Escalation Call Lists are needed when an emergency alert must be received and acted upon. EmailToVoice.Net provides the customer the ability to create a list of recipients that will be called sequentially until a person is reached and listens to the alert message.
We have added an additional feature to our Escalation List. The customer can now set a default amount of time that occurs between the sequential calls. The customer signs into the Customer Portal and goes to MY Details. The field is called ‘Escalation List Delay’. This field sets the time between each call that was not answered in an escalation list. The setting is the delay duration in minutes.
List Management
EmailToVoice.Net has long provided List Management so that a customer can send a message to multiple recipients, such as an email to a voice phone call. This is done in the Customer Portal under the menu item Manage Personal Lists.
Escalation Lists are a feature of the List Management capability in EmailToVoice.Net.
Escalation Lists are used to sequentially send a text-to-speech (TTS) message to a list of phone recipients. The messages are sent one at a time until a person answers or takes an action to accept the call. The acceptance of the call is based upon specific criteria set by the administrator that created the list. This is unlike the standard list type, where the message is sent to all the recipients at one time.
The purpose of an escalation list is to find a recipient who can act on the message. Examples of such a message might be:
Perform an urgent maintenance job for a piece of equipment that has failed
Fill a shift vacancy for someone who has called in sick
Get a courier to urgently pick up a package and deliver it
Send a Message to an Escalation List
You send your TTS message using this list in EmailToVoice.Net. For example,
send the email message TO dmy@tts.message-service.org
in the body of your message, include:
<Lists>*My New Escalation List Name*</Lists> (* * replace with your list name)
The message must be picked up (not by voice mail) and listened to for at least 10 seconds, otherwise, the next recipient in the list is called. Once someone listens to the message for the required length of time, the job stops there.
If you send a two-way TTS, the recipient must press 1 on the phone’s Dialpad to accept the message. Otherwise, the next recipient in the list is called. In this case, it doesn’t matter how long the person has listened to the message. Making a TTS message a Two Way is done by merely adding the tag <TwoWay> on a separate line in the content of the email.
More Features
EmailToVoice.Net is rich in features while being simple and effective to use for business communications and alerts. We transform an email message into a phone call or enterprise Text Message with no need to program APIs or install any hardware or software. You can send a voice phone call (TTS), Enterprise Text SMS, FAX or prerecorded Voice Message from any email program interface through your monitoring software, CRM, or Dispatch System. Contact Us and let us assist you in meeting your mission-critical business communications needs.
Author
Director at EmailToVoice.Net: CISSP – Solutions Architect for Industrial IoT Alerts and Business Communications. LinkedIn
Let’s take a look back at the customer value we added in 2020 to EmailToVoice.Net. We continue to grow because of our global customer base. They know exactly what they need to provide mission-critical business communications for their alert services, value chains, and supply chains. We listened, and are still listening.
Customer Portal
Our customers requested the ability to look at their job activity in real-time. We provided them a customer portal. The customer can now login at any time and view jobs, add recipient lists and so much more.
View All Jobs: The customer can view summary and detailed information on messages that have been sent through EmailToVoice.Net. Specific date ranges or a specific job number can be specified.
Manage Personal Lists: The customer can setup distribution lists, which are then referenced by the LISTS tag in the content of the email for sending TTS or SMS messages to a group of recipients.
Multiple Recipients
Multiple Destinations in the TO Field
Multiple destinations can be specified in the TO field by separating them with a “#”. IE;:
2145551234#2145551235#2145551236@tts.message-service.org
OR, multiple destinations can be entered as multiple full email addresses:
“2145551234@tts.message-service.org, 2145551235@tts.message-service.org”
NOTE: When stringing destinations in the TO field of the Email, there is a standard general length restriction of about 64 characters for the TO field.
NOTE: The type of messages, such as TTS or SMS, cannot be mixed in a single message.
