Hi everyone!

In this article, we will explain a bit more about the different ways in which you can share media from the Foto Master Photo Booth software and how to custom-build your own online sharing method.



TABLE OF CONTENTS



Introduction

Creations captured by your Foto Master photo booth software can be shared online with participants using 4 methods that are already available through the software, or by using a special 5th method which is custom-built online sharing.



Types of Online sharing

To help you make well-informed decisions that best suit your needs, we need to first briefly go over the nature of each online sharing method:


Method #1: Online Sharing by Email using Foto Master’s Servers

Costs: Courtesy service with sandbox server

Requirements: None

Advantages:

  1. Good deliverability
  2. No additional costs
  3. No setup is required
  4. Analytics is provided in the software
  5. Export of email addresses is available in the software
  6. Your own email address is automatically targeted when recipients click "reply"

Limitations:

  1. Messages are sent with a Foto Master sender address (for example no-reply@fotomasterltd.net)
  2. No subscription management or advanced post-delivery analytics such as click and view tracking (yet)



Method #2: Online Sharing by MMS using Free Carrier Services

Costs: Courtesy service with sandbox server

Requirements: None

Advantages:

  1. No additional costs
  2. No setup is required
  3. Analytics is provided in the software
  4. Export of phone numbers is available in the software

Limitations:

  1. Deliverability is not guaranteed and unpredictable
  2. No control over sender information or reply destination
  3. No subscription management or post-delivery analytics




Method #3: Online Sharing by MMS using Twilio Account

Costs: Typically $4 for Twilio’s initial one-time account setup fee and a cost per each message sent

Requirements: A working personal Twilio account

Advantages:

  1. Excellent reliable deliverability
  2. Cost-effective for most activations
  3. Quick and easy to set up in the software once you have a working personal Twilio account
  4. Analytics is provided both in the software and in the Twilio account
  5. Export of phone numbers is available in the software

Limitations: Businesses lacking an EIN currently experience issues getting their account approved for use by Twilio




Method #4: Online Sharing by Social Media using an iPad, Stand, and a 3rd Part App

Costs:

  1. Initial purchase costs of an iPad and a stand for it
  2. Social media sharing service costs vary by 3rd party apps

Requirements:

  1. iPad
  2. iPad Stand
  3. 3rd party sharing app

Advantages: Seamless transfer of media from the software to the iPad using a hotspot connection

Limitations:

  1. 3rd party social media sharing apps often require participants to log into their account using the sharing station’s iPad which may cause discomfort and raise security concerns
  2. Additional hardware requirements in the form of an iPad and a stand for it
  3. Additional costs for the social media sharing service by a 3rd party app




Method #5: Custom-Built Online Sharing

Costs: Vary by the nature of your development and the resources you spend to develop, host, and maintain it

Requirements:

  1. A domain name
  2. A working web server
  3. Someone to develop your custom sharing methods and maintain your domain name, web server, and custom development

Advantages:

  1. The sky's the limit. You may integrate with any 3rd party provider and handle sharing however you like with no constraints.
  2. Developing might be cost-effective and profitable in case you efficiently create and maintain a custom-sharing option that allows you to charge more for your services

Limitations: Financially and operationally risky if you’ll spend development and maintenance resources on a custom online sharing method that won’t increase actual profit for your business



All About Custom-Built Online Sharing

With the custom-built online sharing option, the software basically puts the data needed for online sharing in your own hands, allowing you to handle sharing however you like with no constraints.


What Data Will You Need to Handle Online Sharing Yourself?

To handle online sharing yourself you will need to get:

  1. The photo or video file to share.

  2. The phone number or email address to share the file with.

  3. The message title you’ve defined for the activation.

  4. The message body you’ve defined for the activation.


How Does the Data Need for Online Sharing Get Into Your Own Hands

Routing the data needed for online sharing into your own hands is simple.

Navigate to the ‘Globals’ tab → ‘MMS’ in the software, input web URLs that you own into the ‘SMS Service PHP’ and ‘Email Service PHP’ fields, and click the Save button.


The software will now route the data needed for online sharing to your web URLs when you use the Sharing by MMS and Sharing by Email features.

