by Denis ONeil | Oct 22, 2020 | How To
You have become a user of EmailToVoice.Net. So, now what?
First Things First
Let’s make sure we all understand the basics of how EmailToVoice.Net works. Our cloud messaging service converts the text in the email message to a genuine-sounding voice or formatted SMS text message and then delivers that message to a phone anywhere in the world without preregistrations. No need to install hardware or use APIs.
To send a message, the Email Fields would look something like this:
TO: phonenumber@NNN.message-service.org (The recipient’s cell phone, NNN can be TTS, SMS, LinkInSMS, Voice or FAX)
FROM: emailaddress@yourcompanydomain.com (The authorized email address to send messages through our service)
SUBJECT: Anything (Used as a job name for reporting purposes, but can be used as the message or part of the message)
CONTENT (For TTS, this will be converted to a voice message. For SMS, this becomes the text message)
Those are the fundamentals. So, now let’s cover what more we can do to meet your enterprise business needs. (Note that this is not an inclusive list. These are the most commonly used advanced features.)
Send a Voice or SMS message from Monitoring Software, CRM, ERP, PCS, or any business application
Integrating communications with business applications is the most common use of EmailToVoice.Net. Applications can send an email, but it is so important in today’s sensory-filled world to get the important messages out as a voice phone call or an SMS text message. Merely change the recipient’s email address to the format of the TO as described above, and you are now sending live communications from your applications without the need for APIs, coding, etc.
What Email Addresses are Authorized?
The main email address specified during the Subscription process on the account can always send messages through our service. That email address also receives reports, password changes, and billing:
You can request us to add an additional email address to your account that will be authorized to only send messages through our service. Just Contact Us.
There are many security features to identify items such as a whitelist of IP addresses. Let us know what you need.
What Phone Numbers Can I Send To?
You can send messages to any number in the world. If the number is in the USA or Canada, then the country code is not needed. When the number is outside of the USA and Canada, then specify phonenumber in the TO field to be something like +6155555555, where 61 is the country code. (Note that there are some global regulations that may exclude some phone numbers.)
Can I Have Only Part of the Message Converted to Voice or SMS?
You can parse the email message by specifying where the important part of the text starts and ends. This eliminates the irrelevant parts of your email, such as the top Header part, and the bottom of the email, such as the Signature, leaving only the important part of the message. Set these parameters in the Customer Portal / My Details / Change Details. It is great to keep the message short and more succinct.
Can I Set a Window of Time for Delivering the Messages?
If you want to send alerts out to your staff as phone calls or SMS text messages only during a specific time of day, you can specify the times in Customer Portal / My Details / Change Details / Email To Broadcast: Active Window.
Can I have the Sending Number be From My Company?
You can have the Caller ID for TTS and Voice messages be from a number that you own. Just Contact Us. It is important that you are able to provide proof that your company owns the phone number. We cannot guarantee that the Caller ID will display in all regions of the USA and globally because carriers throughout the US and the world have to meet varying regulations regarding Caller ID.
You can specify an SMS Sender ID number in Customer Portal / My Details / Change Details. If you are not in the USA and Canada, you can specify a number you own. Within the USA and Canada, you will need to request a number (a Long Code) from us and we will update your account with that number. There will be a minimal monthly charge for that Long Code.
Can I Send to Multiple Destinations?
There are several ways to send to more than one destination.
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
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
Can I Have the Subject Field be Part of the Message?
The Subject field of the email coming into our service is always used as the Job Name for reporting purposes. However, sometimes the Subject Field has valuable information in it. So, you can choose to concatenate the Subject field to the message or have only the Subject field be the entire message. You specify this in Customer Portal / My Details / Change Details.
Can I have an SMS Message Deliver Large Amounts of Formatted Data?
An Aert text message sometimes needs to deliver a large amount of formatted data (HTML). This can be done by sending the SMS message with the TO field as phonenumber@LinkInSMS.message-service.org. For instance, the formatted data may be the section of a user manual on how to perform the repair for the failed device. Our ‘Enterprise SMS’ feature, which uses LinkInSMS, is explained in more detail in our post called “Sending Enterprise Text Using a Simple Email Interface “.
How Does Reporting Work?
