Send an SMS and a Voice Phone Call Alert from a Single Email Message

Send an SMS and a Voice Phone Call Alert from a Single Email Message

by | Oct 10, 2024 | Emergency Alerts, How To, Product Feature

We’re excited to announce a powerful new feature for our alert messaging service, EmailToVoice.net, that will simplify your business communications processes.

Previously, if you wanted to send both a voice phone call and an SMS alert, you had to send separate emails. Now, thanks to our latest upgrade, you can send both types of messages with just a single email—saving you time and effort, and ensuring consistent communication across channels.

How It Works

Imagine you need to send both an SMS alert and a voice phone call to a list of contacts. Instead of crafting and sending two separate emails, you can now combine both services into one single email. Simply include both destination addresses in the same email: for SMS, use phonenumber@sms.message-service.org, and for voice messages, use phonenumber@tts.message-service.org. With just one email, both an SMS alert and a voice phone call will be sent simultaneously.

This new feature is designed to make life easier for our customers who need to deliver time-sensitive information to their audiences. Whether it’s an emergency alert, an important meeting reminder, or any other notification that requires a multi-channel approach, you can now ensure both text and voice messages reach their recipients without having to perform repetitive tasks.

Why This Matters

We understand that efficiency is critical when it comes to business communication. By providing this unified messaging option, we’re giving you the power to seamlessly coordinate multiple channels of communication from one simple action—sending a single email. This means fewer chances of errors, fewer steps in the process, and an easier way to get your message out there quickly.

For instance, if you’re a customer service team sending outage alerts or a logistics company coordinating deliveries, it’s crucial to ensure your message reaches recipients in the most effective way possible. SMS messages are immediate and convenient, while voice calls add a personal touch, often catching attention even if a text is missed. Now you can make sure you cover all bases without any extra work.

How to Get Started

To start using this feature, simply include both SMS and TTS addresses in your email when composing your message. It’s that easy! There’s no additional setup required, and you can keep using the familiar email interface that makes EmailToVoice.net so convenient. If you have an existing workflow for sending SMS or voice messages, you can now extend it to include both with minimal changes.

We designed this feature with our customers’ needs in mind—to streamline processes and help you maximize your reach with minimal complexity. Communication is evolving, and we’re committed to providing tools that help you keep up effortlessly.

More on the Way

As always, we’re continually working on enhancing our service to meet your business needs. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this new feature, and if you have suggestions or specific needs, please feel free to reach out to us. Your feedback helps us ensure that EmailToVoice.net remains the best solution for your business communication.

Visit our blog for more updates and helpful tips, and stay tuned for more exciting announcements.

Retaining the Forwarded Email Address When Forwarding an Email to a Phone

Retaining the Forwarded Email Address When Forwarding an Email to a Phone

by | Jun 19, 2024 | How To, Product Feature

Let’s talk about how a customer of EmailToVoice.Net forwards an email from an application or monitoring software as a voice phone call.

The Situation that Needs to be Solved

If the Monitoring Service sends the email from an email address that has the same domain as your company, or from an email that you have exclusive rights, then no problem. You can specify that email address in the Subscription form as a ‘Send Only’ Email address or contact us to add the Send-Only email address to your account. Then begin making phone calls from your application or monitoring service. In your application, you merely change the email recipient to something like 5551231234@tts.message-service.org. (Where 5551231234 is any phone number in the world. This number does not need to be preregistered.)

It is important to note that Emailtovoice.net requires that the Email message sent to EmailToVoice.Net be from your company email address. That means that the email address has the same domain as your company URL or your company has exclusive rights to the email address.

However, sometimes the application originating the message will send from its general-purpose email address. For instance, monitoring software will send an alert email from an email address within their own service domain. This is a problem because the email address must be unique to the EmailToVoice.Net customer so that usage can be applied approriately.

The X-Header Alternative

Now, there is a sophisticated alternative to solve the issue caused by an application or monitoring service sending the Email FROM a general-purpose email address, which is not exclusively owned by the Emailtovoice.net customer.

That alternative is to have a special code be entered into the x-Header of the email sent to EmailToVoice.Net. That code is then entered into the customer’s EmailToVoice.Net account profile. So, any message coming into EmailToVoice.Net with that unique code in the x-header will be assigned to the appropriate EmailToVoice.Net customer account.
The X-Header ID method of account identification disregards the FROM email address when the email arrives in EmailToVoice.Net.

