Custom Web Based Unit Contact/Alert System

[Al Sayre]

Since almost everyone now has cellphones and SMS text capability, it's easy enough to set up a cellphone text alert list on your own.  All you need is the members name, cellphone number and service provider.

Then you can email to text for everyone on the list and most email programs support multiple lists. i.e. all IC's, All GTM's, all ES qual's etc.

The format is (10digitphonenumber)@txt.ATT.net or someting similar.  You can find the email to text format for the most popular carriers at http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-send-e-mail-to-sms-text/ and the others can be googled.

Just keep the message under 160 characters and it works fine.  If you go over 160 characters, the message goes by MMS and won't get to those who don't have an MMS account.

[JeffDG]

Since almost everyone now has cellphones and SMS text capability, it's easy enough to set up a cellphone text alert list on your own.  All you need is the members name, cellphone number and service provider.

Then you can email to text for everyone on the list and most email programs support multiple lists. i.e. all IC's, All GTM's, all ES qual's etc.

The format is (10digitphonenumber)@txt.ATT.net or someting similar.  You can find the email to text format for the most popular carriers at http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-send-e-mail-to-sms-text/ and the others can be googled.

Just keep the message under 160 characters and it works fine.  If you go over 160 characters, the message goes by MMS and won't get to those who don't have an MMS account.

Wouldn't get me with that.  My Google Voice number has no e-mail->SMS address for it.

Plus, then you have to maintain a list of who has what cell phone providers as they change and morph from one to another.

For $0.0075 per message, I can send a lot of messages before it adds up to the time and effort to maintain that kind of list reliably.

[Al Sayre]

Your call, just saying there a free way to do it that's pretty flexible.  Once it's set up, it's pretty easy to administer.  It's already up to the members to make sure they update their contact info, if they change services and don't let the Wing ES folks know, then they shouldn't be surprised when they don't get called...