Why Collecting Valid Phone Numbers Matters

Phone numbers are essential for:

To ensure that the data collected is accurate, it's important to validate phone number inputs properly.

We are unable to restrict the phone card's input to a specific number. According to the current implementation, we are not allowed to enter more than fourteen numbers and less than seven numbers.

Screenshots:

Validating Specific Digit Formats (e.g., 10-digit Numbers):

We understand that not every country uses phone numbers with fixed set of digits. The number of digits in a phone number varies by country and depends on factors like population size and the need for unique numbers. For example, North America uses a 10-digit system with a 3-digit area code and a 7-digit local number whereas in countries like Australia Mobile numbers are 12 or 13 digits and India uses 10-digit numbers, including area codes.

While the Phone card has basic validation, it does not natively enforce specific digit limits (e.g., exactly 10 digits for Indian numbers).  We cannot restrict visitors' ability to enter the required number of numbers in accordance with your geographical standards, To handle this, you can implement a workaround using:

• Plug (custom script-based validator)
• Criteria Router (decision logic based on Plug output)
  

To validate the length of the phone number provided in the phone card, we can connect a script-based plug into the bot which can be configured to validate whether or not the phone number value entered in the phone card has a specific length. 

In the script-based plug, we configure both Input and Output parameters:

• The Input parameter is set up to accept the phone number entered by the user.
• The Output parameter is defined to return a text message based on the result of the validation.

This ensures that the phone number is validated through the script, and the corresponding validation message is sent back to the bot for further processing.

In the script-based plug, we can incorporate a Deluge script to validate the length of the phone number obtained as an input parameter.

In this case, the script checks the length of the phone number and returns a text string as the output. This output is then stored as a context variable in the bot, which is subsequently used in the criteria router card to route users based on the returned value.

The output of the code will be “Please enter a valid 10-digit phone number” if the phone number entered by the visitor is not exactly 10 digits. Otherwise, it will display “Correct format.”

Sample Plug Code used for this case:

1. info session;
2. response = Map();
3. if(session.containsKey("phone"))
4. {
5. if(session.get("phone").get("meta").get("phone").isEmpty() == false)
6. {
7. phone_raw = session.get("phone").get("meta").get("phone");
8. }
9. else
10. {
11. phone_raw = session.get("phone").get("value");
12. }
13. if(trim(phone_raw).len() == 10)
14. {
15. message = "Correct format";
16. }
17. else
18. {
19. message = "Please enter a valid 10-digit phone number";
20. }
21. }
22. else
23. {
24. message = "Phone number not found in session";
25. }
26. response.put("message",message);
27. return response;

[Zobot Configurations Explained]