Important Update: TRAI Mandates New SMS Header Format

Important Update: TRAI Mandates New SMS Header Format

Hello everyone,
We have an announcement regarding a new regulation by the Telephone Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) that affects all application-to-person (A2P) SMS services. Starting on May 6, 2025, TRAI has mandated that telecom service providers in India append a suffix to the SMS sender header based on the type of message being delivered. Aimed at improving transparency, this change will impact how your SMS is displayed in the recipient's inbox.

What is the change?

According to TRAI's latest regulation, the sender header section of all A2P SMS messages must include a suffix that will convey the type of message being delivered. Below are the suffixes and their respective categories:
  • P: Promotional messages
  • S: Service messages
  • T: Transactional messages
  • G: Government-authorized messages
For example, if your SMS header read JD-ZYLKER previously, after the change it will read XY–ZYLKER–P, where XY is the operator and circle code, and P stands for promotional message.

Who does the regulation affect?

This change affects A2P SMS services. This means that if you're using bulk SMS to send promotional, transactional, or customer service alerts, this will affect the way your message header is displayed to your recipients.

What is the purpose of this regulation?

Through this regulation, TRAI aims to:
  • Improve transparency and user experience by displaying the SMS type.
  • Reduce spam and fraudulent messages.
  • Standardize SMS headers to monitor messages more effectively. 

How will it affect businesses?

This change will only affect the way message headers are displayed to your recipients. Businesses are not expected to add the suffix manually or change their existing SMS marketing practices. The suffix will be automatically included in the SMS header by the telecom service provider during the DLT scrubbing based on the type of SMS you're sending.
 
Best regards,
Team Zoho Campaigns

      • Sticky Posts

      • Tip of the week 03 - Sending emails in batches

        Today's marketers not only want their email marketing to be efficient, but also smart. For an email campaign, you may think you have all the essential elements for lead conversion—a big mailing list, an attractive template design, and the most-engaging message content, but after hitting the ‘send’ button, you may not get the expected conversions. Wondering why? Here’s one of the major reasons. Many marketers miss out on sending the email campaign the right way. Did you know that you should not be
      • Tip of the week 04 - Know about your recipients' 'prime open time.'

        In today's market, the importance of customer behavior is astounding, with a vast amount of research and resources going into finding how customers make decisions. The process of persuading your customers to open your email and click on your call-to-action becomes easy when you understand the psychology behind their behavioral traits. Time to turn into a psychologist! Let's get to the basics—you want your emails to resonate well with your recipients. So, what's the primary thing involved here? It's
      • Zoho Campaigns Expert Diaries on SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube

        Hi email champs,  As email marketers, we find great lessons in each other's works—be it the subject lines that worked good, the design that was received well, or the CTA that had the maximum clicks. Email marketing encompasses a wide variety of topics spanning everything from creation and design to development and deliverability.  Here's when we from the Zoho Campaigns team found the need to build an email marketing community comprising of seasoned marketers and email geeks who can help each other
      • Email Deliverability Tip #3: Seal the deal with the preheader

        In the last post, we learned about the subject line. Today we'll be learning about the preheader. A preheader is the short text that follows the subject line in an email. The preheader is designed to hint at what your email message is all about. A good preheader should act as a second subject line and convince your contacts to open the email. Now, let's learn the best way to craft a preheader. Your subject line and preheader should work together and accurately convey the gist of your email. Keep
      • Tip of the week 15 - Add subscription-preferences option. Drive more engagement.

        If crafting content for emails, getting creatives done, and running email campaigns is your love, then unsubscribes are the heartbreakers.  You can save your emails from being unsubscribed/trashed by adding a proper subscription-preferences option in your emails (works best at the time of signup). Giving subscribers the option to choose what they want to receive from you and decide how often (frequency of the emails) your emails should hit their inboxes will increase the reach of your campaigns manifolds. 

        • Recent Topics

        • This domain is not allowed to add. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details

          I am trying to setup the free version of Zoho Mail. When I tried to add my domain, theselfreunion.com I got the error message that is the subject of this Topic. I've read your other community forum topics, and this is NOT a free domain. So what is the
        • Print Labels

          How can I configure my address to print my labels like this: Name Mailing Address Mailing City, Mailing State Mailing Zip Country Instead of: Name Mailing Address Mailing City Mailing State Mailing Zip Country Thanks!!!!
        • Mailing labels - Improperly formatted

          All I'm trying to do is print one, properly formatted, mailing label. I'm in the Contacts module. In the default "list view" for mailing labels I selected a single client, hit the "more actions" drop down and selected print mailing label. Unfortunately,
        • Printing mailing labels

