Comparing Enterprise SMS using LinkInSMS to RCS and MMS

Comparing Enterprise SMS using LinkInSMS to RCS and MMS

Enterprise SMS is a feature of EmailToVoice.Net, which uses LinkInSMS to deliver rich content to smartphones from mission-critical business applications using the combination of commonly available platforms of Email and SMS.

Your company can send large amounts of formatted data to a cell phone with SMS by merely sending an email, like from your Monitoring Software, CRM, or ERP application. When you send an email through our service as an Enterprise SMS, we create a custom HTML Web page from the content of the email. We then deliver the link for that custom web page in an SMS message. The recipient can then view the formatted HTML web page with a simple tap.

This allows a single SMS text message to deliver large amounts of formatted data to any smartphone in the world initiated by any simple Email interface. There are many more features of Enterprise SMS to meet your mission-critical communications requirements.

SMS Beginning and Present

SMS was proposed in 1982 as part of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), a second-generation cellular standard devised by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Little has changed in SMS since the beginning. SMS messages are still limited to 160 text characters per message. If a message exceeds this limit, most carriers will chain the messages together so they present as a single continuous message to the recipient. SMS is still universally used throughout the world despite its lack of growth in capability.

In response, there have been rich communication alternatives introduced, such as RCS (Rich Communication Services) and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service). Let’s take a look at these communication protocols.

A Look at RCS

Rich Communication Services (RCS) was brought into the GSM Association around the late 2000s. The protocol lay quietly until around 2018 when Google announced it was interested in developing some communications services using RCS.

As Digital Trends says in their Posts “What is RCS messaging? Everything you need to know about the SMS successor”

Considering Google and the carriers are still scattered on how RCS will come together — or even if it will coalesce into some kind of cohesive whole — the new, improved RCS universe as an interconnected unified messaging system is still waiting to emerge. As of mid-2020, things seem to have gone quiet. RCS may be officially available from the network operators, but it is not available on all devices. According to the GSMA, there are 430 million active users with 13 million of them in Germany. Even though RCS has already been launched in many parts of the world, a connection between all these networks is not guaranteed. It looks customers will have more waiting to do before RCS comes to the forefront of consolidating messaging technologies.

RCS has some advanced features over SMS. For instance, RCS can support higher quality picture messaging of up to approximately 10MB in size. The issue that seems to restrict the growth of RCS is that both parties must be using a messaging app and network that supports RCS. If both parties are not on a messaging app supporting RCS, then SMS or MMS will be the fall-back protocol.

A Look at MMS

MMS is built using the same technology as SMS. This allows SMS users to send multimedia content. Whenever you send a message with more than text, such as a picture, you are using MMS.

While their maximum size depends on the carrier and the device receiving the message, 300 KB is often mentioned as the largest size most carriers will reliably handle.

The Challenge to SMS by Business Processes

Businesses often need to send large amounts of formatted data as part of enterprise workflow processes to a cell phone. This can be done easily with just a simple email interface using EmailToVoice.Net. SMS Messaging is a reliable means to get important information to employees or business partners immediately. However, the limitations of SMS text messaging often keep it from being used in mission-critical business processes. Text messaging is limited by the lack of formatting and low text character limit, which is necessary to convey detailed information. MMS and RCS attempt to address this issue. However, they too have limitations that cause barriers to wide adoption for mission-critical applications. And, the ability to send informational and alert messages from business applications is complex without the ability to use standard email capabilities.

Enterprise SMS Using LinkInSMS from EmailToVoice.Net

Enterprise SMS is a text messaging feature from EmailToVoice.Net that enables the delivery of large amounts of formatted data, up to 16MB, to a cell phone by just sending an email to the SMS phone.

Enterprise SMS is a feature of EmailToVoice.Net that creates a custom HTML Web page delivered through a simple SMS message using LinkInSMS. For each SMS recipient, a custom web page is created and inserted in the SMS 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 a receiving smartphone anywhere in the world.

Business applications and monitoring software can deliver detailed information to mobile devices, such as detailed orders, repair instructions, etc. using Enterprise SMS.

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 APIs or propriety software gateways.

