Today our BUStxt text messaging system went live. I was responsible for this endeavour from the IT end and I am very pleased with how it turned out.

Because of the existing real-time scheduling web services that we built for systems like Telebus and the electronic signs that are going up all over the city, developing the application that drives BUStxt was relatively straightforward. A developer and I independently came up with virtually the same command set which we implemented. The parser was the most complex part of the system, which was constructed entirely using Ruby on Rails.

We put out an RFQ for SMS aggregation services as soon as the project was conceived, and once awarded, we chose 278898 (bustxt) as our short code. After a lengthy approval process due to a CWTA brownout period at the end of the year, our number was provisioned in late January. A period of beta testing ensued which saw us finalize the command set and work out bugs.

A formal press release will be issued tomorrow morning.