Everbridge SmartPath: SMS to Email Router

Everbridge SmartPath is a suite of features to ensure the reliable delivery of your messages. This includes the structuring of messages to optimize throughput in all communication channels, evaluating channel message delivery and message failure history, intelligent routing of messages to avoid potential delays or failure of delivery of messages, and recommending optimization of your message credit allowance.

This article describes the Everbridge SmartPath: SMS to Email Router feature. For more information on the Everbridge SmartPath suite of features, please see knowledge base article 000062924 0 EBS: Everbridge SmartPath: Unique Intelligent Delivery .

What is the SmartPath: SMS to Email Router Feature?

When an Organization is enabled for the SMS to Email Router feature and the notification in question is NOT set to High Priority, then enabling the SMS to Email Router feature skips the SMS delivery path in lieu of an email delivery path when an email delivery path (Email [1-5]) is defined at the notification level and for the individual contact.

What you will be able to do

Minimize message costs for non-priority notifications using SMS and Email Address by ensuring only an email notification is sent to Contacts who have both SMS and Email Address path value in their contact records. The application will activate this feature for your notifications only when the "High Priority" field is not selected for the notification.

Why this may be important to you

You want to preserve your message credits for priority or life-safety notifications.

How this affects your current Everbridge service

Contact Everbridge Technical Support to activate SmartPath for your Everbridge Suite Organizations. Once this feature is activated, your users will see the following text when clicking the information icon:

For non-High-Priority notifications, the SMS to Email Router will skip all SMS delivery paths for contacts who have an email delivery path that is also used in the notification.

Benefits

The SMS to Email Router feature is meant to address the rising cost of SMS messaging. SMS messaging consumes messaging credits, whereas email messaging does not. If you rely heavily on SMS, you can benefit from enabling SMS to Email Router by allowing the feature to route the notification messages to the email delivery path rather than SMS.

Additionally, SMS to Email Router can alleviate alert fatigue. SMS is generally considered a more intrusive messaging modality because new incoming messages alert the recipient immediately. Email on the other hand is considered a more passive communication means because it typically requires the recipient to explicitly check their email to see new messages. When both high-priority and non-high-priority messages are delivered via SMS, it can cause alert fatigue for contacts, in which case some may either stop paying attention to the messaging or opt to unsubscribe from SMS alerts all together. SMS to Email Router mitigates this by ensuring that high-priority messages are sent via SMS for immediate attention by the recipient, but non-high-priority messages are sent through email instead (if delivery path available for the contact), to let recipient check on when convenient.

How to enable the Everbridge SmartPath: SMS to Email Router feature

The Everbridge SmartPath: SMS to Email Router feature is enabled at the Organization level.

1. Log in to the Organization's Manager Portal
2. Click Settings from the top menu bar.
3. Click SMS Options from the left menu panel.
4. Toggle the SMS to Email Router option to On.
5. Press Save.

 











 

Examples:

The way this feature works is best illustrated with examples. When viewing these examples, note that the Delivery method order remains unchanged. The SMS message is not replaced by an email, it is simply bypassed when an email delivery method is detected.
 

Example 1

Notification Setup:

 

Contact	Contact Delivery Paths	Actual Delivery Result	Explanation
Contact A	1. SMS 1 2. Phone 1 3. Email 1	12:00 - Phone 1 12:00 - Email 1	•SMS 1 is skipped because contact contains an email delivery path (Email 1). •Notice that the email is NOT sent in place of the SMS. Rather, SMS is simply skipped knowing that an email delivery path exists somewhere in the contact’s delivery paths.
Contact B	1. SMS 1 2. Phone 1	12:00 - SMS1 12:00 - Phone 1	•SMS 1 delivery path is not skipped because contact does not have an email delivery path.
Contact C	1. Email 1 2. Phone 1 3. SMS1	12:00 - Email 1 12:00 - Phone 1	•SMS 1 is skipped because contact contains an email delivery path (Email 1). •Notice we do not send over Email 1 a second time when SMS 1 is skipped. When the logic gets to SMS 1, it simply evaluates if there is an email delivery path for this contact. If yes, it skips SMS. It does not matter that the Email was delivered prior to when the SMS would have normally gone out.

 

Example 2

Notification Setup:

 

Contact	Contact Delivery Paths	Actual Delivery Result	Explanation
Contact A	1. SMS 1 2. Mobile Push 3. Email 1	12:00 - Mobile Push (recipient confirms)	•SMS 1 is skipped because contact contains an email delivery path (Email 1). •We then immediately move to the Mobile Push delivery path (do not wait 2-minute interval setting if skipping a path). Here, the recipient confirms receipt, in which case we do not move to the next delivery path.
Contact B	1. SMS 1 2. Mobile Push 3. Email 1	12:00 - Mobile Push 12:02 - Email 1	•SMS 1 is skipped because Email 1 exist. •We then immediately move to the Mobile Push delivery path (do not wait 2-minute interval setting if skipping a path). •Since recipient never confirmed receipt via the Mobile Push path, we move to the next delivery path (Email 1) 2 minutes after.

 

Message Sender Experience

New Notification Page On the New Notification page, at the bottom of the message body section, your users will see the following text when clicking the information icon: For non-High-Priority notifications, the SMS to Email Router will skip all SMS delivery paths for contacts who have an email delivery path that is also used in the notification.

New Incident Template On the New Incident Template page, at the bottom of the message body section, your users will see the following text when clicking the information icon: For non-High-Priority notifications, the SMS to Email Router will skip all SMS delivery paths for contacts who have an email delivery path that is also used in the notification.

Call Result

The call result value when the SMS to Email Router feature is enabled is designated as “Not Attempted - Email Preferred over SMS”.