Detailed reports are provided to the enterprise customer for business reporting through the Customer Portal and through optional detailed reports that are sent to operational email addresses. These reports show dates, times, success or failure of the messages, and more. The detailed reports can be exported for import into the customer’s BI applications.

The communications channel used to send the message initially is email, so business applications such as Monitoring Software, CRM, or ERP applications can be used seamlessly. The EmailToVoice.Net Customer Portal provides fields for universal header and footer information as well as the ability to manage delivery windows of time.

How Enterprise SMS works

  1. Enter phonenumber@linkinsms.message-service.org in the “to” field.
  2. The FROM email address must be the same as specified in the subscription process or a special email address you provided us.
  3. Type in anything you want in the subject field using less than 120 characters.
  4. The message in the email will be converted to an HTML Web page, up to 16MB, and a link to the page will be inserted in the SMS message.
  5. And then just send the email. The recipient will receive a link to the custom web page.

Features of Enterprise SMS from EmailToVoice.Net

Enterprise SMS provided by EmailToVoice.Net is rich in features to meet any business requirement. Below are some examples of these features.

  • You can add a Header and a Footer that will be used in all Text messages from your account. For example, you can add a logo, an introductory message, disclaimers, and links using HTML
  • You can specify a specific SMS Sender ID so the recipient can recognize the sender of the text message.
  • You can enter a default email address for SMS replies. So, if the recipient replies to the text message, the reply will go to this email address.

There are many more features of the Enterprise SMS Messaging feature in EmailToVoice.Net. Let us know if you would like to learn more. Contact us. We love to share our experience in workflow processes, industrial communications, and alerts.

Communication Enable your Business Processes

Enterprise SMS is excellent for automating labor-intensive, time-sensitive tasks generated from monitoring software, ERP, or CRM applications. The messages can be two-way and integrated with complex workflow processes. EmailToVoice.Net allows a single text message to communicate large amounts of data. For example, a text message could deliver detailed technical information for device repair or financial data accessed by a simple tap in their SMS text message.

To deliver rich content to smartphones, Enterprise SMS from EmailToVoice.net uses the combination of commonly available platforms of Email and SMS to deliver large amounts of formatted data from mission-critical business applications.

Setting Message Delivery Times In EmailToVoice.Net

Setting Message Delivery Times In EmailToVoice.Net

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.

Easily configure your delivery start time and end time

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.

If you have any questions about this feature of EmailToVoice.Net, please contact us so we can help you meet your mission-critical business communications requirements.

We have recently added other features that assist our customers in adding workflow processes to their business communications needs. An example is designate the beginning and the end of a voice or text message sent using email. This is valuable when you want to send only the pertinent information in your alerts and mission-critical messages.

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:

How EmailtoVoice.Net works

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 an SMS message with no need to program APIs or install any hardware or software.

For making a voice phone call, you merely make the TO field in the Email you are sending to look something like 5551234567@tts.message-service.org (international calls require a +CountryCode in front of the local number). 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.

You can also send an Enterprise SMS, FAX or prerecorded Voice Message from an email program interface, like from an application, Internet of Things device (IoT / M2M), or through your CRM and Dispatch System.

Contact Us if we can provide further assistance in helping you meet your business communications requirements.

Easily Parse the Beginning and End of an Email To Voice Message

Easily Parse the Beginning and End of an Email To Voice Message

EmailToVoice.Net has the ability to designate the beginning and the end of a voice or text message sent using email. This is valuable when you want to send only the pertinent information in your alerts and mission-critical messages.

Send Voice and Text via Email

EmailToVoice.Net provides the ability to make a phone call or send an enterprise text message by merely using any email capability. This is a requirement for mission-critical processes in many industries. Our customers can send alerts directly from monitoring software, like Vaisala/viewLinc, ServiceNow, Nagios, SolarWinds, and more. If the alert message is concise and complete, then the complete message can be converted and delivered to the recipient as a voice phone call or text message without change.

However, there are situations when our customer has information in the content of the email that does not need to be converted to a voice message (TTS) or SMS message.

Examples When Email Parsing Is Desired

Food Delivery Services

A person may order food from a web site which creates a Delivery Order form. That Order form may need to be sent to the delivery person or the restaurant via a voice phone call or a text message. The Delivery Order form will often have information that does not need to be converted to voice or a text message. EmailToVoice.Net allows our customers to specify, at the account level, the characters that designate the beginning and the end of the message that needs to be delivered by voice or text message.