Multiple Destinations in the Email Content
Multiple Destinations can be In the body of the message in the following format:
<Numbers>
2145551234
2145551235
2145551236
</Numbers>
NOTE: The destination phone numbers are included in the body of the message. So, the TO field should be: msg@tts.message-service.org
Multiple Destinations can be through pre-setup lists by using the format:
<Lists>
First ListName
Second ListName
</Lists>
NOTE: These lists are created and loaded through the Customer Portal
NOTE: The TO field should be: msg@tts.message-service.org
New Broadcast: The customer can send a TTS, SMS or Email messages to one or more recipients directly from the Portal
Quick SMS: A customer can send a Quick SMS message, one-way or two way, to one or more recipients directly from the Portal
Manage Opt-Outs: The customer can specify a phone number that is never to be sent through the customer’s account. This is useful for phone numbers that have changed and should no longer be used. This is useful when an employee leaves the company and their personal cell phone number remains in lists.
My Details: The customer can change profile settings, such as company address, email address or main account phone number. This includes the customer’s account password. To learn more about the very useful fields in the profile, refer below.
My Details
Choosing the My Details section will provide the customer with the ability to change the password and other fields within the customer’s account profile.
Some more commonly used fields for TTS (Text To Speech) are:
Timezone: You can select the most appropriate timezone. This is used for reports.
Additional Report Emails: You can specify an additional email address to receive the detailed email reports. These are the emails you receive in your main email address on your account every time a message is sent through your account.
Default TTS Voice: You can select a different voice from the list to be used for your messages. American English is the default.
TTS Message Prefix: You can raise or lower the speed of the voice. However, we recommend the default speed, as set here.
Additionally, you can also add a Header message to identify yourself as the organization that is calling. This Header Message is not repeated. For instance, this field looks like this during the Free Trial. When a Trial Customer becomes a customer by providing their credit card on file, we remove the Header Message. This message also demonstrates the creative ways you can use punctuation to make your message sound good.
\speed=26 The following message, is being delivered to you! through, Email To Voice, messaging cloud service!
Email To Broadcast -Subject Field Behaviour: The Subject Name of the email is used as the EmailToVoice.Net Job name. However, you can choose to either concatenate the Subject Field to the message or have the Subject Field the entire message.
Enterprise SMS for Mission-Critical Applications
Businesses have been asking for the ability to send large amounts of formatted information to mobile phones. We have accomplished this by utilizing LinkInSMS. RCS and MMS have long been attempting to provide a solution while never actually achieving widespread adoption. Enterprise SMS from EmailToVoice.Net uses ubiquitous Email, SMS, and HTTPS to seamlessly meet the needs of the enterprise’s mission-critical requirements.
EmailToVoice.Net provides the ability to send formatted data to a cell phone using SMS from monitoring software or business applications. Messages with the formatting requirements of an HTML Web Page can be automatically sent to just about any cell phone in the world as easily as sending an email.
Enterprise SMS is a feature of EmailToVoice.Net, which creates a custom HTML Web page from your business email alert and then delivers it as a simple SMS message. For each SMS recipient, a custom web page is created and inserted in their SMS text message, allowing viewing of the page of HTML with a simple tap. This allows a single text message to communicate large amounts of formatted data.
To send an Enterprise SMS message,
the TO field merely needs to have the recipient’s phone number and specific email domain provided by EmailToVoice.Net.
Our cloud-based messaging service will convert the email content into a custom web page and insert the link of the automatically created Web page into the text message.
The recipient can then tap the link in the text message and see the entire email content formatted as a Web Page on their smartphone.
The Email Fields would look like this:
TO: 5551231234@linkinsms.message-service.org (The recipient’s cell phone – no preregistration required)
FROM: emailaddress@yourcompanydomain.com (Subscribed to EmailToVoice.Net)
SUBJECT: Anything (Used as a job name for reporting purposes)
The content of the email is converted to an HTML Web page. The Web page of data is hosted by our service and a link to the Web page is substituted into the outgoing SMS text message so that the recipient can easily view the data with a tap.
Integrating Enterprise SMS with Business Applications
The implementation of industrial communications is critical for premier customer support, business continuity, and process efficiency. However, integration projects can become a major effort. Sending large amounts of data with special formatting from monitoring software or directly from an IoT device to a phone could require program development with specialized hardware and software. Connections to smart devices, CRM, PCS or ERP systems need to go through complex API’s or propriety software gateways.
