they’ve completed registration. If they have and the submission is still missing, have the client redo their submission using this link: https://www.realgeeks.com/a2p10dlc
Q: The information I see in Echelon does not match the information I see in Twilio. What should I do?
A: Twilio is the source of truth in these cases. We need to edit the fields in Echelon to match what we see in Twilio. For now, ask A2P heroes for advice on a case-by-case basis.
Q: The client submitted their registration multiple times. Which submission should I use?
A: If in doubt, you should always use the most recent submission. When searching for the client’s submission, it will appear first in the list of results. If on the phone with the client, you can verify some of the information in the submission to be sure that you selected the right one.
Q: If a client has multiple websites, do they need to complete their registration multiple times?
A: Yes. The client will need to do a new A2P registration for each CRM that they want to use a local number for.
Q: How do I check Twilio message logs to find out why my client’s texts are going undelivered?
A: In the client’s subaccount in Twilio, navigate as follows:
Monitor > Logs > Messaging
If the client is getting undelivered texts, the undelivered messages will be highlighted in red. On the right-hand side, you can hover over the information icon for more details on the error. If you’re not sure how to handle an error, ask A2P heroes for now.
Q: My client has multiple texting numbers, but texts from some of them are going undelivered. Why?
A: The client is probably a sole proprietor. Sole proprietor registrations are only allowed to have one local number for texting. If the client adds another local number to their CRM, Twilio will see that they registered as a sole proprietor and will automatically stop any messages from the additional number from being delivered.
You can check the Twilio message logs to see which local number is delivering texts. If the other local numbers aren’t delivering texts because they are sole proprietors, remove the additional numbers. DO NOT remove the original number.
Q: My client is fully registered for local number texting, but texts from their local number are going undelivered. Why is this happening?
A: On top of the normal A2P registration process that clients have to go through to use their local numbers, there is also a hidden registration process for each local number. This registration happens alongside the A2P registration process and typically it does not cause any issues.
However, if a local number is added after the A2P registration is completed, the number will have to go through this hidden process before it can be used. There is no status in Twilio to tell us if the hidden registration has been completed or not.
The only way to know if this is happening is by checking the client’s Twilio logs. If a local number is undergoing this invisible registration process, all texts sent from that number will go undelivered. These undelivered texts will have an error message associated with them that says that the number has not been registered for A2P messaging.
This hidden registration process is why it is important to add all the local numbers the client wants before their A2P registration is completed. It is also why we don’t recommend picking a different local number after the A2P registration completes. Similar issues can be caused by disabling texting and re-enabling it since disabling texting releases all previously claimed numbers.
Q: What should I do if a client’s brand or campaign is rejected?
You can view the reason for rejection in Twilio by clicking into the brand or campaign attached to the client’s subaccount. For now, if you need help with a rejection message, reach out to the A2P heroes with Twilio’s reason for rejection and we can help. We will be working on another document with common rejection messages in the near future.
Q: My client's A2P brand and campaign are both verified in Twilio and Echelon, but the phone number in their CRM is disabled.
A: Reach out to escalations for assistance. They will make the necessary change to enable the number.
Q: What do we do if we have confirmed the customer’s information should be 100% correct, yet are still receiving errors for the brand or campaign that they do not meet the requirement to register or the error states their information is incorrect?
A: If the customer has a business that is incorporated or they are a sole prop with an EIN or BN-9 (Canadian registration number), ask the customer for a copy of their documentation for proof, and then submit a ticket to Twilio. If they are a sole prop without an EIN, you may also want to submit a ticket to Twilio if the error states their information is incorrect.
You can submit a ticket to Twilio by going to the Help and Support Center (found in the bottom left of the page). When submitting a ticket follow this template:
- Name the ticket “A2P Brand (or Campaign) Registration Failure.”
- CC Natalie Hannah (nhannah@twilio.com ) as she handles many of these A2P tickets.
- In the body of the ticket, include the reason for the ticket, and provide the following IDs:
- Account SID (can be found on the customer’s profile or the failed campaign).
- Brand SID
- Campaign SID (if one exists)
- Messaging Service SID
- Label the ticket as P2-Degraded.
- Include any documentation as an attachment.
These numbers are unique to Twilio for them to be able to troubleshoot efficiently.
Note: UUID should never be included in the ticket as the UUID is specific to customers for Real Geeks, not Twilio.
Note: Tickets submitted can only be seen by the user who submitted them. So if you submit a ticket to Twilio, nobody else will be able to see the status of it but you.