# Event destinations in AWS End User Messaging SMS
<a name="configuration-sets-event-destinations"></a>

An *event destination* is a location (such as a CloudWatch Group, a Amazon Data Firehose stream, or an Amazon SNS topic) that SMS and voice events are sent to. To use event destinations, you first create the destination, and then associate it with a [Configuration sets in AWS End User Messaging SMS](configuration-sets.md). You can associate up to five event destinations with a single configuration set. When you send a message, your call to the API includes a reference to the configuration set. 

Events or Delivery Receipts (DLR) generated by carriers can take up to 72 hours to be received and should not be used to determine if there is a delay in outbound message delivery. After 72 hours, if AWS End User Messaging SMS has not received a final event from a carrier, the service will automatically return an UNKNOWN `messageStatus` as we do not know what happened to that message.

**Prerequisites**

You need to have already created a configuration set to associate the event destinations with, see [Configuration sets in AWS End User Messaging SMS](configuration-sets.md).

**Topics**
+ [Event types](configuration-sets-event-types.md)
+ [Example event data](configuration-sets-event-format.md)
+ [Set up Amazon CloudWatch event destination](configuration-sets-cloud-watch.md)
+ [Set up Amazon Data Firehose event destination](configuration-sets-kinesis.md)
+ [Set up an Amazon SNS event destination](configuration-sets-sns.md)