          The ability to print mailing labels would seem to be an important, basic, function of a good CRM. I find it very surprising that this has still not been addressed adequately by Zoho. When trying to use the existing "mailing label" included: 1. the data
        • Pageless mode needed to modernise Writer

          When we switched from GSuite to Zoho, one of the easiest apps I found to give up, was Docs. In many ways, Writer has always been more powerful than Docs, especially in terms of workflows/fillable forms/etc. However, I went back into Docs because I notice
        • Zoho Projects - Visual improvement to parent and sub-task relationship

          Hi Projects Team, My feature request is to improve sub-task visibility. Please see screenshot below. I really think parent child relationships could be visually improved. Even if the first letter of the parent task was inline with other same level tasks
        • AI Interview Insights: Turn Recorded Interviews into Quick Transcripts & Summaries

          Evaluating interviews shouldn’t require replaying long recordings or taking manual notes. With AI Interview Insights, you can now review complete transcripts and AI-generated summaries of your One-way (Recorded) interviews right inside Zoho Recruit. This
        • API method to get activity feed in Recruit

          Hi community, I'm trying to figure out - is there any API method tto get information about datetime when Recruit/Candidates record tag where added?
        • Printing Mailing labels

          Is there any way to adjust the size of the printing labels? or product would I use to print labels from Zoho? Thanks, Josef Krieger Moderation Update (14th April 2025): We have another post discussing the same topic with votes and feedback from users.
        • Default to Current Date

          I'm importing data from a excel spread sheet that does not have date column and I'd like the date column in the Zoho Database to default to the current date. Any way I can do this?
        • "Spreadsheet Mode" for Fast Bulk Edits

          One of the challenges with using Zoho Inventory is when bulk edits need to be done via the UI, and each value that needs to be changed is different. A very common use case here is price changes. Often, a price increase will need to be implemented, and
        • Different Company Name for billing & shipping address

          We are using Zoho Books & Inventory for our Logistics and started to realize soon, that Zoho is not offering a dedicated field for a shipping address company name .. when we are creating carrier shipping labels, the Billing Address company name gets always
        • What's New in Zoho Inventory | Q2 2025

          Hello Customers, The second quarter have been exciting months for Zoho Inventory! We’ve introduced impactful new features and enhancements to help you manage inventory operations with even greater precision and control. While we have many more exciting
        • Make Packages from multiple sales order of a single customer

          Our customers sends orders to us very frequently, some times what customer wants is to ship items from 5 to 6 sales orders in a single shipment. it will be very nice if, zoho can implement this function, in which we can select items from other sales orders of the customer.
        • Update CRM Price Books to include volume discounts as per Zoho Books/Inventory

          Once again, Zoho has 3 great products that all store information in different ways (which is not helpful when you attempt to integrate the 3 products - one of the best features of Zoho). Zoho CRM Price Books are basic at best. Zoho Books/Inventory Price
        • Print a price list or price book

          Hi Community. Am I right in concluding that Zoho has no functionality to print a price list from either Zoho CRM, Zoho Inventory or Zoho Books? I won't get stuck on the fact that Zoho doesn't sync price books between Zoho CRM and Books/Inventory (more
        • Start Workflow from Deluge Script

          I have developed a customized process from our CRM that leverages a deluge script to create a statement of work document. Once the document has been created via the merge and store function, I would like the ability to start a workdrive review & approve
        • Show Custom Button in Portal Listview Canvas

          I have created a custom button that shows in a list view of deals (internally I can see it). I have permissions to allow this button on the portal. But it is not displaying in the canvas list? Before I do too much leg work, is this function allowed?
        • Zoho Survey Enhancements

          We love Survey. We use it a ton. It needs some enhancements. Maybe some of these are already on the roadmap? API - this is crucial. We have some complex surveys that take place and need to update records, trigger other functions/automations, etc. I would
        • Work Order Assignment for Engineers Handling Their Own Requests

          I’m setting up FSM for a business where there are multiple engineers, but each engineer handles their own process end-to-end receiving the service request, creating the work order, and completing the field service job. I noticed that I must create an
        • Zoho Sites "pages" management page

          I have 80 plus pages on zoho sites. When I go to the "pages" link to view and edit pages, They are not in any kind of order, so I spend lots of time searching for pages when I need to edit or create new. How can I change the view order of all my pages
        • AI feature in Zoho Desk suggesting answers based on past ticket threads

