Mass Voice/Text Messaging Service
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Does anyone have any experience with systems or companies that can send mass voice or text messages? We're looking to contact selected employees with info relating to work. Ideally, I think we would set up the contacts and whether or not they want voice or text messages. The interface needs to be user friendly with a small learning curve if possible.
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Well, have you found anyone with real world experience, here at the lounge on mass text bombing? And if so, did that experience help you make mission critical, command decisions on this topic? Just curious is all... :)
Actually, yes. I've been able to narrow it down to 4 options that people have had experience with. One has PeopleSoft integration which might be desirable, depending upon what they're looking at for price. Remember, we're manually calling these people anyway in regards to work, so this will be just a way to automate it. :) The four are, for reference: Mass Notification & Emergency Notification Software | MIR3, Inc.[^] Cloud Phone System, Voice Broadcasting, Appointment Reminders, IVR API[^] https://www.twilio.com/[^] Nimbow - API for Text Messaging & Bulk SMS[^]
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My previous employer setup VoiceShot[^] as a platform to distribute emergency office closed type messages. I think during the 3 years between when they set it up and I left it was only used for the annual system test message...
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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I have no idea how usable it was on the admin end, but they never had to do an emergency office closure after setting the system up. Or at least not in my building. A few of the coastal locations had hurricane shutdowns, and the other local building had a watermain problem that they encouraged people to work from home if possible (to try and avoid having to buy 200-300 people's worth of bottled water) until it was fixed that might've happened after the system was setup.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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I have no idea how usable it was on the admin end, but they never had to do an emergency office closure after setting the system up. Or at least not in my building. A few of the coastal locations had hurricane shutdowns, and the other local building had a watermain problem that they encouraged people to work from home if possible (to try and avoid having to buy 200-300 people's worth of bottled water) until it was fixed that might've happened after the system was setup.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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Does anyone have any experience with systems or companies that can send mass voice or text messages? We're looking to contact selected employees with info relating to work. Ideally, I think we would set up the contacts and whether or not they want voice or text messages. The interface needs to be user friendly with a small learning curve if possible.
Sounds like you are describing twitter.
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Does anyone have any experience with systems or companies that can send mass voice or text messages? We're looking to contact selected employees with info relating to work. Ideally, I think we would set up the contacts and whether or not they want voice or text messages. The interface needs to be user friendly with a small learning curve if possible.
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Spok EverBridge I know we use them both at different locations. I have no insight into the use of them.
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Does anyone have any experience with systems or companies that can send mass voice or text messages? We're looking to contact selected employees with info relating to work. Ideally, I think we would set up the contacts and whether or not they want voice or text messages. The interface needs to be user friendly with a small learning curve if possible.
try X-matters.com We use it for on-call notification and escalation as well as emergency notification I am sure it will fit the need how ever I do not know the cost (We support 18,000 employees with 5 hospitals and dozens of clinics )
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try X-matters.com We use it for on-call notification and escalation as well as emergency notification I am sure it will fit the need how ever I do not know the cost (We support 18,000 employees with 5 hospitals and dozens of clinics )
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Does anyone have any experience with systems or companies that can send mass voice or text messages? We're looking to contact selected employees with info relating to work. Ideally, I think we would set up the contacts and whether or not they want voice or text messages. The interface needs to be user friendly with a small learning curve if possible.
try bulksms.com No voice option, but great for bulk sms text messaging - international coverage.
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Does anyone have any experience with systems or companies that can send mass voice or text messages? We're looking to contact selected employees with info relating to work. Ideally, I think we would set up the contacts and whether or not they want voice or text messages. The interface needs to be user friendly with a small learning curve if possible.
Our county sheriff's office uses http://www.nixle.com to send text message notices of accidents, road closures, etc. It works pretty well. Not sure if it's a solution for you or not.
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So do it all by email. It's free (which texts mostly aren't) and the subscriber can always set a rule to bin them unread or feed them to a particular folder.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
Oddly, most USA plans anymore have free text messaging while data (which would include email) is metered. I think texts are great; very easy to ignore. Agree with those who point out automated phone calls are INCREDIBLY annoying.
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Does anyone have any experience with systems or companies that can send mass voice or text messages? We're looking to contact selected employees with info relating to work. Ideally, I think we would set up the contacts and whether or not they want voice or text messages. The interface needs to be user friendly with a small learning curve if possible.