Parsing Message Content
The Customer Portal has provided us a means to deliver many new features and capabilities to the customer. One is the ability to convert only the middle part of the message of a Text to Speech (TTS) voice or SMS message when using EmailToVoice.Net. This is done with no coding.
The customer can designate the beginning and end of all messages by logging into the Customer Portal and then going to My Details / Change My Details. The fields in the account details are
Email to Broadcast-Start of Message Text:
Email to Broadcast-End of Message Text:
There is an additional capability that is extremely useful. The customer can specify if the text designated as the Start of the Message is to be included in the text of the outgoing message. This is a checkbox. See the Customer’s “My Details” section below:
You can also enter the “Begin Message” and “End Message” tags directly into the email message to control what is converted to voice or text.
Start message indicators
Instead of starting the outgoing message content at the beginning of the email, there are methods of skipping the start of the email and starting the relevant message further
down.
1. A line containing just the tag “<Begin Message>” can be included in the email, and the
outgoing content will start on the line AFTER this.
2. If the user has the option “Start of message text” set, then the outgoing content will
start where this text is found (including the text itself) End message indicators
The end of a text message to be sent can be indicated in a number of ways:
1. A line containing just the tag “<End Message>” can be included in the message.
2. A blank line followed by “– ” (two plain ascii dashes and a space) which must then be on
a line by itself
3. Four empty lines
4. The text entered in the users “End of Message Text” configuration field
Setting Message Delivery Times
EmailToVoice.Net provides the user with the ability to set a window of time for the delivery of voice phone calls and SMS messages using any email interface.
This feature is extremely useful for departments that need their staff to be alerted by voice or SMS when they are off their primary working hours. When staff are at their desks, they may not need voice and SMS alerts. However, when the staff is not on their primary shifts, the messages must get the attention of the staff members. To get that attention, the messages should be delivered as a telephone call and/or SMS text message. Email is not an effective way to get the attention of essential support staff.
We created a user option so an active window of time can be designated for voice phone calls or SMS text messages to be delivered by EmailToVoice.Net.
Although setting a window of time for voice or SMS messages to be delivered can be accomplished by using no-code alternatives like Microsoft Power Automate, we provide this ability without the need for any third-party capability. The customer merely needs to sign-in to the Customer Portal and modify these parameters in the ‘My Details’ section.
The parameters in Customer Portal / My Details provide the ability to block or allow the messages to go through. The parameters allow the user to set different rules for the Weekend (Saturday and Sunday) and the Weekdays (Monday through Friday). The time can either be blocked or allowed. The time is according to the timezone set in the account under My Details.
Let Us Know What You Need
We look back and see a value-added year in 2020. What is exciting is that we are already working on more great features coming in 2021.
EmailToVoice.Net is rich in features while being simple and effective to use for business communications and alerts. You can send a Voice Phone Call, simple SMS message, an Enterprise SMS, FAX or prerecorded Voice Message from any email program interface, application, Internet of Things device (IoT / M2M), or from your CRM and Dispatch Systems.
Contact Us if we can provide further assistance in helping you meet your business communications requirements.
Author
Director at EmailToVoice.Net: CISSP – Solutions Architect for Industrial IoT Alerts and Business Communications. LinkedIn
Enterprise SMS messages require secure transmission. Enterprise SMS from EmailToVoice.Net provides TLS to protect a ‘Man in the Middle’ view of the content of the message as it travels from the customer’s server to our cloud base messaging platform. The message is then delivered to the recipient as an HTML web page using an HTTPS active link in the SMS message. (LinkInSMS)
EmailToVoice.Net Provides Enterprise Text
EmailToVoice.Net provides the ability to send formatted data to a cell phone using SMS from monitoring software or business applications. Messages with the formatting requirements of an HTML Web Page can be automatically sent to just about any cell phone in the world as easily as sending an email.