X-Header Parameters

Using Microsoft Mail flow rule actions in Exchange Online, you can add a Header Name and a Header Value. For more info on this Mail flow rule actions in the Exchange Online feature:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/security-and-compliance/mail-flow-rules/mail-flow-rule-actions

Some common parameters are:

X-Header-ID

“X-Header-ID” is an alternate method of user identification. If a field called “X-Header-ID” is
found in the header of an email arriving at EmailToVoice.Net, the system searches for a user with a
matching “X-Header-ID” value setup in their user profile using that account to send the
message.

When this field is found, the sender’s email address is not used to identify the user account. Therefore, the FROM email address does not have to match the Customer’s URL or even be owned by the EmailToVoice.Net customer..

Note, for backward compatibility, equivalent email header fields are “X-EtoBcode”.

Additional account selection options

If you can not edit the email headers, and you are stuck with a fixed sender address, you can
also identify your account by adding “<EtoBcode>*my xheader id*</EtoBcode> to the start of
your email body.

The important issue is the FROM email address is from the customer’s domain, not the Monitoring Service domain. Or, if it is not possible to send the email to our service FROM an email address owned by your company, or, alter the X-Header of the email coming into our service, then the FROM email address must be owned exclusively by the customer.

The Gmail Alternative

If you need to use GMAIL, then to achieve the desired behavior where the forwarded email appears to come from `youremail@yourcompanydomain.com` and is addressed to `5551231234@tts.message-service.org’ or ‘list-alerts@tts.message-service.org’, you will need to Forward the email from an intermediate email address that is owned by your company. That email address will be the FROM email address as it enters our service.

Since Gmail’s standard forwarding feature retains the original sender’s address, you will need to use Google Apps Script.
(Outlook is simpler because Outlook retains the forwarding email address as the FROM email address. GMAIL does not. Gmail retains the Sending email address as the FROM email address)

Here’s a step-by-step guide to setting up an automatic forwarding system using Google Apps Script:

In this example, we use the List function rather than sending the message to 5551231234@tts.message-service.org. The reason we do this is because it would be easier for the customer to change the recipient phone number(s) in the Customer Portal / Personal Lists rather than changing the Google Apps Script.

### Using Google Apps Script for Custom Email Forwarding

1. **Access Google Apps Script:**
– Open your web browser and log in to your Gmail account. This Gmail account is the intermediate email address that is used for forwarding messages to our service.
We prefer if this email address has your company domain. However, you can use a free Gmail email address here as long as you attest that your company has exclusive rights to log in and access this email address.

This intermediate email address will be the Send-Only email address specified by us in your EmailToVoice.Net customer account. You either specify this email address in the Subscription Form or use the Contact Us form and request we add this email address to your customer account profile.

(`intermediateforwardemail@yourcompanydomain.com`).
– Go to [Google Apps Script](https://script.google.com/).

2. **Create a New Project:**
– Click on the `New project` button.

3. **Write the Script:**
– Delete any code in the script editor and replace it with the following script:

“`javascript
++++++++++

 

function forwardEmails() {
var label = GmailApp.getUserLabelByName('ForwardThis');
if (!label) {
label = GmailApp.createLabel('ForwardThis');
}
var threads = label.getThreads();
for (var i = 0; i < threads.length; i++) {
var thread = threads[i];
var messages = thread.getMessages();
for (var j = 0; j < messages.length; j++) {
var message = messages[j];
var from = message.getFrom();
if (from.indexOf(‘generalemailaddress@monitoringsoftware.com') !== -1) {
var body = message.getBody()
var subject = message.getSubject();
var recipient = ‘list-alerts@tts.message-service.org';
GmailApp.sendEmail(recipient, subject, '', {htmlBody: body, from: ‘intermediateforwardemail@yourcompanydomain.com’ });
message.moveToTrash(); // Optional: Move the original email to trash after forwarding
}
}
thread.removeLabel(label);
}
}

++++++++
“`

4. **Save the Script:**
– Click on `File` > `Save`, and give your project a name (e.g., `AutoForwardEmails`).

5. **Authorize the Script:**
– Click on the `Run` button (triangle icon) and authorize the script by following the prompts to grant the necessary permissions.

6. **Set Up a Trigger:**
– Click on the clock icon in the toolbar (Triggers).
– Click on `+ Add Trigger`.
– Set the function to `forwardEmails`, deploy to `Head`, and select a time-driven trigger (e.g., `Every 5 minutes` or `Hourly`).
– Save the trigger.

