Communicating with a group via text and email?

November 13, 2008 2:42 PM

Communicating with a group via text and email? How can a group of 7 communicate via text and email. 3 are email only, 4 are text only, the idea is any member can send a single text or email which is delivered to all 7 as an email or text as appropriate. Does this exist? Alternate suggestions welcome.

To make it more complex, everyone has different email and phone services (and won't/can't change), and most are not techie enough to send an email from their phone. UK based if relevant.

posted by zingzangzung to technology (7 answers total)

I haven't directly done this, but have got close enough to it that I could have if the need arose.

Using a SQL Server database interacting with a web service to send & receive text messages. Building a VB Macro over Outlook to receive/log emails, and the xpsendmail function to send plain text emails.

Add a user setup table to hold people's preferences & have a couple of Stored Procedures over the top to manage all the workflow.

Easy enough conceptually. Find someone close by with database & application development skills.
posted by MatJ at 3:04 PM on November 13, 2008

I know that some american cell providers have an email-to-SMS interface. If these UK providers do the same, then than solves half your problem.
posted by kickingtheground at 3:13 PM on November 13, 2008

Jott?
posted by davcoo at 3:14 PM on November 13, 2008

Jott.

i.e. what davcoo said
posted by katrielalex at 4:55 PM on November 13, 2008

Jott looked very promising but is only available in the US and Canada, thanks anyway. Similarly the email to SMS interface seems limited in the UK. I was hoping for a prepackaged solution, exploring MatJ's response may be my last resort.
Thanks all so far, any other suggestions would be very welcome.
posted by zingzangzung at 5:27 PM on November 13, 2008

email-to-SMS gateways should be available world-wide though not necessarily free. Once you have that, you can just create a mailing list with mailman or whatever and subscribe the phonenumber@gateway addresses to it.

If you can't do an email/SMS conversion and people can't read email on their phones then you can't do it.
posted by polyglot at 8:58 PM on November 13, 2008

I have email to SMS with vodafone in Europe. It's free. I'd be pretty surprised if it's not available with all the carriers in the UK.
posted by sero_venientibus_ossa at 4:22 AM on November 14, 2008