Every time a message is sent from your account through our service, the main email address receives a detailed email providing the status of the message. This can be changed in your account so that the main email address receives messages only if there are exceptions, such as a failed job. Just Contact Us.
You can specify additional emails to receive reports, or specify that no email reports are sent at all.
Is There A Customer Portal To View Job History?
We have mentioned the Customer Portal previously regarding Account Details and Lists. However, it has much more, such as ‘View All Jobs’ to see the jobs history on any date range you choose.
In Summary
There are many advanced features of EmailToVoice.Net. These are merely a few 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.
by Denis ONeil | Mar 27, 2020 | Customer Portal
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.
Here is a quick summary 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.
- 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.
The Customer Portal
Our customers are businesses, from medium size to global enterprises. Before we launched our new Customer Portal, the customer could look back for information on messages by searching the inbox of the main email address on the account profile. That is still possible. But now the customer has an interactive dashboard to check the status of messages or review the number of messages that have been sent in the past and many more capabilities.
Customer Portal Login
UserName and Password
The username is prefixed with etv/. For our customers that have been with us for a while, we want to point out that the us/ prefix is retired. All usernames are prefixed with etv/ – even the old usernames.
If you do not know your username or password, no problem. Just click on the “I don’t know my username and/or password” button. You will be asked to specify the main email address on your account and a secure link specifying the username will be sent to your email. Save the username and click on the secure link. their you will be asked to reset the password. Then you will have the username and password so that you can login to the Customer Portal.
Customer Portal Fundamentals
View All Jobs
The View All Jobs provides the customer the ability to 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.
My Details
Choosing the My Details section will provide the customer the ability to change password and 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 to the recipient who 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.
There are many other fields in the Details that are useful for TTS, SMS and FAX. We will save those for a subsequent post.
EmailToVoice.Net is Rich in Features
There are many features in EmailToVoice.Net. If you have a business process that requires communications, please reach out to us. We have a wealth of experience in enterprise communications and business process flow. We would love to share that experience and offer you solutions. If your not an EmailToVoice.Net customer yet, subscribe for a free trial.
When to Use EmailToVoice.Net
Why do our customers use EmailToVoice.Net? Phone calls and SMS messages 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. However, email is the typical mode of communication for alerts from the monitoring software, CRM or other business applications. EmailToVoice.Net makes it simple to make a phone call or send and SMS by just using the Email interface that is already available in the software systems.
How to Use EmailToVoice.Net
As a customer of EmailToVoice.Net, a phone call or SMS is sent by an application by just sending an email. The TO field looks something like 5551234567@TTS.message-service.org for a Text to Speech call or 5551234567@SMS.message-service.org for a SMS text message. (Calls made outside of the USA and Canada should have a + country code in front, like +61555123456@tts.message-service.org)
For a voice call, the text in the email is converted to a nice sounding voice (TTS – Text-to-Speech). 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 voicemail. There are many mission-critical features in our service.
We deliver Text To Speech messages, prerecorded voice messages, SMS text message, and even Faxes, with no need to install special APIs, hardware or software.
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 28, 2019 | Voice communications
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.
Critical messages are becoming more common as we move into the Industrial IoT era. As TARRIS states
The Internet of Things (IoT) has exploded in recent years, and it’s not slowing down any time soon. Gartner forecasts that 20.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide by 2020, and a new Business Insider Intelligence study predicts that the IoT market will grow to over $3 trillion annually by 2026.
An IoT device is any device connected to the Internet. In an enterprise environment, monitoring these devices is commonly done through Monitoring Software, like viewLINC, or SolarWinds to name just a couple – there are many.
These IoT devices need to communicate with people through alerts and integration with mission-critical applications. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) needs to be given a voice. An IIoT device that has only the ability to send an email must now be enabled to dial a phone. The number may be repair truck, or used to wake people in the middle of the night, or cut through all the mundane communications received during the regular business day.
Cloud Communications Solution Makes it Easy
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.
How EmailToVoice.Net Works
All you have to do is subscribe to the EmailToVoice.Net service and then make the TO field in the Email look something like 5551234567@tts.message-service.org
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! There are many mission-critical features in the service.
Let us know if you would like to learn more. Contact us. We love to share our experience in mission-critical business communications and industrial alerts.
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.
