by Denis ONeil | Jan 20, 2020 | How To
As a customer of EmailToVoice.Net, you may want to check the status of a message that was sent through EmailToVoice.Net. This is easy for you to do. You need to merely do a Search from inside the email mailbox of the email address that receives reports from EmailToVoice.Net. This will provide you detailed status of any job.
The reason this is available to you is because EmailToVoice.Net sends a detailed Job Success Report back to the main email address on the account, plus any additional email addresses added to account upon request. So, there is a detailed success report residing in the main email address specified on your EmailToVoice.Net account. A Job Success Report exists for each message sent through EmailToVoice.Net. Many customers set a Filter in the email mailbox so these detailed Job Success Reports are put in a special folder.
Example of Locating Job Success Reports
Therefore, to locate a past Job Success Report showing the detailed status of a job, merely sign into the email address that is designated as the the main email address in your EmailToVoice.Net account. Then you can do a Search to find the job’s detail. Below is an example for GMAIL.
Step 1: In the Email Search box, click on the Down Arrow to open. This will open advanced search capabilities.
Step 2: In the Search Box, enter Search criteria. In the Subject Field, enter “job report: Success “. Then in the ‘Has the words’ field, you can enter other search criteria, such as the phone number.
That’s it. You will see email search results showing the Job Success Reports matching your search criteria. You will be able to see things in the detailed reports such as:
- Was the job successful or is there an error code.
- Did the call go to Voicemail
- What was the cost to send the message
- And much more…
Alternative Use of Job Success Reports
Another good use of these Job Success Reports is to automatically take action if a certain result occurs. For instance, if a call goes to Voicemail, then another job can be initiated for sending the message to a different phone number, SMS or email address. This can be done using Microsoft Flow or other like services.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us.
by Denis ONeil | Dec 28, 2019 | Voice communications
Phone calls get people’s attention when you need them to act on a critical event. When you send an email, it just does not get the necessary level of attention for important information.
Critical messages are becoming more common as we move into the Industrial IoT era. As TARRIS states
The Internet of Things (IoT) has exploded in recent years, and it’s not slowing down any time soon. Gartner forecasts that 20.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide by 2020, and a new Business Insider Intelligence study predicts that the IoT market will grow to over $3 trillion annually by 2026.
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.
Cloud Communications Solution Makes it Easy
Implementation of industrial strength solution for communication-enabling business processes such as critical alerts is a major effort. 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
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.
Let us know if you would like to learn more. Contact us. We love to share our experience in mission-critical business communications and industrial alerts.
by Denis ONeil | Dec 1, 2019 | How To, Product Feature
EmailToVoice.Net has added German as a voice in its Text To Speech offering.
When sending a voice phone call using email, it is important that the voice being used in the Text To Speech engine is matched to the language the message was written. The pronunciation should be matched to the written text in the email to have the message clearly understood by the person answering the call.
EmailToVoice.Net allows a phone call to be made by using any email interface. This is useful when monitoring software, CRM or ERP systems need to place phone calls in alerts. These services generally have only the ability to send emails. Making a phone call is necessary to have alerts recognized in a timely and effective manner.
German Voice is now Available
EmailToVoice.Net has added German to its long list of voices. This newly added voice has been quickly utilized by customers that prefer to have their alerts spoken in German. Although EmailToVoice.Net does not translate the content of the email before the text is converted to a nice sounding voice, it will read the message in a voice chosen by the customer.
German is an additional voice added to a long list of available pronunciations for Text to Speech messages. The Features Document can be downloaded to see more voices available in EmailToVoice.Net. If you do not see a voice that you need for your EmailToVoice.Net messages, contact us and let us know what you need.
Voice Selection Alternatives
A customer can choose to change their account voice default to be German or one of the other voices listed above. This is done by letting us know the voice you want as the default for your account. Female American English is the initial default for all EmailToVoice.Net accounts.
Alternatively, a customer can add a Voice Tag in the content of a specific email message to dynamically change the voice for that email message. The Features Document can be downloaded to learn more about Tags.
by Denis ONeil | Oct 29, 2019 | How To
There are business processes that require parsing important information from the text of an email and then creating a voice message for making a phone call.
When We Need to Parse an Email into a Voice Call
Using the EmailToVoice.Net service, you are able to make a phone call by using any commonly available email interface. EmailToVoice.Net provides the ability to convert the content of an Email to voice using text-to-speech (TTS) and call a phone number. This is extremely useful when monitoring software or a business application can only send an email; but a phone call is necessary to be an effective alert.
But, the content of a voice call can sometimes need to be quite different than an email. For example, the signature section of an email is not needed in a phone call and may sound quite unusual to the phone recipient.
The email signature can be excluded from the voice conversion process. This can be done at the Account level by making the request through the contact us form, or by inserting the EmailToVoice.Net tag called “<End Message>” into the text of the email. Thereby, the email signature is not converted to voice. This makes the call sound more natural for a phone call. And, this also helps in reducing the size of the voice message.
Sometimes Email needs to be parsed into a voice message
Eliminating the email signature can sometimes not be enough. The text of the email may need to be parsed to make an intelligible voice communication, if the original email has tables or is inherently cryptic.
There are several alternatives to parse content of an email into a voice message when using EmailToVoice.Net. One solution is Microsoft Flow. We discussed this service in our Blog post call Using Microsoft Flow with EmailToVoice.Net to Forward an Alert to a Phone. In that post we explain:
So, what is the solution to the dilemma of needing to make a phone call from a general purpose email monitoring service.
