Several campaign formats will need the interpretation of user answers (MOs). More often than not, users will not type exactly what the call-to-action message requested. For example, a call-to-action message may request users to text the word HELP to a shortcode/longcode, and users may actually text messages such as:

1. I need help
2. Please help
3. helpp

In a multiple choice questions related to colors and listing for example BLUE, RED, and GREEN as valid answer options, users may end up texting messages like:

1. blue and red
2. gren
3. color red
4. it is blue

For cases like this, and always depending on the specifics of each campaign, the ME platform allows the configuration of the following interpretation mechanisms:

Also called regular expressions, the ME allows great flexibility in their configuration. In {base_url}/admin/Pattern.html you will find a complete list of available options. This is a very technical information, but very powerful as well. Some samples of common uses of wildcards based on the two examples above are:

1. h* will match any text starting with the letter H to the word HELP;
2. gr* will match any text starting with the letters GR to the color GREEN;

An advanced use of wildcards is the validation or extraction of relevant information from messages received from customers. For example a utility company can enable an on-demand service where their customers can query up-to-date consumption levels. The service requires the customer to text a 6 or 7 digit account number. In this case the keyword will be configured as \d{6,7}+.

Another use case is to validate an email address in the text message. In most cases, this wildcard will do the work ^[_A-Za-z0-9-\\+]+(\\.[_A-Za-z0-9-]+)*@[A-Za-z0-9-]+(\\.[A-Za-z0-9]+)*(\\.[A-Za-z]{2,})$

If this options is selected, only messages starting with an exact match of the requested keyword will be accepted as valid. For example, the message “it is blue” will not be accepted as a valid entry for a campaign which is expecting BLUE.