Enterprise Text is a feature of EmailToVoice.Net, which creates a custom HTML Web page from your business email alert and then delivers it as a simple SMS message. A custom web page is created and inserted in the recipient’s SMS text message, allowing viewing of the page of HTML with a simple tap. This allows a single text message to communicate large amounts of formatted data. (16MB)
To send an Enterprise Text message,
the TO field merely needs to have the recipient’s phone number and specific email domain provided by EmailToVoice.Net.
Our cloud-based messaging service will convert the email content into a custom web page and insert the link of the automatically created secure Web page into the text message.
The recipient can then tap the link in the text message and see the entire email content formatted as a Web Page on their smartphone.
TLS encryption email
With EmailToVoice.Net, the business application uses Email to deliver the message to our cloud service to be converted to an Enterprise Text message. The Email can be sent using TLS (Transport Layer Security). TLS provides that the Email message is securely traveling from the application’s server to our cloud-based messaging platform protected from “man-in-the-middle” attacks. The message cannot be read while the text is in transit.
HTTPS prevents websites from having their information broadcast in a way that’s easily viewed by anyone snooping on the network. When information is sent over regular HTTP, the information is broken into packets of data that can be easily “sniffed” using free software. This makes communication over the an unsecure medium, such as public Wi-Fi, highly vulnerable to interception. In fact, all communications that occur over HTTP occur in plain text, making them highly accessible to anyone with the correct tools, and vulnerable to on-path attacks.
With HTTPS, traffic is encrypted such that even if the packets are sniffed or otherwise intercepted, they will come across as nonsensical characters.
Enterprise SMS uses TLS and HTTPS
Enterprise SMS is a feature of EmailToVoice.Net, which creates a custom HTML Web page from the content of your business email alert and then delivers it in a simple SMS message. For each SMS recipient, a custom web page is created and inserted in their SMS text message, allowing viewing of the page of HTML with a simple tap. This allows a single text message to communicate large amounts of formatted data.
The Email Fields would look like this:
TO: 5551231234@linkinsms.message-service.org (The recipient’s cell phone – no preregistration required)
FROM: emailaddress@yourcompanydomain.com (Subscribed to EmailToVoice.Net)
SUBJECT: Anything (Used as a job name for reporting purposes)
The content of the email is converted to an HTML Web page using HTTPS.
The Uses of Enterprise SMS
The implementation of industrial communications is critical for premier customer support, business continuity, and process efficiency. However, integration projects can become a major effort. Sending large amounts of data with special formatting from monitoring software or directly from an IoT device to a phone could require program development with specialized hardware and software. Connections to smart devices, CRM, PCS or ERP systems need to go through complex APIs or propriety software gateways.
To deliver rich content to smartphones, Enterprise SMS from EmailToVoice.net uses the combination of commonly available platforms of Email and SMS to deliver large amounts of formatted data from mission-critical business applications.
Features of Enterprise Text from EmailToVoice.Net
Enterprise Text provided by EmailToVoice.Net is rich in features to meet any business requirement. Below are some examples of these features that can be set up in the Customer Details in the Customer Portal.
You can add a Header and a Footer that will be used in all Text messages from your account. For example, you can add a logo, an introductory message, disclaimers, and links using HTML
You can specify a specific SMS Sender ID so the recipient can recognize the sender of the text message.
You can enter a default email address for SMS replies. So, if the recipient replies to the text message, the reply will go to this email address. You can then alternatively use Microsoft Flow to continue a complex business workflow process without any coding. (Contact us for assistance in developing workflow processes)
There are many more features of the Enterprise Text Messaging feature in EmailToVoice.Net. Let us know if you would like to learn more. Contact us. We love to share our experience in industrial communications, workflow, and alerts.
Author
Director at EmailToVoice.Net: CISSP – Solutions Architect for Industrial IoT Alerts and Business Communications. LinkedIn
People pay more attention to voice calls these days than email. A phone ringing gets the attention of the person that needs to be alerted in an emergency. The reason is that email and other forms of text messaging have swamped us to the point we do not pay attention to them, anymore. A phone ringing still makes people pay attention. They are loud and rare.
