Email2SMS Introduction
Email2SMS is our service that allows email messages to be sent from a standard Email client, such as Outlook, Office365, or GMail, and delivered to a mobile handset via SMS. Any replies are also delivered to your Email's inbox.
Before you start
Before using email to send SMS messages, ensure Email2SMS is enabled in your Company, and that your address is enabled in the system. Valid addresses are listed on the Website on the settings/options page. If you can not access this page, contact your Administrator and ask them to check if your email address is configured.
If your individual email address is enabled, or if Email2SMS is enabled for your entire domain, then messages can be sent from any RFC 5322 compliant email client, depending on settings such as:
- Domain and IP Authentication (Company).
- Close Address Books (Company or Account).
- Email to contacts only (Company or Account).
You can request personal access to Email2SMS on this page.
If you are an Administrator, you may wish to read about configuring Email2SMS.
Sending via Email2SMS
The steps to send SMS via email are the same as sending a normal email:
- Open your Email Client (Outlook, Gmail, Thunderbird, Hotmail etc).
- Enter the Recipient Addresses, eg: 642715414141@bulletinmessenger.net, or bobs-alias@bulletinmessenger.net in the space provided.
- Enter the Subject of the Email (or leave blank).
- Write your Message.
- Send the Email.
Warning
By default only the first 160 characters of the subject plus the message will be sent to the mobile device so get to the point quickly. Alternatively you can change your Messenger settings to that upto 459 latin characters can be sent. To avoid sending irrelevant content you can also set a signature separator string that will force trailing content to be removed from the email when converted to SMS.
Using smiley faces in your email may result in truncated messages or excess message fees due to the way Outlook sends this emoticon and how it is received by Bulletin.
A “long” SMS is formed from several standard SMS containing a 7 byte concatenation header at the beginning of each one. Since this 7 byte header is within the message, it reduces the size of each partial SMS to 153 characters. This means 2 part messages are 306 characters long (153 x2) and 3 part message can be up to 459 characters long.
With this system, the SMS recipient may not know who sent the message so it is suggested that you add your name and a contact number so you can be contacted if required (replies by SMS will go back to your email address but the person will not be able to call the number that the SMS appears to come from).
With group emails, it is suggested that Messenger addresses be entered in the BCC field. This will stop other recipients from attempting to send email messages to addresses they may not have access to.
Delivery Receipt Emails
If your email client allows delivery receipts you can send an Email2SMS message and request a delivery receipt. Messenger will respond to such requests with an email providing a summary of delivery statuses within about 2 minutes.
The way of setting a message to send a delivery status varies depending on what email client you are using and some email products may not offer this service. Gmail for example only offer this service in the business version of Gmail.
Email Signature Separator Regex
Due to SMS character/part restrictions it is useful to have Email2SMS messages automatically exclude your email auto-signature content from sent SMS messages.
To do this Messenger uses an Email Signature Separator Regex to identify the start of your Email auto-signature. Any content that appears in the email after the Regex characters will automatically be removed and not included on your Email2SMS messages.
The default characters that appear in this field are two dashes and a space “-- “, (this will also take effect if this field is left blank) but this field can be set as any characters you chose. For example, using “Regards,” might be useful if your emails always end with this closing.
All email2SMS content sent from your email will now only include the content that appears before your Regex characters.
The Email Signature Separator Regex can be defined in the Settings|Email2SMS submenu.
More detailed information about common problems can be found here.