Texting from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

This article explains how to send text messages from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 without the use of 3^rd party components. 

In order to text someone from your email all you have to do is send an email using a cell phone number with an appropriate domain extension of their carrier such as: 5135551212@txt.att.net. The domain extension of @txt.att.net specifically denotes the AT&T cell phone service. This has nothing to do with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

The email message will come into the recipient’s phone as a text message and their text reply will come into your email as a reply. The following web site has a long list of cell phone providers’ texting domains.
http://www.emailtextmessages.com/

So, how can we integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 with texting? There are two ways to accomplish this:

1) It’s very easy to send text messages from Outlook and track the email back to CRM. You just type in the cell phone number with the appropriate cell phone domain extension and send. If you want to track it in CRM, you just click on the tracking icons in Outlook for CRM.
2) If you want to send texts from within the Microsoft Dynamics CRM I.E. (non-Outlook) interface, there is a hoop you have to jump through, which is to temporarily change the Contacts Email. As part of the instructions on how to do this, I will explain WHY you have to do this… 

How the email interface \ process works in Microsoft Dynamics CRM: When you create an email in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM I.E. interface you are forced to select an Entity, then a specific record, such as Contact, then the actual person’s name you want to email. The interface doesn’t give you the option to manually type in a phone number. So in order to send a text message to the person you have to temporarily change the selected Contacts Email field from their normal email to their cell phone number along with their proper text domain (mentioned above). Once the email is sent you would need to change the email field back to their normal email address. This process can be invoked through workflow or done manually. It’s not really pretty but it can be accomplished. The practicality of doing this may not be a real world scenario but these steps can be followed to show how text messages can be sent from CRM without any 3^rd party involvement.