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.
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 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
by Denis ONeil | May 13, 2019 | How To
It is often useful, and even required, to send a voice message to a phone from SAP as an alert or very important information. However, the problem may be that only Email is available to get a message sent from SAP.
So, what alternatives are available to make a phone call from SAP when Email is the only option?
A cloud-based messaging service called EmailToVoice.Net provides the ability to convert the content of an Email to voice and call a phone number. This is possible with no need to install special APIs, hardware or software.
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 SAP.
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.
There are many advanced features, such as being able to send FAX and SMS, that are discussed further on EmailToVoice.Net
