Email to text service is an extension to inbound message notification via email feature. It is provided for customers to easily reply to inbound messages without having to log in to Salesforce.

A sales or service rep would get alerted via an email whenever a new incoming message is received from a customer. Until now, they had to go to Salesforce to reply to these inbound messages. With an Email to Text feature, your sales/service rep can reply to inbound messages via an email. These SMSs will get logged under appropriate objects such as a lead, contact as per your org setup. These SMS replies will also get attached to an ongoing conversation. 

It would save significant time for your reps from switching between email & the Salesforce app and also increase their productivity. It would also increase customer satisfaction as they will get quick responses from your reps. 

We have given the option to configure this feature globally, or specific to Sender ID. 

Users can reply to the notification received over an email using their email software such as Gmail & Outlook clients. SMS-Magic will further send the same message as a text via the same channel, using the Sender ID on which the notification was received. 

This functionality will work with SMS, WhatsApp as well as the Facebook channel.

Prerequisites

Some of the prerequisites for a manual setup for reply notification are as follows:

• Gmail or Microsoft Outlook client  
• The SMS-Magic application should be version 1.62 or higher
• The user has permission to configure Apex email services and email service addresses. Admin users will have this permission by default.
• The user has permission to create Apex classes. Admin users will have this permission by default.

Email to Text sample screenshot

Contact record details page view –

You can configure the Email Services to handle the inbound messages. Perform the following steps to manually set up Email Services:

1. Click on the ‘Settings’ icon on the Salesforce navigation bar and then click on the ‘Setup’ button
2. Select Email Services in one of the following ways:
   • Use the Search Setup/Quick Find search field, or
   • Select Platform Tools > Custom Code > Email Services
3. Click on the ‘New Email Service’ button as shown in the image below:

4. The following window will appear:

5. Enter ‘NotificationReplyService’ in the ‘Email Service Name’ field. This is a mandatory field.
6. Enter ‘EmailToTextServiceHandler’ in the ‘Apex Class’ field. This is a mandatory field.
7. Do not enter values in the ‘Accept Email From’ text box
8. Click on the ‘Active’ checkbox to enable the email services
9. Click on the ‘Save and New Email Address’ button. If the user gets the following error while creating an email service: 

Error: The Apex class selected is not valid. An apex class that implements the Messaging.InboundEmailHandler interface must be selected.

Follow the below additional steps to complete the configuration

• Go to the ‘Setup’ page in the org

• Search ‘Apex Classes’ in the quick find and open the page
• Click on the ‘Compile all classes’ link and wait until it finishes compiling

• Once the compilation is complete, you will get the following message saying, ‘Compilation Complete’:

10. Go to the email service page and now try to save the email service. The following window will appear:

11. Enter the name in the ‘Email Address Name’ field and click on the ‘Save’ button. The following window will appear:

12. Once you complete the email notification configuration as mentioned in the following ‘enable notification’ section by selecting the newly created email service address against the ‘Reply-To address’ field, upon receiving an incoming message, the system will send the email notification to the user assigned with Sender ID.

When the ‘Send Email Notification From’ field is not configured, you will see the oAuth user email address as ‘From email ID’ and you will see the above created ‘Reply-To address’ in the ‘Reply-To’ email ID field in the email composer as shown below:

Notes: The same email address will start reflecting for the ‘Reply-To Address’ field in the Default Notification settings as well as the Sender ID level notification settings. For more information about Email Services, see Defining Email Services

Perform the following steps to set up an organization-wide email address: 

1. Click on the icon on the Salesforce navigation bar and then click on the ‘Setup’ option
2. Select Organization-Wide Email Address by one of the following ways:
   1. Using the Search Setup/Quick Find search field, or
   2. Selecting Administration > Email > Organization-Wide Addresses

3. Click on the ‘Add’ button

4. Enter a display name in the ‘Display Name’ field. For example, reply-support.
5. Enter the alias email address in the ‘Email Address’ field. For example, reply-support@gmail.com.
6. Select ‘Allow All Profiles’ to use this From Address
7. Click on the ‘Save’ button

8. Once you complete the email notification configuration as mentioned in the following ‘enable notification’ section by selecting the newly created org wide email address against ‘Send Email Notification From’ field, upon receiving an incoming message, the system will send the email notification to the user assigned with Sender ID.

You will see the org wide email address as an ‘From email ID’ generated and you will see the above created ‘Reply-To address’ in ‘Reply-To’ email ID field in the email composer as shown below.

