Turn Important Emails into Call Notifications with Echobell

Route urgent emails to Echobell and receive call-style notifications on iOS. This guide covers channel setup, spoken-friendly templates, conditions for filtering, and forwarding rules for Gmail, iCloud, and Outlook.

Some emails need to reach you regardless of what you're doing — production incidents, billing failures, VIP senders. Echobell lets you forward those emails to a channel and deliver them as call-style notifications that ring through Focus mode.

Echobell stores only accounts, channels, and subscriptions server-side. Notification content stays on your devices.

Prerequisites

  • Echobell installed (App Store)
  • Notifications permission granted

Step 1 — Create a channel

  1. Open Echobell → New Channel
  2. Name it (e.g. "Critical Email Alerts") and pick a color
  3. Save

Step 2 — Bind the email trigger

On the channel detail page, copy the dedicated email address. Any email sent to this address triggers the channel.

Available template variables for email triggers:

  • from — sender address
  • to — channel-bound address
  • subject — email subject
  • text — plain-text body
  • html — HTML body (when present)

Step 3 — Write spoken-friendly templates

Call notifications read this content aloud, so keep it short and direct.

Title:

[Email Alert] {{subject}}

Body:

From: {{from}}
Preview: {{text}}

To attach a clickable link to the notification record, pass externalLink via webhook or set a Link Template in Advanced Settings.

Step 4 — Set the Calling notification type

In your subscription settings, configure:

  • Notification Type: Calling
  • App Settings → Repeat Voice Content: On (optional)
  • App Settings → Retry Failed Call: On (recommended)

Calling notifications ring like a phone call and can break through Focus modes depending on iOS settings.

Step 5 — Filter with Conditions (optional)

Without Conditions, every email to the channel triggers a notification. Add a Condition to restrict which emails actually ring.

Only a specific sender:

from == "alerts@yourcompany.com"

Subject contains "URGENT":

subject.toLowerCase().includes("urgent")

Combined rules:

(from == "pager@service.com" || from == "vip@customer.com") && subject.toLowerCase().includes("fail")

Step 6 — Set up mail forwarding

Gmail

  1. Settings → See all settings → Filters and Blocked Addresses
  2. Create a filter by From or Subject
  3. Action: Forward to your Echobell channel email address
  4. Optional: Skip inbox or apply a label

Gmail may require verifying the forwarding address. If that's inconvenient, forward via a group alias you control.

iCloud Mail

  1. Settings → Rules
  2. Condition: From or Subject contains your criteria
  3. Action: Forward to your Echobell channel email address

Outlook

  1. Settings → Mail → Rules
  2. Add conditions for sender, subject, or keywords
  3. Action: Forward/Redirect to your Echobell channel email address

Step 7 — Test

  1. Send an email to the channel address (or trigger your forwarding rule)
  2. Confirm a call-style alert arrives
  3. Check the record in Echobell and adjust templates or conditions as needed

Troubleshooting

  • Not receiving calls: Confirm Notification Type is set to Calling; check iOS notification permissions and Focus mode; enable Retry Failed Call in App Settings.
  • Template didn't render: Variable names are from, to, subject, text, html. Conditions use plain expressions — no {{ }} wrapping.
  • Too noisy: Tighten Conditions or add stricter sender/subject criteria in your mail rules.

Next steps

  • Create separate channels per team or system
  • Use webhooks for automated system alerts, email for human-sent messages
  • Share the channel subscription link with teammates who need the same calling alerts

By

Nooc

on

Aug 22, 2025