          Hi I would like to suggest something that would be very useful : instead of suggesting answers based on the Knowledge Base, I think it would be great if Zia could analyze the history of all customer and agents threads, to suggest answers in new tickets.
        • Advanced Customization of the Help Center using JavaScript

          Hello everyone, The Help Center in Zoho Desk can be customized by using HTML and CSS to provide structure and enhance the page's appearance—but what if you want to add interactive and dynamic elements? You can add these effects with JavaScript, a programming
        • Using a CRM Client Script Button to create a Books Invoice

          Hello, I need help handling error messages returned to my client script from a function. The scenario I have setup a client script button which is available from each Deal. This CS executes a crm function, which in turn creates an invoice based on the
        • Using IMAP configuration for shared email inboxes

          Our customer service team utilizes shared email boxes to allow multiple people to view and handle incoming customer requests. For example, the customer sends an email to info@xxxx.com and multiple people can view it and handle the request. How can I configure
        • Introducing Zoho POS for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

          Hey everyone, We are excited to kick-start December with a completely personalized edition of POS for retail businesses in Saudi Arabia to help run your operations with ease. It offers four different subscription plans—Free, Standard, Professional, and
        • Whatsapp Connection Status still "Pending" after migration

          Hello, I migrated my WhatsApp API to Zoho from another provider a day ago. So far the connection status is still “Pending”. There is a problem? How long does it usually take?
        • Unveiling Zoho Sites 2.0 - A new dimension in website building

          Dear Zoho Sites Users, We are thrilled to announce the launch of Zoho Sites 2.0 today! This refresh represents a significant step forward in the capabilities of Zoho Sites and is crucial for creating a lasting and positive impact on our customers' businesses.
        • Subform edits don't appear in parent record timeline?

          Is it possible to have subform edits (like add row/delete row) appear in the Timeline for parent records? A user can edit a record, only edit the subform, and it doesn't appear in the timeline. Is there a workaround or way that we can show when a user
        • Script Editor not an option

          I am trying to apply a script to a sheet and Script Editor is not an option. I don't want to go outside Sheets to do this (like Creator) if it can be done inside Sheets.
        • Zoho CRM - Writing Assistant Tone

          Hi Zoho CRM Team, Text in my emails often gets underlined in yellow because I tend to use a more informal tone with my client's, like using "I'm" instead of "I am". Is there some way for me to tell the system that this is my preferred writing tone, so
        • Not able to link email text.

          Kindly check Zoho Sites. I am unable to turn a text into a email link. The save button does not work. Kindly try yourself to see it not responding to save.
        • Adding Multiple Files to a Zoho Vault Entry

          There is a old blog post talking about adding multiple file attachments to one Zoho Vault Secret: https://www.zoho.com/blog/vault/introducing-new-features-in-zoho-vault-powerful-password-sharing-wider-storing.html Is that still possible, I can see how
        • Migrate data from old to new account

          Hy, Have one Old Zoho Notebook Account with Data , want to migrate that whole Data to New Zoho Notebook Account which is in Zoho One . Is that possible ? If Yes then how?
        • Zoho Analytics Regex Support

          When can we expect full regex support in Zoho Analytics SQL such as REGEXP_REPLACE? Sometimes I need to clean the data and using regex functions is the easiest way to achieve this.
        • RTL Support for Webforms in Zoho CRM

          Dear Zoho CRM Support Team, We are writing to request an enhancement to the webform builder functionality within Zoho CRM. Currently, to create a webform in a right-to-left (RTL) language, the entire CRM instance must be set to RTL, which can be inconvenient
        • Add Custom Reports To Dashboard or Home Tab

          Hi there, I think it would be great to be able to add our custom reports to the Home Tab or Dashboards. Thanks! Chad
        • MCP > Creator connection failing with Claude

          I'm trying to get claude to access any of my Zoho Creator apps and it keeps failing. I have enabled all tools for creator and ensured in claude settings that everything is authorised. Here is what claude says : Unfortunately, the error messages I'm receiving
        • Pricing Strategies: #1 Nuances in Pricing

          When Clara first opened her digital printing shop, pricing was simple. She sold handmade greeting cards, planners, business cards, and other physical items at fixed label prices, individually and in bulk. One SKU, one price, one bill, and that's all it
        • [Free Webinar] Learning Table Series – Education Management in Zoho Creator

          Hello Everyone! We’re excited to invite you to another edition of Learning Table Series, where we showcase how Zoho Creator empowers industries with innovative and automated solutions. About the Learning Table Series The Learning Table Series is a free,
        • Next Page