We just started using Everbridge at work for inclement weather and emergency notifications. I can't speak to the set up by the owning office, but the UI for configuring how you want to receive messages was very simple to use. It sends to voice, email, and text and you can choose which of these to get messages on and in what order. The Safety folks set it up with work phone and email, and each user gets to register and add any other numbers/addresses they want information on. Very easy. Good luck!
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try bulksms.com No voice option, but great for bulk sms text messaging - international coverage.
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Our county sheriff's office uses http://www.nixle.com to send text message notices of accidents, road closures, etc. It works pretty well. Not sure if it's a solution for you or not.
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We just started using Everbridge at work for inclement weather and emergency notifications. I can't speak to the set up by the owning office, but the UI for configuring how you want to receive messages was very simple to use. It sends to voice, email, and text and you can choose which of these to get messages on and in what order. The Safety folks set it up with work phone and email, and each user gets to register and add any other numbers/addresses they want information on. Very easy. Good luck!
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Does anyone have any experience with systems or companies that can send mass voice or text messages? We're looking to contact selected employees with info relating to work. Ideally, I think we would set up the contacts and whether or not they want voice or text messages. The interface needs to be user friendly with a small learning curve if possible.
Do you want an API, or a web interface that a non-programmer can use? I looked into this a bit for my son's school, and there was a big difference between A) a turnkey solution where the school's reception could just log in & send a voicemail or text to all the parents, and B) an API that you could control with code. As you can imagine the API is much cheaper. I just played around with one of the sandbox API's (I forget which one) and it was very easy. It made me realize you could develop a web interface pretty easily, and I was planning to do this for them to save them some money over the turnkey solution. To send a text message, you just provide the text string and phone number to the API as you'd expect. For a voice message, as I recall you provide a MP3 or WAV file along with the phone number to the API. For APIs, there's Twilio and Plivo; Amazon Web Services (AWS) also has these services available. To give you an idea of AWS pricing: Pricing[^] The first 100 text messages per month are free, and then it's $0.00645 per message after that. It's hard to gauge a price like that in the abstract (is that cheap? or a lot?), so I did some ballpark estimating. The school has about 1,000 parents, so that's $6.45 each time the school sends a text message. It's not necessarily a lot, but it's not something you want to be sending 5 times a day either, or even every day, because it can start to add up. If you're just sending one a week, that's $25.80 per month. This is still radically cheaper than the turnkey solutions. I think the secretary told me they were quoted $3,000/yr for a ready-made web solution? I'm sure that had restrictions or additional fees if you went over a texting limit.
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Does anyone have any experience with systems or companies that can send mass voice or text messages? We're looking to contact selected employees with info relating to work. Ideally, I think we would set up the contacts and whether or not they want voice or text messages. The interface needs to be user friendly with a small learning curve if possible.
Do you want an API, or a web interface that a non-programmer can use? I looked into this a bit for my son's school, and there was a big difference between A) a turnkey solution where the school's reception could just log in & send a voicemail or text to all the parents, and B) an API that you could control with code. As you can imagine the API is much cheaper. I just played around with one of the sandbox API's (I forget which one) and it was very easy. It made me realize you could develop a web interface pretty easily, and I was planning to do this for them to save them some money over the turnkey solution. To send a text message, you just provide the text string and phone number to the API as you'd expect. For a voice message, as I recall you provide a MP3 or WAV file along with the phone number to the API. For APIs, there's Twilio and Plivo; Amazon Web Services (AWS) also has these services available. To give you an idea of AWS pricing: Pricing[^] The first 100 text messages per month are free, and then it's $0.00645 per message after that. It's hard to gauge a price like that in the abstract (is that cheap? or a lot?), so I did some ballpark estimating. The school has about 1,000 parents, so that's $6.45 each time the school sends a text message. It's not necessarily a lot, but it's not something you want to be sending 5 times a day either, or even every day, because it can start to add up. If you're just sending one a week, that's $25.80 per month. This is still radically cheaper than the turnkey solutions. I think the secretary told me they were quoted $3,000/yr for a ready-made web solution? I'm sure that had restrictions or additional fees if you went over a texting limit.
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Does anyone have any experience with systems or companies that can send mass voice or text messages? We're looking to contact selected employees with info relating to work. Ideally, I think we would set up the contacts and whether or not they want voice or text messages. The interface needs to be user friendly with a small learning curve if possible.