Industrial Device Alerts

Industrial IoT (Internet of Things) devices are generally out in the field. When a monitoring service detects a failure or scheduled maintenance, an alert is sent to the Service department. The alert can also be sent directly to the Field Repair person. The alert may contain information that does not need to be converted. Our customers can merely specify the characters that identify the beginning and the end of an alert message that needs to be converted to voice or text.

Important Email Messages

Emails do not always get the attention that is required for important messages. Most of us are overloaded with email messages. So, to get people’s attention, companies will send a voice phone call or text SMS message. However, the original email will often times have an Email Signature that is not necessary for other forms of communication. Or sometimes the email is forwarded and that creates extra header information that does not need to be converted to voice or text. EmailToVoice.Net provides the ability for our enterprise customers to eliminate the top and bottom portion of the email before conversion to voice or text occurs. Then when the message is played over the phone, only the important part of the message is heard by the recipient. The same occurs for the person receiving the important Email message in text across the SMS channel.

The above three examples are only a few of many where this feature of EmailToVoice is so valuable. The recipient of alerts and other mission-critical information should be hearing or reading only that which is of the utmost importance.

How To Enter the Beginning and End of a Message

Change My Details Account Information

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

Enter Tags into the 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

Alternatives for More Detailed Parsing

Our customers can choose to do more elaborate parsing of the email before sending the message through our service for conversion to voice or text. There are many Email Parsing services available. In the past, we have written about Microsoft’s Power Automate as one example. These email parsing services provide the customer with the ability to extract and reformat information before being sent through our Email to phone call cloud service for conversion and delivery.

Let Us Help

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.

 

 

 

Parse Email into a Phone Call Using Microsoft Flow and Workflow Definition Language

Parse Email into a Phone Call Using Microsoft Flow and Workflow Definition Language

Making a phone call has become a critical requirement for alerts and notifications from monitoring systems and customer service applications. The challenge is these applications often can only send emails. In addition to that challenge, an email has a lot of stuff that is not necessary for a phone message. The solution for this challenge is to parse the content of the email into a succinct voice message that gets the important message across quickly and effectively.

Microsoft Flow and EmailToVoice.Net work well together. We have written about this integration in past articles in our Blog. In this post, we are going to delve deeper into the script used to parse the email content into a sensible phone message.

Workflow Definition Language

The Microsoft Workflow Definition language is at the center of extracting relevant information from an email and passing only what is applicable to a voice phone call. The Microsoft Workflow Definition Language is available in Microsoft Flow. You also find this powerful language in Azure Logic Apps. Actually it is better documented in Azure Logic Apps.

Sample Script for Parsing and Email

In our previous posts about using Microsoft Flow with EmailToVoice.Net, we have shown sample scenarios of forwarding a message that arrives in a customer service email inbox and then passes that message on to a phone. In this post, we are showing a simple example of parsing the content of an email into shortened text that would be more applicable for a voice phone call.

Sample Incoming Email

Let’s use a simple email for our example. From this email, all we want for the phone call is what has been ordered. In this case, it is ‘One Pizza’.



Initialize Variable with the Body of the Email

First we will initialize a new variable with the content of the Email. This grabs all of the text of the incoming email. If the email is HTML, then all the HTML formatting is also present in this new variable.

Discard beginning text of the email

Next we want to discard all text before the part of the email that we want to have as the content of the voice phone call. To do this we used the following expression:

last(split(variables(‘Email Text’),’This is the order </div><div><br></div><div>’))

It is important to note that when the email is HTML, then you need to look into the source to see exactly how the email content looks.

Discard bottom part of the text of the email

Now we want to discard everything after the part of the email that we want to keep as the voice phone message. in this simple case, the only part we want to keep is ‘One Pizza’. To do this we used the following expression:

first(split(variables(‘Email top part’),'</div>’))

Pass the remaining content to a Phone Call

As the final step, we use the variable that now has only the part of the email that we want to be converted to speech (TTS) for the phone call. This text will be passed to EmailToVoice.Net.

