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.
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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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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try bulksms.com No voice option, but great for bulk sms text messaging - international coverage.
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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.
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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[^]
In a Union shop?! You're going to eliminate someone's job! :)
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In a Union shop?! You're going to eliminate someone's job! :)
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A place I used to work at used Rave Mobile Safety. Seemed easy to set up as a user (recipient).
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milo-xml wrote:
I like receiving a text when I schedule a haircut confirming the time of the appointment
Usually it is confirmed when you make the appointment. Why would you wait for a text to confirm it?
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^][](X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett)
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Yes, usually on the receiving end. So you think that spamming is the way to go when you want to make your emplyees happy? Perhaps you can make some extra money by setting up a booth where they sell torches and pitchforks.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a fucking golf cart.
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