Partnerships:

Why are the "New" messages in my NOC mailbox never flagged as "Filed"? 

When a message arrives in a mailbox, it is flagged as new and transmitted over our forward path radio frequency to the designated PMU. When the PMU receives the message, it responds with an acknowledgement signal that is transmitted over our reverse path radio frequency. When the NOC receives this acknowledgement, it changes the state property on the message from "New" to "Filed".

Therefore, there are at least two scenarios when your messages are never flagged as "Filed". One is when you have your PMU turned off. The other is when your mailbox is assigned a Server PIN -- that is you have a PIN for which there is no PMU.

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How long are my messages stored in my mailbox at the NOC? 

All 2-way messages are stored for a maximum of 72 hours, and 1-way messages are stored for a maximum of 99 hours. Messages can be deleted from a mailbox at any time during its lifetime. Every day the NOC processes each mailbox and deletes all messages older than 72/99 hours.

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When does my mailbox get full and what happens? 

Once the number of messages in a NOC mailbox reaches 300, it is considered full. At that time the mailbox will no longer accept messages until the messages count falls back below 300. There are two different ways in which you can reduce the message count in your mailbox. First, you can simply wait for the messages to be automatically deleted after 72 hours. Secondly, you can manually delete messages from your mailbox. This can be accomplished programmatically with the SkyTel SDK or manually with the 1-800-SKYTEL2 IVR.

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Why do I continue to retrieve messages as "New" or "Filed" once I've deleted them from my mailbox? 

When you delete a message from your mailbox, you are effectively requesting that the NOC "flag" that message for deletion. Periodically, a Delete Process runs and genuinely removes all messages that are flagged for deletion from each mailbox. Thus, at any one time you may have many "deleted" messages still in your mailbox. Please note that these messages do NOT count toward your mailbox size limit.

There is a delay between the time you submit a Delete Request and the time it is actually flagged for deletion. Depending on traffic at the NOC, it is possible for this delay to extend up to, and possibly beyond, 15 minutes. Thus, it follows that, if you retrieve your messages after you've submitted a delete request and before the messages get flagged for deletion, you will retrieve those messages again as "New" or "Filed", and you will continue to retrieve them as such until they are flagged for deletion.

One developer circumvents this problem by maintaining an array of recently retrieved Message ID's so that when he retrieves new messages, he can check their Message ID's against the array and eliminate any duplicates.

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