Microsoft Flow Power Automate

 

This is a great independent Youtube video to further explain this type of process using Workflow Definition Language.

 

Can We Help Further

If you have a business process that would be enhanced by using voice phone messages, contact us. We can help you integrate phone messages into any mission-critical business flow.

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 an SMS message with no need to program APIs or install any hardware or software.

For making a voice phone call, you merely make the TO field in the Email you are sending to look something like 5551234567@tts.message-service.org (international calls require a +CountryCode in front of the local number). 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.

You can also send an SMS, FAX or prerecorded Voice Message from an email program interface, like from an application, Internet of Things device (IoT / M2M), or through your CRM and Dispatch System.

Using Microsoft Flow with EmailToVoice.Net to Improve Customer Service Business Processes

Using Microsoft Flow with EmailToVoice.Net to Improve Customer Service Business Processes

Microsoft Flow works well with EmailToVoice.Net. And now, Microsoft has made licensing changes that make Microsoft Flow even more convenient for routing and parsing emails while EmailToVoice.Net converts the emails into voice phone calls.

As recently announced by Microsoft, Office 365 is now Microsoft 365. Included in that change, Microsoft Flow is now available in most Microsoft 365 subscriptions.

Microsoft Flow and EmailToVoice.Net are great companions. Microsoft Flow has email connectors that enhance business flows. These email connectors can seamlessly invoke the abilities of EmailToVoice.Net. EmailToVoice.Net provides the ability to integrate Text to Speech and SMS communications with enterprise business flows.

Customer Service Scenario

To provide an example of how Microsoft Flow and EmailToVoice.Net can work together, the following is an example of sending a voice message to customer service staff when an email arrives from the enterprise’s customer. The prerequisites for this example are a subscription to EmailToVoice.Net (can be a free trial) and a paid subscription to Microsoft 365. This example uses the GMAIL connector. Microsoft Flow has many connectors.

When Microsoft Flow detects an email message arriving in the customer service general email address Microsoft Flow will trigger an email to be sent (forwarded) to EmailToVoice.Net that will then generate a phone call to the customer service representative.

To set up the Microsoft Flow script, sign into your Microsoft 365 Account.

Images below are from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365 Updated versions may change the views.

Select All Apps

Microsoft 365 All Apps

 

Select Flow

Microsoft 365 Flow app

Go to Connectors and connect to Gmail

Gmail Connector Microsoft Flow

Select Trigger

In this example, the trigger will be a new email coming into the customer service email mailbox from a customer.

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.

Gmail Microsoft Flow Forward trigger

Provide Assurance to Microsoft Flow that 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 Microsoft Flow requests you to do.

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 customer service email address that will receive the customer’s email message.

Create the Flow part one

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

Create the Flow part two

 

Conclusion

When a message comes in from a customer to the customer service email address, a Microsoft Trigger will occur, which will forward that message to EmailToVoice.Net from your email address. EmailToVoice.Net will convert the content of the email to a nice sounding voice, dial the phone number, etc. Learn more at EmailToVoice.Net

Additional Considerations

The Subject Field of the message being forwarded to EmailToVoice.Net for conversion to a voice can be preset in Microsoft Flow. The Subject field can then be optionally read as part of the message to the customer service representative by selecting the following setting in the Customer Portal.

Customer Portal / My Details / Email To Broadcast Subject Field Behaviour

The number of characters of the email being sent to EmailToVoice.Net can optionally be limited by selecting the setting in the Customer Portal.

Customer Portal / My Details / TTS character limit

Additionally, a Header Message can optionally be set in the EmailToVoice.Net account for every message. The Header message will be converted to voice and read every time at the beginning of every voice message.

Customer Portal / My Details / TTS Message Prefix

How EmailtoVoice.Net works

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 an SMS message with no need to program APIs or install any hardware or software.

For making a voice phone call, you merely make the TO field in the Email you are sending to look something like 5551234567@tts.message-service.org (international calls require a +CountryCode in front of the local number). 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.

You can also send an SMS, FAX or prerecorded Voice Message from an email program interface, like from an application, Internet of Things device (IoT / M2M), or through your CRM and Dispatch System.

Contact Us if we can provide further assistance in helping you meet your business communications requirements.