7. **Label Incoming Emails:**
– Go back to your Gmail inbox (`intermediateforwardemail@yourcompanydomain.com `).
– Create a filter to automatically label incoming emails from `denis.oneil@olinkscorp.com`.
– Click on the search bar, then click on the `Show search options` icon.
– Enter ` generalemailaddress@monitoringsoftware.com’` in the `From` field.
– Click `Create filter`.
– Check the box `Apply the label` and choose `ForwardThis` (or create a new label if it doesn’t exist).
– Click `Create filter`.

### Explanation:

– **Google Apps Script**: The script checks for emails with the label `ForwardThis`, and if the email is from `generalemailaddress@monitoringsoftware.com’, it forwards it to `list-alerts@tts.message-service.org` with the `FROM` address set to `intermediateforwardemail@yourcompanydomain.com`.
– **Triggers**: The script runs periodically (based on the trigger settings) to check for new emails to forward.

This setup should ensure that the forwarded emails appear as if they are sent from `intermediateforwardemail@yourcompanydomain.com` to `list-alerts@tts.message-service.org`.

Remember that `intermediateforwardemail@yourcompanydomain.com` must be set as the Send-Only email address in the EmailToVoice.Net customer account profile.

Updating the Gmail Alternative

If you need to change the Google Apps Script after it has been deployed in a production environment, you can follow these steps. We are not saying this is the only way or even the best way to change existing script code, but it is an alternative for changing the script code.

You can create a new project with a unique name and copy your script code into the new project. Then rename remove the old project.
Create a New Project:

o Go to Google Apps Script.
o Click on the New project button.

 

2. Copy the Script Code:

o In the new project, copy your existing script code from the old project.

3. Paste and Save the Code:

o Paste the copied code into the new project’s script editor.
o Click on File > Save and give your project a new name.

4. Set Up Triggers Again:

o Recreate any necessary triggers for the new project by following the steps to add triggers.

By following these steps, you should be able to edit and save your Google Apps Script successfully.
There may be a more dynamic method than deleting and renaming a project. Please investigate for yourself.

Outlook Email Alternative

Another solution to using Gmail is using an Outlook account. Again, Gmail does not retain the name of the forwarding email address as the FROM email address after the forwarding. Outlook does retain the email address of the forwarding email as the FROM email address.

Here’s a possible way you can set it up.

Setting Up Automatic Forwarding in Outlook

1. Log in to Your Outlook Account:

Access your Outlook account, such as ‘intermediateforwardemail@yourcompanydomain.com’

Set Up Email Forwarding:

Click on the gear icon (Settings) in the upper right corner.

Select “View all Outlook settings” at the bottom.

Navigate to “Mail” > “Forwarding”.

Check the box for “Enable forwarding”.

Enter the email address ‘list-alerts@tts.message-service.org’

Optionally, check the box for “Keep a copy of forwarded messages” if you want to retain a copy in the original mailbox.

Click “Save”

Create a Rule for Specific Sender:

Go to “Mail” > “Rules”.

Click on “Add new rule”.

Give your rule a name (e.g., “Forward alert Emails to Phones”).

Under “Add a condition”, select “From” and enter ‘generalemailaddress@monitoringsoftware.com’

Under “Add an action”, select “Forward to” and enter ‘list-alerts@tts.message-service.org’

Click “Save”

Advantages of Using Outlook

By using Outlook, you can achieve the desired email forwarding behavior more effectively than with Gmail’s standard forwarding features. When emails are forwarded from an Outlook account, the FROM address will be the Outlook account, not the original sender’s address.

Conclusion

In all cases, please do your investigation of these alternatives. We at EmailToVoice.Net are not experts in email forwarding and new features from different providers can be added at any time. We specialize in converting email content into a nice-sounding voice in many dialects or into an SMS or rich text secure message via SMS.

Test all changes before going into production. And then consider setting limits so that if there is a problem with your code, the impact is limited.

Please contact us to learn more about how we can assist you in your mission-critical business communications needs.

How to use X-Header in EmailToVoice.Net for Account Identification

How to use X-Header in EmailToVoice.Net for Account Identification

by | Jun 19, 2024 | How To, Product Feature

It is important to note that Emailtovoice.net requires that the email message sent to EmailToVoice.Net be from your company email address. That means that the email address must have the same domain as your company URL or your company has exclusive rights to the email address.

