Text 2 Email

unwashed potato! · 12 May 2018 at 22:28

i'm looking for a way for staff to text something to a mobile number, and that then gets converted to an email and sent to us.

anyone know of such a thing that doesn't cost the earth? found something but at £200+ per year inc vat was too much for the little we'd use it

we have an unused old mobile phone which we could put a sim into and perhaps get an app that auto backs up the texts to emails, however i'd rather an automated system that doesn't require a mobile being left on charge 100% of the time for the one off texts we'd get.

Deleted member 77746 · 12 May 2018 at 23:13

Instead of texting a mobile number text an email address....

https://www.digitaltrends.com/how-to/how-to-send-texts-to-email/

Must have MMS enabled phone/plan...

planty · 12 May 2018 at 23:54

Why do you need something like this? Surely your staff can just send emails from their phone?

unwashed potato! · 13 May 2018 at 00:30

planty said:
Why do you need something like this? Surely your staff can just send emails from their phone?

yes but enough wouldn't feel comfortable enough to do this and have probably never sent an email. i want to make it simple so that they can really easily send a text and that's it. no fuss for them. any requirement and i know it just wont happen in the end.

mrbell1984 said:
Instead of texting a mobile number text an email address....

https://www.digitaltrends.com/how-to/how-to-send-texts-to-email/

Must have MMS enabled phone/plan...

thanks but unfortunately i can't rely on that. I tested this myself and it didn't work, and would be too much of a PITA if staff were doing this and unknowingly wasn't working for them.

Dj_Jestar · 13 May 2018 at 15:39

Plenty of providers out there that support this. Twilio springs to mind, but a search for "SMS to email" gives lots of options.

touch · 14 May 2018 at 13:02

I've used www.textlocal.com to do this before.
Create an account and set up an inbox (it'll get assigned a 5 digit number to text and a unique reference, like "HGH1R")
Configure it to forward all messages to your email address.

Users then need to send the text to the 5 digit number and start their message with the reference:

"HGH1R Hi OP, here is an email"

edit: I thought this was familiar. Just realised I recommended textlocal to you in a similar thread last year. I guess you already have an account then?

unwashed potato! · 14 May 2018 at 18:35

i do but £180+VAT for the year is too much

Russinating · 14 May 2018 at 20:19

You're the cleaning guy right? What about Whatsapp? Our cleaner uses it. I'm not sure of your specific needs (ie what happens next) but using another SIM and Whatsapp Web you could potentially scrape the contents of that.

The to email bit, who is that going to? Just you or?

unwashed potato! · 15 May 2018 at 06:45

Not to me it'll be a girl who works once a week Staff will send her things throughout the week which she can do when she's in. At the moment they tell me, "I need this, this needs to be done" etc, then I need to remember to tell her or they need to remind me at a better time and not while we are on sites, but too often we naturally forget so wanted a simple way for them whenever they remember anything they just text it to a number and she will pick it up on email when in the office.

Russinating · 15 May 2018 at 10:57

WhatsApping a PAYG number that she just accesses via WhatsApp Web would work. It's searchable and you can access media pretty easily (photos of properties/damage etc?). And she can message back with questions via WiFi and that becomes a bit more conversational than having to email/text back.

You could have it setup in 2 minutes and it'll be intuitive from your cleaners' side. Plus it'd be free apart from the initial £10 top-up.

touch · 15 May 2018 at 11:57

Fairly sure the answer is no said:
i do but £180+VAT for the year is too much

It didn't cost me anything to set up. Still looks like it says "free to receive texts" but I didn't go the whole way through the checkout process.

bremen1874 · 15 May 2018 at 12:22

There appear to be plenty of Android Apps that'll forward incoming SMS messages to an email address.

An Android phone capable of handling this wouldn't cost much.

Compared to the other options it's pretty straightforward. If you don't want it on charge 24/7 plug it in via a cheap timer and only charge it enough to keep it topped up.

unwashed potato! · 15 May 2018 at 18:11

Thanks all for the suggestions. Will go with an android I think then as there will be other possible uses having a phone in the office, for instance when her phone is on silent and doesn't answer she will get a very loud shock when I ring the office phone

AHarvey · 16 May 2018 at 15:07

Would it not just be easier to have a little app written for the phone that sits on the desktop. they click it, write their message and hit send.

You can have it pre-setup with the correct email to send it too
You can set it up so that it automatically add's their ID

It's even easier than sending a text for them and you still get a nice email come through with none of the hassle of training. Although, email training would be beneficial for all of your staff if they'd struggle with it.

You could probably even knock up a quick one with these Android WYSIWYG app creators

OR

A simple icon that links to a google form. Fill it in, save, done

unwashed potato! · 16 May 2018 at 17:48

no as i'm talking about the phones that they own not one sat in the office as it's the office the messages need to get to

AHarvey · 17 May 2018 at 08:47

Fairly sure the answer is no said:
no as i'm talking about the phones that they own not one sat in the office as it's the office the messages need to get to

Are their phones unable to load apps on to? Are they all using Nokia 3210's?

hargi · 17 May 2018 at 09:06

Would something in IFTTT do it?

unwashed potato! · 17 May 2018 at 23:18

AHarvey said:
Are their phones unable to load apps on to?

of course. you're forgetting the way people use mobiles and how good they are at them. we are good. most others are not.

Quartz · 17 May 2018 at 23:26

Fairly sure the answer is no said:
Not to me it'll be a girl who works once a week Staff will send her things throughout the week which she can do when she's in.

It sounds like you need some sort of ticket tracking system. Do you already have one to which you can add 'Tasks for Jane'? This may sound like overkill but it will help her manager and her justify her job. Jane can then log into a terminal, view her tasks, then mark them as complete when done.

If it's web-based, she could see it on her mobile.

unwashed potato! · 17 May 2018 at 23:39

we have something at the moment which we can create a todo list and assign who it's for and the importance, however that's for me and one other and not something i'd use for staff.

you're asking 60 year old ladies to do way too much. they want to vacuum floors and empty bins, they don't want to be logging into websites to ask for vacuum bags, nor downloading apps.

thinking about it. if there is such as thing as SMS divert from the operator, i could get a number that auto diverts text to me, then set up a rule that texts i get from that number are auto sent on by email. anyone know if such as thing exists with operators? i know call forwarding is a thing but not sms forwarding