Q: What if I won’t have or if I lose an internet connection during an event?

A: The software maintains a queue that will gradually deliver the data of each sharing action to your URLs when an internet connection becomes available.



What Types of Sharing Methods You May Custom-Build Yourself?

Theoretically, there are no limits or constraints to sharing methods you may custom-build yourself. To give you an idea, let’s go over a spectrum of possibilities you’ll have.


Rebuilding Online Sharing Features that are Already Offered by Foto Master

You may rebuild online sharing features that are already offered by Foto Master to obtain complete control over them and to extend them further to suit your needs.

Features you may rebuild are Online Sharing by Email, Online Sharing by MMS using Free Carrier Services, and Online Sharing by MMS using your own Twilio account.


Motivation Example: Using Your Own Email Address as the Sender when Sharing by Email

When using Foto Master’s built-in Sharing by Email feature, messages are sent with a Foto Master sender address (for example no-reply@fotomasterltd.net).

Bad News ?: It’s technically impossible for Foto Master to use your email address as the sender without direct access to it from Foto Master’s servers (and still provide reliable deliverability) - attempting this is called email spoofing. This is why Foto Master is using its own authenticated email addresses as the sender when sharing messages by email on your behalf.

Good News ?: However, there is a technical option to automatically target your own email address when recipients click reply to email messages Foto Master had sent on your behalf - and this is how our built-in feature works right now.

More Good News ?: By rebuilding the Sharing by Email feature on your own server, you can use your own email address as the sender.

Even More Good News?! ?: Foto Master already prepared a basic sample script (written with PHP) that you or your developer may use to get started faster with your own server - the file is available through the support team.

Motivation Example: Trying to Increase Deliverability when Sharing by MMS using Free Carrier Services

Sharing by MMS using free carrier services is a method where participants select their mobile carrier and input their mobile phone number.

This method works by sending the shared file and message to carriers using email. The email messages then get converted to MMS by the carriers’ services and sent to the intended recipient.

As with some free things in life, the deliverability of this sharing method is not guaranteed. These services are public and have no authentication so they are bombarded with millions of requests at any given time.

Deliverability is unpredictable and depends on the selected mobile carrier, the load on that carrier’s service at the time of trying and countless other technical server regulations that each carrier’s service has behind the scenes.

Each carrier's service has its own capacity and prioritization rules for accepting and delivering a request. During high load, a carrier’s service might not even respond to a request.

Carriers' servers may also look at the email address the message is being sent from. If you attempt to manually send an email to be converted to MMS to one of the carriers' servers for the first time - it may have a relatively higher chance of being delivered within a reasonable time. But when you attempt to send a few hundreds during an actual activation, then the carrier's server might deprioritize your request. Obviously, using a unique email address for every email message you send to a carrier's server is impractical generally speaking (and will not guarantee deliverability regardless).

There are technical guidelines which can optimize the deliverability rate (while still subject to each carrier's server and service limitations) and Foto Master's servers (set as default in the software) employ all of them.

By rebuilding the Sharing by Email feature on your own server, you can use your own email address as the sender, thus sending less requests then Foto Master does overall, which might help you get higher prioritizations. 

BUT PLEASE TAKE INTO ACCOUNT: Going through the trouble of doing so might still result in the same deliverability as using Foto Master’s servers or might even result in worse deliverability (this is because the number of requests is just one of countless possible aspects affecting deliverability with this method). 

For reliable online sharing deliverability use a different method from the ones mentioned in this article.



Building Online Sharing Features that are Not Offered by Foto Master Directly

You or your developer may programmatically integrate with other 3rd party providers to use their services. You may also develop additional services for your clients on your own.

Motivation Example: Using a Different Paid 3rd Party Provider of Your Choice When Sharing by MMS

The software offers a built-in feature for online sharing by MMS using your own Twilio account. Twilio is a world-leading provider of communication services offering reliable and cost-effective services for our general purposes as photo booths.

However, you might want to send MMS messages through a different 3rd party provider if you’ve found pricing or a user experience that suits you better or maybe you’ve experienced difficulties approving your account with Twilio.