However, sometimes the application originating the message will send from its own general-purpose email address.

For instance, monitoring software will send an alert email from an email address within their own service domain. The customer wants to get that alert message as a phone message instead of an email. So, we convert the content of the Email into a nice-sounding voice, dial the phone number of the customer’s recipient who needs to hear the message, etc. An example of the recipient’s TO field would be something like: 5551231234@tts.message-service.org or list-alerts@tts.message-service.org.

Now, there is a sophisticated alternative to solve the issue that an application or service is sending the Email FROM a general-purpose email address not exclusively owned by the Emailtovoice.net customer.

X-HEADER PARAMETERS

X-headers are email headers that are added to the email in addition to the standard headers, such as the To, From, and Subject, according to the specific needs of the sender.  

Using Microsoft Mail flow rule actions in Exchange Online you can add a Header Name and a Header Value. For more info on this Mail flow rule actions in the Exchange Online feature:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/security-and-compliance/mail-flow-rules/mail-flow-rule-actions

This means you would not need to change the FROM address. You can set up a rule to add a header to any message received from a general address.

  • For the message header Name, set this as: X-Header-ID.
  • For the Header value: insert a random string of your choice. Add this random string in the Customer Portal / My Details for the customer account.

This enables processing email to TTS via any FROM Email address as long as it gets to @nnn.message-service.org, and we use this embedded identifier to authorize and route the message through the appropriate customer account.

For those interfacing with the Email ToVoice.Net programmatically, several parameters can be included in the email header fields. These are:

X-Header-ID

“X-Header-ID” is an alternate method of user identification. If a field called “X-Header-ID” is
found in the header of an email to broadcast request, the system searches for a user with a
matching the “X-Header-ID” value setup in their user profile, and using that account to send the
message.

If this field is found then the sender’s email address is not used to identify the user account.

X-ReportTo

If an “X-Header-ID” field exists, then an additional field “X-ReportTo” can be added to the email
header. This should consist of a valid email address, and if this is found, then job reports are
sent to this address instead of the address linked to the user’s Account. This allows multiple
users to send jobs and receive job reports through a single account.

X-EtoB-PW

For accounts set with embedded password authentication, the password can be sent in an “X-
EtoB-PW” header field instead of in the body of the message.

X-Receiver

In the special case where the “TO” address is not a standard xxx@nnn.message-service.org
format address, as can be the case when a Mailing List is used to send emails to Broadcast
requests, then the system will check for one or more “X-Receiver” header fields for appropriate
xxx@nnn.message-service.org addresses, and use these to get the destination addresses.

Additional account selection options

If you can not edit the email headers, and you are stuck with a fixed sender address, you can
also identify your account by adding “<EtoBcode>*my xheader id*</EtoBcode> to the start of
your email body.

If we can assist you further, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Advantages of Cloud Based Fax Services

Advantages of Cloud Based Fax Services

by | Apr 17, 2023 | FAX, Product Feature

Fax should be a major consideration as an enterprise develops its Digital Transformation strategy. Traditional steps that have always been part of the business processes must continue to be considered. If they are not, business processes will be broken.

FAX communications still holds significant importance in many industries, such as the legal, healthcare, and financial sectors. But, FAX is used for many business purposes because of the ubiguitous FAX protocol; its security, and relability.

As the Wel Corporation states in their post Legal and Government: Why use Cloud Fax?

Cloud fax services offer security features such as encryption and secure data centres to protect your confidential documents. In addition, many services offer audit trails and access controls to ensure that only authorized personnel can view and send faxes.

EmailToVoice.Net FAX

One such cloud FAX service is offered by EmailToVoice.Net. This service allows users to send FAXes through their existing email accounts. Business applications can send FAXes as easily as sending an email. The Attachment of the email is converted to FAX format and delivered to the recipient’s FAX machine or email inbox. The content of the email will optionally be converted to the FAX cover page.

Cloud FAX services offer numerous advantages for enterprises, including cost-effectiveness, speed, security, and accessibility. EmailToVoice.Net offers cloud-based FAX solutions. Utilizing these services, businesses can streamline their FAX communications processes, improve efficiency, and reduce costs, while maintaining the security and confidentiality of their sensitive information.

How to Send a FAX Using a Cloud Service

Sending a FAX from the cloud-based EmailToVoice.Net is as easy as sending an email or adding an Email destination to your business applications software.

