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Using Microsoft Flow with EmailToVoice.Net to Improve Customer Service Business Processes

by Denis ONeil | May 12, 2020 | How To

Microsoft Flow works well with EmailToVoice.Net. And now, Microsoft has made licensing changes that make Microsoft Flow even more convenient for routing and parsing emails while EmailToVoice.Net converts the emails into voice phone calls.

As recently announced by Microsoft, Office 365 is now Microsoft 365. Included in that change, Microsoft Flow is now available in most Microsoft 365 subscriptions.

Microsoft Flow and EmailToVoice.Net are great companions. Microsoft Flow has email connectors that enhance business flows. These email connectors can seamlessly invoke the abilities of EmailToVoice.Net. EmailToVoice.Net provides the ability to integrate Text to Speech and SMS communications with enterprise business flows.

Customer Service Scenario

To provide an example of how Microsoft Flow and EmailToVoice.Net can work together, the following is an example of sending a voice message to customer service staff when an email arrives from the enterprise’s customer. The prerequisites for this example are a subscription to EmailToVoice.Net (can be a free trial) and a paid subscription to Microsoft 365. This example uses the GMAIL connector. Microsoft Flow has many connectors.

When Microsoft Flow detects an email message arriving in the customer service general email address Microsoft Flow will trigger an email to be sent (forwarded) to EmailToVoice.Net that will then generate a phone call to the customer service representative.

To set up the Microsoft Flow script, sign into your Microsoft 365 Account.

Images below are from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365 Updated versions may change the views.

Select All Apps

Microsoft 365 All Apps

Select Flow

Microsoft 365 Flow app

Go to Connectors and connect to Gmail

Gmail Connector Microsoft Flow

Select Trigger

In this example, the trigger will be a new email coming into the customer service email mailbox from a customer.

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.

Gmail Microsoft Flow Forward trigger

Provide Assurance to Microsoft Flow that 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 Microsoft Flow requests you to do.

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 customer service email address that will receive the customer’s email message.

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

Create the Flow part two

Conclusion

When a message comes in from a customer to the customer service email address, a Microsoft Trigger will occur, which will forward that message to EmailToVoice.Net from your email address. EmailToVoice.Net will convert the content of the email to a nice sounding voice, dial the phone number, etc. Learn more at EmailToVoice.Net

Additional Considerations

The Subject Field of the message being forwarded to EmailToVoice.Net for conversion to a voice can be preset in Microsoft Flow. The Subject field can then be optionally read as part of the message to the customer service representative by selecting the following setting in the Customer Portal.

Customer Portal / My Details / Email To Broadcast Subject Field Behaviour

The number of characters of the email being sent to EmailToVoice.Net can optionally be limited by selecting the setting in the Customer Portal.

Customer Portal / My Details / TTS character limit

Additionally, a Header Message can optionally be set in the EmailToVoice.Net account for every message. The Header message will be converted to voice and read every time at the beginning of every voice message.

Customer Portal / My Details / TTS Message Prefix

How EmailtoVoice.Net works

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 an SMS message with no need to program APIs or install any hardware or software.

For making a voice phone call, you merely make the TO field in the Email you are sending to look something like 5551234567@tts.message-service.org (international calls require a +CountryCode in front of the local number). 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.

You can also send an SMS, FAX or prerecorded Voice Message from an email program interface, like from an application, Internet of Things device (IoT / M2M), or through your CRM and Dispatch System.

Contact Us if we can provide further assistance in helping you meet your business communications requirements.

Italian Voice is Now Available in EmailToVoice.Net Text to Speech (TTS) Messaging

by Denis ONeil | Apr 28, 2020 | How To

EmailToVoice.Net has added Italian as a voice in its Text To Speech feature 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. 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.

Italian Voice is now Available

EmailToVoice.Net has added Italian to its long list of voices for customers.

Italian 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

American English is the default voice in EmailToVoice.Net. A customer can choose to change the voice default in their account profile by logging into the Customer Portal and going to the My Details menu selection. Or the customer can let us know and we will make the change. 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.

How to Check on the Success of a Job in EmailToVoice.Net

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.

German Voice is now Available in EmailToVoice.Net Text to Speech (TTS)

by Denis ONeil | Dec 1, 2019 | How To, Product Feature

EmailToVoice.Net has added German as a voice in its Text To Speech offering.

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.

How to Parse Text from an Email into a Voice Phone Call

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.

Using Microsoft Flow with EmailToVoice.Net to Forward an Alert to a Phone

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.