Phone Number Validation

Overview

In order to successfully text with contacts, each contact must have a valid mobile phone number stored as the mobile number on his/her Cadence record. While contacts may provide your school with a phone number as the "mobile number", sometimes they enter a landline number or a number that is invalid altogether.

Sending text messages to landline phone numbers or invalid phone numbers will increase your  undelivered rate in Cadence. Additionally, the more texts that you attempt to send to these phone numbers, the higher the chance that the carrier starts to view your texting phone number as spam which can eventually lead to carrier violations.

The validation allows you to check the phone numbers on the contact records you store in your information system and import into the platform, telling you whether or not each number is a true, valid mobile number.

Enabling Phone Number Validation

To enable the service, navigate to Marketplace and located Phone Number Validation. Click the toggle to enable the service. For questions about enabling the service and associated costs, please contact your Mongoose Client Success Lead.

Click [ Enable] to confirm.

Validation Methods Summary

Validation on Import

Phone numbers you include in the MobileNumber field will be automatically checked for validation each time you import data into Cadence. Cadence will automatically take any number being imported and reformat it to follow a consistent 1-XXX-XXX-XXXX format. This is so that you don't have to adjust or worry about how numbers are stored in your system of record. 

If the phone number is a valid mobile number, the contact will be imported. If the phone number is invalid or anything other than a mobile number, the contact will not be imported. An error record will be generated indicating that the phone number was not a valid mobile number.

Ad-Hoc

Phone numbers can be validated even before (or after) import using the ad-hoc validation tool. Validation status is stored in the Cadence database even if the phone number does not currently belong to an imported contact. If it does, that existing record is validated.

Navigate to " Team Name" > Data Management > Number Validation. Paste phone numbers into the text box and click [Validate]. An email report will be sent to you with the results of the validation for each phone number.

Note: This does not import the phone numbers--it only shows you the validation for the phone numbers you entered.

Validation on Text Delivery and/or Reply

If you send a text message to a phone number and that phone number successfully receives the message, it will be validated as a mobile number in Mongoose. If a contact sends one of your users a text message and that message is successfully delivered to you (i.e., an incoming message/reply), we will validate the phone number as a mobile number.

Note: If an "unknown contact" or "cold contact" sends a text to a Cadence user's phone number, we validate the sender's phone number as "validated." We do not store type or carrier for the number.

How Validation is Stored in Contact Data

There are three different pieces of information stored with each phone number.

• "Validation Status" tells you whether or not the number has been processed for validation. Only valid numbers can be imported; unvalidated numbers may exist in Cadence if they were imported prior to turning on the validation service.

• "Validation Carrier Type" tells you the type of phone number it is. Only mobile numbers can be imported.

• "Validation Carrier Name" tells you the name of the carrier (if available).
• VOIP numbers from "trusted" carriers can be imported. Mongoose updates a list of trusted carriers as we obtain delivery data and can verify that you will be able to successfully deliver texts to each provider.

Confirming Current Validation Status For Imported Contacts

Current number validation status for each contact in a team's data can be found by generating a Contact Data export. Navigate to Reports > Contact Data > Export to receive an email with the file. The columns containing validation data are:

• Result (e.g., valid, invalid, unvalidated)
• Type (e.g., mobile, landline, VOIP)
• Carrier (e.g., Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc.)

If you would like to validate all of the currently unvalidated numbers belonging to your imported contacts, sort the Contact Data export file by Unvalidated then copy/paste the numbers into the ad-hoc validation tool (referenced above).

Other Validation Methods

• If you  manually add a contact, the number will be validated at that time.
• If an Admin user manually edits the mobile number on an existing contact record in Cadence, the new number will be validated at that time.
• If a bulk  Identifier Update is performed, all phone numbers included will be validated at that time.