How to Send a FAX Using Email

Enter phonenumber@FAX.message-service.org in the “to” field.
phonenumber for the USA and Canada is something like 5555555555. The number does not need to be preregistered with EmailToVoice.Net.
For International numbers outside of the USA and Canada, the phonenumber needs a + country code and would look something like +6155555555

The FROM email address must be the same as specified in the subscription process or a special email address you provided.

Type in anything you want in the subject field using less than 120 characters.
Attach your document, such as a PDF, to the Email.

The content of the Email will be used as the FAX Cover Page.

In Summary

There are many advanced features of EmailToVoice.Net. This is just one of them. 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
Escalation Lists Support Sequential Calling for Alerts in EmailToVoice.Net

Escalation Lists Support Sequential Calling for Alerts in EmailToVoice.Net

by | Jan 26, 2021 | Escalation Lists, How To, Product Feature

This article was update 06/30/2023 to reflect the List feature eliminating the need to have a tag in the body of the the email text. (ie TO: list-nightshift@tts.message-service.org)

Escalation Lists in EmailToVoice.Net are used to sequentially send a text-to-speech (TTS) message to a list of phone recipients from any business application. An alert notification needs action immediately. This may require the alert to be sent to more than one person to assure action is taken on the critical issue. EmailToVoice.Net provides the ability to send to a sequential list of people until one is reached. The feature of EmailToVoice.Net is called an Escalation List.

Escalation List Based Upon Proven 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.

 

Recipeint Lists in Email to Phone and SMS

In the Customer Portal, you can create and maintain lists of recipients. Then in the Email, you use the tag called Lists to identify the List you want to use for the message.

 

Feature Addition to List Management

A feature of the List Management capability in EmailToVoice.Net is Escalation Lists.

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

How the Escalation List works

The Escalation List feature would call the first contact in the list. If they do not listen to the message for at least 10 seconds, or do not reply in a positive fashion by pressing 1 in the phone’s Dialpad, then the second contact is called. And that continues until someone listens to the message, replies to accept the offer, or the List is exhausted.

In all instances, a status report of the message is logged on the Customer Portal under View All Jobs and an email status report is returned to the main email address on the account. Further Workflow processes can be executed using the email status report with a product such as Microsoft Power Automate.

To use this feature, you set up a new list (or edit an old one) in the Customer Portal and tick the box “This list is an escalation list”.

 

Set the Escalation List identifier

When you name the List, click on the box that says this is an Escalation List

 

Send a Message to an Escalation List

 

There are two ways to send a message using an Escalation List:

ONE:

The List name can be designated in the TO field. For example, if a List has been created with the name nightshift, then the TO field would look like this:

list-nightshift@tts.message-service.org.

When the email is sent to our service, we will look for the List name nightshift in the Customer Portal profile of My Personal Lists. Our service will then use that List of recipients. This article has more details on this feature.

TWO:

You send your TTS message using this list in EmailToVoice.Net. For example,

  1. send the email message using the list’s name in the TO field as described in this post about sending to a list without a tag. (remember to create the name of the list with all small letters.)
  2. Or send TO dmy@tts.message-service.org and in the body of your message, include:
    <Lists>*alerts*</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.

Some Special Considerations for Lists

  • Make sure that the list has unique references and recipients. The phone number can be duplicated more than once, but the names of each list item must differ.
  • The reference field is sorted alphabetically when you designate the list as an ‘escalation’ list, so name the references something like ‘reference1, reference2, etc.’.
  • Ensure that the Escalation List box was ticked when you created the List.
  • Please make sure you use the list’s name in the TO field (like for instance: list-alert@tts.message-service.org) as described in this post about sending to a list without a tag. (remember to create the name of the list with all small letters.)
  • The name of the list cannot have spaces or any special characters, like a dash, a plus sign, or anything other than alphanumeric characters. Keep the name of the list short.

Phone Calls are Loud and Rare

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.

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.

Rich on 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.

NOTE: This post was updated on November 9, 2022, to reflect enhanced features.

Author

Director at EmailToVoice.Net: CISSP – Solutions Architect for Industrial IoT Alerts and Business Communications. LinkedIn

 

 

2020 Recap of EmailToVoice.Net New Features and Added Value

2020 Recap of EmailToVoice.Net New Features and Added Value

by | 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:

Email to Voice start and end of message

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.

Email to Voice Active Window

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