Send a Voice Alert to a List of Recipients Without Adding a Tag to the Email Content

Send a Voice Alert to a List of Recipients Without Adding a Tag to the Email Content

+++ Updated May 30, 2023 +++

Users of EmailToVoice.Net are not always able to add a special Tag to the content of the email before the content is converted to voice and used as a voice phone call. That restriction is now solved through a special feature of EmailToVoice.Net.

Multiple Ways To Send To Multiple Recipients

EmailToVoice.Net can send a message to a phone using email and have the email content read to the recipient with a nice-sounding voice using Text-To-Speech. The destination used in the email is simply to have the TO field look something like 2145551234@tts.message-service.org.

To send the message to multiple recipients, the sender can merely send the message multiple times to different recipients. However, there are three other ways to send a message from EmailToVoice.Net to 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 standard general length restriction of about 64 characters for the TO field.

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

Multiple Destinations can be through pre-setup lists by using the format:
<Lists>
My First List Name
My Second List Name
</Lists>

NOTE: The destination phone numbers are included in the body of the message. So, the TO field should be: msg@tts.message-service.org

Creating Lists

EmailToVoice.Net continues to grow in features and functionality. On March 16th of 2020, we launched our new Customer Portal. The customer can see real time status of their jobs submitted through EmailToVoice.Net, change details in their Profile settings, create distribution lists, and much more.

Manage Personal Lists: The customer can set up 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.

No Need for LIST Tag in Content

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.

 

Considerations when creating the list in the Customer Portal:

  • The name of the list must be in lower case
  • The name of the list cannot have spaces or any special characters, like a dash or a plus sign or anything other than alphanumeric characters. Keep the name of the list short.
  • The reference field for each entry must be unique.
  • The reference field is sorted alphabetically when you designate the list as an ‘escalation’ list, so name the references something like ‘reference1, reference2, etc.’.

Escalation Lists Work, Too

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.

This feature will work with Lists setup as an Escalation List.

Works for all Communications

The examples above are using TTS. However, these multiple destination options are applicable for all of the communication methods available in EmailToVoice.Net. The exception is that escalation lists are only for TTS (Text to Speech). For instance, the tts can be replaced with sms, fax or voice, since EmailToVoice.Net can also send to SMS, FAX and send a pre-recorded voice message via an attached WAV file.

You can learn more at our Features Page. If you have any questions regarding these optional methods to specify recipients in EmailToVoice./Net, please Contact Us

 

Author

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