Validity period
Was ist Validity period?
Dieser Eintrag liegt derzeit nur auf Englisch vor.
A validity period is the per-message time-to-live — how long the sending pipeline keeps trying to deliver before it stops and closes the message as expired. On the carrier side the SMSC stores and retries an SMS until it either succeeds or the window lapses; on Orbit a message whose validity period runs out before send terminates in the `expired` status rather than being delivered late or not at all.
More detail
The window exists to stop a stale message from arriving after it would be misleading or harmful — an OTP or a flash-sale alert sent hours later is worse than no delivery at all. Common windows range from a few minutes for OTP traffic up to 24–72 hours for general SMS.
A Messaging Service on Orbit binds a default `validity_period` for every message sent through it, so the policy lives once on the service rather than being passed explicitly per send.
When a send terminates as `expired`, the decoder tells you the fix is in the window itself: resend with a longer validity period on the service, or clear the hold that stalled the send first.
Häufige Fragen
- What happens when a message's validity period expires?
- The sending pipeline stops trying and closes the message as `expired` — it never delivers late. The status decoder on Orbit shows that row as time-to-live exceeded, and the fix is to re-send with a longer window on the Messaging Service or resolve the hold that stalled the send.
- Which validity period should you pick?
- Short (minutes) for anything time-critical — OTP codes, two-factor prompts — where a late arrival is worse than none. Longer (hours) for general SMS where you tolerate a retry window while a handset is unreachable. Default it once on the Messaging Service rather than re-passing per send.
See also
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