by Denis ONeil | Feb 7, 2022 | Escalation Lists, List Management, Uncategorized
+++ 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.
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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.