In a phone call, there’s a chance the person on the other end of the line might have an opinion.
An alert phone call is not a conversation. It is the delivery of critically important information. A phone call with a voice message is the perfect delivery method for time-sensitive critical information.
Critical Alerts from Applications
Implementing critical alerts delivered from business applications is a major effort. Sending a message from monitoring software or directly from an IoT device to a phone requires specialized hardware and software solutions to be installed in the client’s central data center. Connections to smart devices, CRM, PCS or ERP systems need to go through complex API’s or propriety software gateways
However, a cloud-based communications solution such as EmailToVoice.Net makes this all as easy as sending an email. The EmailToVoice.Net service does the hard stuff. It converts the text of the email message into a genuine-sounding voice (Text to Speech), then dials the phone, handles voice mail, and much more. All of this is done without the need to install hardware or use APIs. There are not even any monthly fees.
How EmailToVoice.Net Works
All you have to do is subscribe to the EmailToVoice.Net service and then make the TO field in the Email look something like 5551234567@tts.message-service.org
The recipient will receive a call on their phone. The text in the email is converted to a nice-sounding voice. If the recipient answers, they will hear the message right away. If they do not answer, the message will be left on their voice mail system. You can even leave a different message if the call goes to voice mail! There are many mission-critical features in the service.
Industrial IoT Needs To Send Alerts
An IoT device is any device connected to the Internet. In an enterprise environment, monitoring these devices is commonly done through Monitoring Software, like viewLINC, or SolarWinds to name just a couple – there are many.
These IoT devices need to communicate with people through alerts and integration with mission-critical applications. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) needs to be given a voice. An IIoT device that has only the ability to send an email must now be enabled to dial a phone. The number may be repair truck or used to wake people in the middle of the night or cut through all the mundane communications received during the regular business day.
Since people are not making phone calls as much as they used to, the voice phone call now becomes the perfect way to deliver a critical alert to an individual.
Supply Chains Require Communications
Supply Chain communication is critical to the success of the Supply chain and its stakeholders. The importance of effective communications for internal stakeholders and external suppliers cannot be overstated. An enterprise must have a well-planned communication strategy to ensure the resilience of the Supply Chain.
As part of a Supply Chain communication plan, multiple channels and methods should be taken into consideration,. An alternative communication channel is a voice phone call. This is an effective communication channel in regular Supply Chain processes because phone calls get the participant’s attention. Supply Chain Communications is critical to the resilience of critical processes. Using multiple channels during the process is imperative to success.
The fact that Phone calls are rare has made them an excellent communication channel to convey important information and emergency alerts. We are inundated with text communications coming from SMS, Email, and a multitude of chat Instant Messaging platforms. To cut through all of that noise with an important alert, a loud and reliable channel needs to be used. That channel is the common voice phone call.
How to send an Alert to a Phone
EmailToVoice.Net provides the ability to make a phone call using any email interface. This can be tested using a personal email mailbox. However, the production use of this capability is by utilizing the email messaging capability within the monitoring software or business application.
How to Use EmailToVoice.Net
First, a user should subscribe to EmailToVoice.net. A free trial is available.
FROM Field
The Email must be sent from the same Email address as was specified during the free trial subscription process. A Send-Only Email address can be added later for the production implementation.
TO Field
The TO field should specify the phone number to be dialed.
The TO field would look something like 2145551783@tts.message-service.org. (if the number is not a USA or Canadian number, then the TO field would look something like +6155551243@tts.message-service.org)
The number can be any phone number in the world, with some exceptions due to international regulations, and does not have to be preregistered.
SUBJECT Field
The SUBJECT field can be anything brief. It is used for reporting. Optionally, the Subject field can also be made part of the voice message.
Content of Email
The content of the Email is converted to a pleasant sounding American English voice. (Leave at least 4 lines after the content of the email and before the email signature, so the Email signature is not converted to voice.) There are additional dialects to accommodate other languages or accents.
Send the Email
That’s it. The EmalToVoice.net service will dial the number, play the voice rendition of the email content, handle voicemail, etc.