We are providing a default template for the package users. If you want to create a separate template you can follow the below steps and create your email template as per your requirements:

1. Click on the ‘Setup’ option
2. Search ‘Classic Email Templates’ in the Quick Find field and go to that page
3. Click on the ‘New Template’ button
4. Select Text in Step 1 and click on the ‘Next’ button
5. In the ‘Email Template Information Form’ type in a name for the Email Template and a Unique Template Name
6. Select SMS-Magic Email Templates in the Folder type and also select the checkbox against field Available for Use
7. Click on the ‘Save’ button to proceed

This is the final step of the configuration to enable the ‘Email to Text’ feature. Notifications can be enabled in the following two ways:

1. Default Notification Settings 
2. Sender ID Notification Settings

1. Default Notification Settings

In default notification settings, you can configure templates and assign sender ID to a user to notify them about incoming messages. To enable ‘Email To Text’, you will have to create and configure the ‘Reply-To Address’ field by following the steps given here.

1. Click on the ‘Edit’ button, the following window will appear:

2. Select the default SMS-Magic email template from the ‘Email Template’ drop-down list

Note: Users need to select the new HTML template in order to see the message history view in the email notification setup section [Default settings as well for Sender ID level overriding]. 

2. Select the email ID from the drop-down list in the ‘Select email notification from’ field
3. Select ‘Enable’ option in the ‘Do you want to enable Email to Text setting’ field
4. Click on the ‘Save’ button 

The steps to manage notifications at the Sender ID level are explained in the following section.

2. Sender ID Notification Settings

This section will help you enable notifications at the Sender ID level, which will in turn help you to stay up to date whenever you receive a message.

1. Go to Converse Settings
2. Click on Sender ID and Assignment on the left
3. Choose a Sender ID and click  and click on the ‘Assign to Users’ option. The following window will appear:

4. Search a user by entering the name or email ID 
5. Click  and click on the ‘Manage Notifications’ option to enable notification. The following window will appear:

6. In the Manage Notification pop-up window verify the pre-filled details
7. Select an Email Template if you wish to use some other template in place of the default template

Note: Users need to select the new HTML template in order to see the message history view in the email notification setup section [Default settings as well for Sender ID level overriding].

6. Select an Email ID if you wish to be notified through that
7. Select ‘Enable’ option from the drop-down list in the ‘Do you want to enable Email To Text setting’ field and a new drop-down appears
8. Select an Email ID if required or continue with the default notification method
9. Click on the ‘Save’ button
10. Enable Notification on incoming using the toggle button

The above function can be managed from the Default Configuration Section when you click on the ‘Edit’ button as shown in the image below.

• 1. Is setting up an org-wide email address mandatory?

  No. Setting up an org-wide email address is only required when you want to show a specific email address as an alias email address while sending out the email notifications.

• 2. Do we trigger email notifications only for SMS or across supported channels?

  Yes. Email to text functionality is supported across channels such as SMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook etc.

• 3. Do we trigger email notifications only for incoming text messages or all types of messages?

  We do trigger email notifications across all channels for all messages. In the SMS-Magic default template, in case of incoming text messages, we show the message text as received from the recipient but in case of incoming MMS file, we do not show the MMS file in the email notification sent. We have one parameter in the default email template as ‘Message Type’ which will populate the value as SMS/MMS depending upon the type of incoming message received.

• 4. Can we send a file as an attachment in response to the email notification received?

  No. You will be only able to send ‘Text’ as a reply to the email notification received.

• 5. Do we auto-populate ‘subject’ in case of notification sent using a custom template?

  No. We do not auto-populate the entire subject line but we add a prefix of SMS-history record ID and append ‘From $name/$number via $channel_name’ to the subject line user will add while creating a custom template.

• 6. How email to text functionality will behave when Sender ID is assigned to either multiple people/group of people?

  The functionality will work the same way as it works for a single user. Notifications will be sent out to multiple people as per Sender ID assignment and responses from all users will be sent back to recipients as separate messages.

• 7. What will happen if a user has an email signature configured with image/different URLs while sending a text in response to received email notification?

  URLs, Links will be sent as a part of text content, and if any images are configured as a part of the signature, they will get ignored by logic while the user’s response to email notification is received in Salesforce.

• 8. Is there any character limit applicable while responding to email notification?

  Yes. Current limit of maximum 700 characters would be applicable and respective credits would be deducted.