2020 Recap of EmailToVoice.Net New Features and Added Value

by Denis ONeil | Dec 15, 2020 | Customer Portal, Enterprise SMS, How To, Product Feature

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.

Here is a quick overview of some of the capabilities of the EmailToVoice.Net Customer Portal

• 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 Using a Pre-Loaded List (Manage in Customer Portal)
    

    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,

1. the TO field merely needs to have the recipient’s phone number and specific email domain provided by EmailToVoice.Net.
2. 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.
3. 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