Advanced Features
There are many advanced features of EmailToVoice.Net. Those features will be covered in future posts. So, subscribe to our blog and stay updated. We also provide some very useful information in our Blog regarding Industrial Internet of Things, Monitoring Software, and much more.
Business applications and monitoring software need to be able to deliver detailed information to mobile devices, such as detailed orders, repair instructions, and more. Although EmailToVoice.Net can send voice phone calls using an email interface from a monitoring software or any business application, we can also send an Enterprise SMS Text Message using any email interface.
EmailToVoice.Net Provides Enterprise SMS
EmailToVoice.Net provides the ability to send a large amount of formatted data (16MB) using LinkInSMS to a cell phone as an SMS from monitoring software or business applications. Messages with the formatting requirements of an HTML Web Page can be automatically sent to just about any cell phone in the world as easily as sending an email using simple SMS, which is available everywhere in the world.
SMS was proposed in 1982 as part of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), a second-generation cellular standard devised by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Little has changed in SMS since the beginning. SMS messages are still limited to 160 text characters per message. If a message exceeds this limit, most carriers will chain the messages together so they present as a single continuous message to the recipient. SMS is still universally used throughout the world despite its lack of growth in capability.
Enterprise Alternative
Enterprise SMS is a feature of EmailToVoice.Net, which creates a custom HTML Web page from your business email alert and then delivers it as a simple SMS message. For each SMS recipient, a custom web page is created and inserted in their SMS text message, allowing viewing of the page of HTML with a simple tap. This allows a single text message to communicate large amounts of formatted data.
The Email Fields would look like this:
TO: 5551231234@linkinsms.message-service.org (The recipient’s cell phone – no preregistration required)
FROM: emailaddress@yourcompanydomain.com (Subscribed to EmailToVoice.Net)
SUBJECT: Anything (Used as a job name for reporting purposes)
The content of the email is converted to an HTML Web page. The Web page of data is hosted by our service and a link to the Web page is substituted into the outgoing SMS text message so that the recipient can easily view the data with a tap.
Integration with Business Applications
The implementation of industrial communications is critical for premier customer support, business continuity, and process efficiency. However, integration projects can become a major effort. Sending large amounts of data with special formatting from monitoring software or directly from an IoT device to a phone could require program development with specialized hardware and software. Connections to smart devices, CRM, PCS or ERP systems need to go through complex API’s or propriety software gateways.
Enterprise SMS is excellent for automating labor-intensive, time-sensitive tasks generated from monitoring software, ERP, or CRM applications. The messages can be two-way and integrated with complex workflowprocesses. EmailToVoice.Net allows a single text message to communicate large amounts of data. For example, a text message could deliver detailed technical information for device repair or financial data accessed by a simple click in their SMS text message.
The Challenge to SMS by Business Processes
Businesses often need to send large amounts of formatted data as part of enterprise workflow processes to a cell phone. This can be done easily with just a simple email interface using EmailToVoice.Net. SMS Messaging is a reliable means to get important information to employees or business partners immediately. However, the limitations of SMS text messaging often keep it from being used in mission-critical business processes.
Text messaging is limited by the lack of formatting and low text character limit, which is necessary to convey detailed information. MMS and RCS attempt to address this issue. However, they too have limitations that cause barriers to wide adoption for mission-critical applications. And, the ability to send informational and alert messages from business applications is complex without the ability to use standard email capabilities.
Enterprise SMS Using LinkInSMS from EmailToVoice.Net
Enterprise SMS is a text messaging feature from EmailToVoice.Net that enables the delivery of large amounts of formatted data, up to 16MB, to a cell phone by just sending an email to the SMS phone.
The implementation of industrial communications is critical for premier customer support, business continuity, and process efficiency. However, integration projects can become a major effort. Sending large amounts of data with special formatting from monitoring software or directly from an IoT device to a phone could require program development with specialized hardware and software. Connections to smart devices, CRM, PCS or ERP systems need to go through complex APIs or propriety software gateways.