One solution is to use Microsoft Flow with EmailToVoice.Net. Following is an example of steps to set up a Microsoft Flow that will accept the alert from the Monitoring Service from a general purpose email address into the customer-owned email address that is authorized to send messages to EmailToVoice.Net. When Microsoft Flow detects an arriving alert message into the customer’s email, Microsoft Flow will trigger an email to be sent from the customer’s email (forwarded) to the EmailToVoice.Net with the same alert message generated by the Monitoring Service.
However, Microsoft Flow can be used for even more than what we discussed in our previous blog post. Flow can be used to parse the content of the email into a smooth flowing message. When the message is converted to a voice by our service, this parsed text will sound natural for the person listening to the voice call. In the U2U blog there is a post explaining the Definition Language used in Microsoft Flow: Using the Workflow Definition Language in Microsoft Flow
What I would like to show in this blog post is how you can extend your flows with a bit more advanced behavior by using the Workflow Definition Language.
In addition to Flow, there are other alternatives to parse an email before it is sent to EmailToVoice.Net such as MailParser and Parserr.
EmailToVoice.Net Staff Can Help
So, there are several effective methods to parse information from an email coming from monitoring software or a business application into a smooth sounding voice call delivered through EmailToVoice.Net. Do not hesitate to contact us if we can assist you further in meeting your business requirements.
by Denis ONeil | Sep 25, 2019 | How To
Using Microsoft Flow with EmailToVoice.Net answers the challenge of sending phone alerts from a general-purpose email address. EmailToVoice.Net can send voice phone calls as alerts from any Monitoring Service or application. A phone call is necessary when the alert is urgent. Or, when it is not appropriate to send a text or email to the person needing the information. This is the case if the person is in a vehicle or traveling, for instance.
EmailToVoice.Net converts the content of an Email to a nice sounding voice and calls a phone number. This is possible with no need to install special APIs, hardware or software. So, EmailToVoice.Net works well with Monitoring Services when a phone call is needed, rather than just an email.
Most of the time, a Monitoring Service will send the email from a customer assigned unique email address. If this is the case, a customer can merely set the Monitoring System’s email address as a Send-Only email address in their EmailToVoice.Net account.
The Challenge of a General Purpose Email Address
Sometimes, however, the Monitoring Service sends the email from a general purpose email address, which is the same for all of the Monitoring Service customers. For strict security purposes, EmailToVoice.Net restricts messages to come from only an authorized customer-owned email address. The customer of EmailToVoice.Net must have the exclusive rights to sign-in to this authorized email address. You can learn more from this short How-To video.
So, what is the solution to the dilemma of needing to make a phone call from a general purpose email monitoring service.
One solution is to use Microsoft Flow with EmailToVoice.Net. Following is an example of steps to set up a Microsoft Flow that will accept the alert from the Monitoring Service from a general purpose email address into the customer-owned email address that is authorized to send messages to EmailToVoice.Net. When Microsoft Flow detects an arriving alert message into the customer’s email, Microsoft Flow will trigger an email to be sent from the customer’s email (forwarded) to the EmailToVoice.Net with the same alert message generated by the Monitoring Service.
The setup is straight forward, as is shown below. The steps used in this example are using the Microsoft Flow features of the free Web-based product. Here are the different pricing plans for Microsoft Flow.
Acquire Microsoft Flow
If your company does not have a license for Microsoft Flow, then sign up for a free Microsoft Flow account. When signing up for the service use the email address that will receive the alert and is authorized by EmailToVoice.Net to be able to send messages through EmailToVoice.Net. Or, when you setup your connectors use the email address authorized by EmailToVoice.Net. For the USA, the URL is https://us.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/
NOTE: This is merely an example that uses Gmail connectors and fictitious destinations. The purpose of these steps is merely to give you an idea of how to setup your Microsoft Flow. Contact Microsoft to learn how to meet your specific requirements using Microsoft Flow or Contact Us at EmailToVoice.Net. We will help to the best of our ability.
Go to Connectors and connect to Gmail
Select Trigger
When a new email comes into your email mailbox from the Monitoring Service, Microsoft Flow will be triggered. Choose the “Forward Gmails that meet a certain criteria” action for this example. But there are many templates and you can also just choose to create your own without using a template.
Assure Microsoft Flow You Own the Email Account
Sign-in to the Gmail account that will receive the alerts that need to be forwarded to EmailToVoice.Net, as Flow requests.
Set the Flow
This is where you specify which emails are entering your email mailbox that are to be forwarded to the EmailToVoice.Net.
Set Flow Part 1
The From criteria specifies the email address from the Monitoring Service.
Set Flow Part 2
Set the SEND criteria. The TO field should be like: nnnnnnnnnn@TTS.MESSAGE-SERVICE.ORG For more information, refer to How Email to Voice Works
Conclusion
That is it. When a message comes in from the monitoring Service into your email address, a Microsoft Trigger will occur forwarding that message to EmailToVoice.Net from your email address. This handles the issue of a general purpose email address being used by a Monitoring Service needing to send messages through EmailToVoice.Net. EmailToVoice.Net will convert the content of the email to a nice sounding voice, dial the phone number, etc. Learn more at EmailToVoice.Net
Featured image : Patrick Amoy – Screen captures of Microsoft Flow
