SIEM critical alerts need to get immediate attention when triggered. Phone calls get people’s attention. A phone call is rare and loud.
SIEM is a class of products that combines security event management and security information management. SIEM technologies provide the analysis of log and event data together with security information management. Machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities within SIEM products are on the rise. Cloud services are also being developed for SIEM offerings.
People responsible for the issues are notified of the results of the threat monitoring, event correlation, and incident response. The critical alerts cannot be ignored. A multi-channel response must be used because of the importance of these issues. Voice phone calls must be part of that multi-channel alert. These SIEM services can send emails. But, an email to voice and SMS service needs to be implemented to achieve the multi-channel communications network. EmailToVoice.Net is a cloud-based multi-channel communications service that can be implemented with minimal effort and reasonable cost.
The SIEM market has several dominant vendors based on worldwide sales, specifically IBM, Splunk and HPE. There are at least several more major players, namely Alert Logic, Intel, LogRhythm, ManageEngine, Micro Focus, Solar Winds, and Trustwave.
Implementing critical alerts delivered from SIEM products is a major effort. Sending a message from SIEM products to a phone requires specialized hardware and software solutions to be installed in the client’s central data center. 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.
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 has 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.
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 capability within Alert Software, CRM, ERP or any enterprise application.
First, a user should subscribe to EmailToVoice.net. A free trial is available with a value of $4.95 USD allowing about 55 message units to be sent within a 28 day trial period. The user will be able to immediately make a phone call using their email by following the simple instructions below:
The email must be sent from the same email address as was specified during the free trial subscription process.
The TO field will 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.
The SUBJECT field can be anything brief. It is used for reporting.
The content of the email is converted to a pleasant-sounding voice.
That’s it. The EmalToVoice.net service will dial the number, play the voice rendition of the email content, handle voicemail, etc.
Extensive Features
There are many advanced features of EmailToVoice.Net. EmailToVoice.net can make a phone call, send an SMS, send 16MB of HTML data via SMS and even send a FAX. We love to share our many years of experience in this industry and provide easy no-code solutions for your workflow communications needs. Do not hesitate to Contact Us.
Author
Director at EmailToVoice.Net: CISSP – Solutions Architect for Industrial IoT Alerts and Business Communications. LinkedIn
Customers of EmailToVoice.Net send alert phone calls or text messages to their employees. Sometimes, those employees leave the company or go on vacation. In these cases, the messages should be stopped permanently or temporarily. The most preferred method to stop calls from going to a specific phone number is to remove them from all lists. But, adding their number to the Opt Out List may be faster and more efficient.
The most expedient way to stop messages from being sent is to add the phone number to the account’s Opt Out List. The administrator can even set a time period.
Opt Out List
The Opt Out List is managed through the Customer Portal.
The administrator is provided with a list of message types on the OptOut Lists Management page. The choice should be made based upon what type of messages were being sent. The following can be used as a reference:
Choose Phone if the message was sent to PhoneNumber@tts.message-service.org
Choose Mobile if the message was sent to PhoneNumber@sms.message-service.org or PhoneNumber@linkinsms.message-service.org
Chose FAX if the message was sent to PhoneNumber@fax.message-service.org
The OptOut List will work if you are sending messages individually or if you are using the different methods available in EmailToVoice.Net for multiple destinations. There are many ways to send to multiple users in a single message.
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.
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 Using a Pre-Loaded List
Multiple Destinations can be through pre-setup lists by using the format:
<Lists>
My First List Name
My Second List Name
</Lists>
We convert your email content to voice so the recipient of your choice receives an easy-to-understand voice message on their phone – plus many more valuable features. We do not require that the receiving phone number be registered with us. You can send a phone call from your email to any landline or cell phone. No software to install. No expensive complicated Apps. Nothing new to learn.
Send Rich content SMS messages from any email interface
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.
Changes to distribution lists used for alerts and business communications are necessary when employees leave the company or change positions. However, sometimes an administrator of EmailToVoice.Net will get the following error message when trying to make a change to a List in EmailToVoice.Net.
Sorry, this list is currently locked and cannot get modified as it is in use for job nnnnnnnn
Updating a list that is currently in use by messaging jobs is easy. It merely entails
downloading the list,
making the changes,
uploading the list under a new unique name,
renaming the production list to something new,
renaming the new list to the name of the production list.
Following are the steps in more detail
Login into the Customer Portal. Choose Manage Personal Lists in the menu on the left. Download the production list that needs to be updated
The downloaded file will be a comma-delimited file that can be updated in Microsoft Excel. Make the required changes to the downloaded file.
In the Customer Portal / Manage Personal Lists, click on Add List… Make the name of the list unique. Remember to click on the “This List is an escalation list” box if the recipients in the list are to be called in sequence until one answers. Learn more about our escalation list feature in our Blog Post “Escalation Lists Support Sequential Calling for Alerts in EmailToVoice.Net“
Import the updated comma-delimited file into the new list
Select Modify List Details and rename the old production list to something unique. Then click on the Modify List Details for the new list and name it the exact same name as the old production list.
Now, the updated list is the current production list.
As an alternative to making a change to the list, you can in EmailToVoice.Net put the employee’s number that has left the company in the Opt-Out List. Then that number will never be called even though it is in distribution lists.
Business Communications is Critical to Effective Business Processes
EmailToVoice.Net makes it easy to implement mission-critical solutions for business communications. Sending a message from monitoring software or directly from an IoT device to a phone requires a specialized hardware and software solution 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. 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. We also can facilitate the delivery of rich communications SMS messages with the need of RCS. Learn more in our article “Comparing Enterprise SMS using LinkInSMS to RCS and MMS”
There are many more features in EmailToVoice.Net. Let us know if you would like to learn more. Contact us. We love to share our experience in workflow processes, industrial communications, and alerts.
Author
Director at EmailToVoice.Net: CISSP – Solutions Architect for Industrial IoT Alerts and Business Communications. LinkedIn
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
