The best way to make a Covs payment, look up an account balance and view your statement will often be to use the website at http://covlets.copsewood.net/ . But if you haven't got a computer, or one isn't in front of you when you want to make a payment or access your account, you can also use your mobile to send a text (SMS) message to a phone number connected to a robot program. With this you can make payments, look up an account balance, and obtain a mini statement with details of your last 3 transactions. This is the full userguide. It's longer than I'd like, but once you've read it, please print, cut out and fold the small cribsheet for the few details which you'll need to keep at hand.
The robot's phone number is: 07797 805 873 . Create an entry for this in your mobile now (suggested name: Covs Robot) . The robot will read your text messages, but it isn't intelligent. So if you text in the wrong format or misspell, you'll get an error message in reply to say what went wrong. The robot uses your mobile phone's originating number securely to identify your account, so your mobile number must be in the Coventry LETS accounts/contacts database first. If you input this in your recent account application correctly, no problem. If you are not sure, you can check your mobile number (phone2) on the website yourself, or if you don't use the Internet but can text using a mobile, ask a friend who has a Covs account and uses the Internet to check the right mobile number is on the website for you. Until the robot can identify your Covs account using your mobile phone number, it won't spend 5p replying to a text if it doesn't know who it's from.
The robot understands commands starting with: HELP, PAY, BAL, STA and EMA. This command word comes first, sometimes followed by other words. The command can be in capitals or small letters or a mixture. You type the command, including other words, all on the single first line of the text (SMS) message. Words, as in written English, have spaces between them. Second and further lines will be ignored.
HEL or HELP, assuming you mobile number is in the COF database, will result in a reply with a summary showing use of these commands. (It's much better to print out the SMS commands cribsheet, which also explains how to use these commands. It's in a format designed to fold and keep in a wallet with your credit cards, and has somewhere for you to write your account number and PIN.)
PAY is used to make a payment from your Covs account to another member. Other words are WHOM, AMOUNT and DETAILS. WHOM must be the account number of the person you are paying e.g. 123 . AMOUNT must be the number of Covs, including a decimal point, e.g. 5.0 . DETAILS must be at the end of the command, and can have one or more words to identify a transaction, e.g. bread and jam . Example (this pays account 123 the amount of 5.0 Covs for bread and jam):
pay 123 5.0 bread and jam
BAL is used to obtain a Covs balance, either for your own account or for another member's account. (It might be a good idea for you to check the balance of someone who wants to make a large Covs purchase from you before you agree to it). The reply you get back will include balance and turnover information. An optional word is WHOM, if used this is the account ID of the person whose balance you are checking. Without a WHOM, you will get information about your own account. Example (obtain balance and turnover details of account 123 ):
bal 123
STA is used to get a mini-statement. The reply will give short details of the last 3 payments into and out of your account. You don't need any other words. You will get a more detailed statement with more payments if you can receive the reply by email, see the EMA command below. Example:
sta
EMA can be used to have your replies sent to an email address, which may work better for you than having replies texted back to your mobile phone, e.g. if your mobile can receive email or you are happy to wait until you can use a computer to see the reply. One word is needed after EMA, either n or N to go back to having replies sent by mobile phone text message, or an email address if you want future replies sent by email to this address. Please don't use an email address which isn't yours here, because you won't get the replies and the address owner might find your replies to be a nuisance. Examples:
ema you@example.com
ema n
The cost for the texts you send is what you normally pay to text a UK phone number. The cost of the text replies you receive will initially come from an allowance of 20 free replies per member to help get you started. If you find this service useful you can pay me (Richard Kay) for more replies at 5p per reply (Minimum £3 for 60). We want to keep these costs down, so if your mobile can receive email, or you are happy to get replies later by email to a normal computer, emailed replies are free. Text message replies are limited to 160 characters and email replies can be longer which will give you a more useful mini-statement.
If your mobile can send email, it's also possible to send any of the commands above to: cpay@copsewood.net . If you'd like to do this input this email address into your mobile now, suggested name Covs Robot. If you use this method, you will have to put your account ID and the 8 digit PIN as 2 words (with a space between them) on the first line of the email you send. The next line will be the one-line command, exactly as described above, but as the second line of the email. Any other lines of the email will be ignored. In this example a member whose account is 123 and PIN is 98765432 requests the balance for account 234 :
123 98765432 bal 234
The information above covers all you are likely to want to know to get started using the robot. The following topics are for those who want to know further details, e.g. if you have accounts in more than 1 community currency using this robot from the same mobile phone.
The number of SMS credits you have left (if you have fewer than 100) will be at the end of any SMS reply you receive, with 1 credit used up for each reply.
Those having accounts in more than one community currency sharing use of the robot phone number from the same mobile number will have to state which currency by preceding commands as described above with an extra word giving the currency symbol, e.g. C for Covs and G for Grouts. Example:
C bal 123
Most users are likely to have their mobile phone number registered to use just one currency, in which case PAY, STA, BAL commands will work as described above and be routed to the correct currency webserver automatically. The currency used by the email responder is identified by each currency using a different email address.
The costs are small and easily found, but we will have to make this service sustainable. The cost will be shared between more than one community currency, one of which is Coventry LETS. So while this service will be provided based upon the ethos of LETSystems, in an open, not for profit and fully accountable way based upon cost of service, the accountability for the small amounts of money likely to be spent and received using it will be to the Coventry LETS AGM as one of the users of this service, and not as the provider of this service.
Very little compared to printing and posting letters. There is a fixed annual cost for the incoming phone number, which will be shared between the community currencies which benefit from use of this. The cost is easily provided compared to the benefits of having a community currency for those able to use one.
Author: Richard Kay, July/August 2010
Version: COVS_0.2 , 7 August 2010