Motivation Example: Using a Paid 3rd Party Provider of Your Choice When Sharing by Email

Some paid 3rd party emailing providers offer advanced services that you may find cost-effective for your business. For example, some providers offer newsletter subscription management, advanced post-delivery analytics such as click and view tracking, and more.

Motivation Example: Sharing by an Online Gallery and Other Social and Communication Platforms

Foto Master is set to offer a service that includes an automatically created online gallery with customizable styling, access controls, advanced sharing analytics, shareable links per file, and options to share gallery files to social networks, instant messaging apps, and other online platforms.

In the meantime, however, you or your developer may use the custom-built online sharing method to create your own online gallery solution.

Motivation Example: Processing the Shared Message and File Even Further before Delivering It to the Intended Recipient

Once you have the shared files in your own server’s hands, you may want to develop and apply new image processing features that you’ll then be able to offer to your clients.



How to Start Custom-Building Your Own Online Sharing Method in Practice?

You now know why and when you may want to custom-build a sharing method and that in order to route the data needed for online sharing into your own hands you need your own web URLs where the shared file and message will be sent to by the software. Let’s now cover what it involves in practice.



With Freedom comes Responsibility

Once the software routes the data needed for sharing to your own web URLs, Foto Master team’s ability to support the sharing operation ends.


We’ve now reached the advanced part of the article and everything below is beyond the scope of Foto Master support services.


How To Get Your Own Web URLs

To have full control over your own Web URLs and their functions you will generally need your own domain name (for example your-own-domain-name.com), a working web server (usually set up through an account with a cloud computing platform such as Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services and GoDaddy among countless others) and last but not least: You will need someone to develop your custom sharing methods and maintain your domain name, web server and custom development.

If you’re not a skilled web developer, you will need to hire one to achieve the above requirements. It is highly recommended to ascertain that custom-building your own online sharing method will be a practical and profitable move for your business before going ahead with it.



How to Access the Shared File and Message Data Routed to your Web URLs

The following information is intended for the developer of your custom-built online sharing method.

The web URL set in the ‘Email Service PHP’ field in the software will receive the following data per sharing action:

Variable Purpose

Variable Name

Variable Type

Variable Location

PHP Access Example

The intended recipient’s email address

emailGuest

String

HTTP POST

$_POST[ 'emailGuest' ]

The title of the message 

emailSubject

String

HTTP POST

$_POST[ 'emailSubject' ]

The textual body of the message

emailMessage

String

HTTP POST

$_POST[ 'emailMessage' ]

The image or video created by the photo booth

Filedata

The raw content of the image or video file

HTTP POST

$_FILES[ 'Filedata' ][ 'tmp_name' ]

The name of the image or video file

HTTP POST

$_FILES[ 'Filedata' ][ 'name' ]

The type of the image or video file

HTTP POST

$_FILES[ 'Filedata' ][ 'type' ]


The web URL set for the ‘SMS Service PHP’ field in the software will receive the following data per sharing action:

Variable Purpose

Variable Name

Variable Type

Variable Location

PHP Access Example

Identifier for a personal Twilio account

accountSID

String

HTTP POST

$_POST[ 'accountSID' ]

Authentication token for a personal Twilio account

authToken

String

HTTP POST

$_POST[ 'authToken' ]

The intended recipient’s phone number

toPhoneNumber

String

HTTP POST

$_POST[ 'toPhoneNumber' ]

The textual body of the message

mmsMessage

String

HTTP POST

$_POST[ 'mmsMessage' ]

The image or video created by the photo booth

Filedata

The raw content of the image or video file

HTTP POST

$_FILES[ 'Filedata' ][ 'tmp_name' ]

The name of the image or video file

HTTP POST

$_FILES[ 'Filedata' ][ 'name' ]

The type of the image or video file

HTTP POST

$_FILES[ 'Filedata' ][ 'type' ]


Q: Is there an example of storing and processing shared file and message data that my developer can see?

A:  Yes! Foto Master already prepared a basic sample script (written with PHP) that you or your developer may use to get started faster with your own server - the example is for sharing by email and the file is available through the support team.