Tridium Niagara has over a million installations worldwide, and pretty much all of them can send email when something goes wrong: a chiller fault, a freeze stat trip, a VAV box that’s stopped responding, and on and on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only problem: Email alerts have a way of disappearing into the clutter. At 2 PM on a Tuesday, you’ll probably spot it in a relatively timely way. At 11 PM on a Saturday, you won’t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the alarms that matter most are the ones that happen when nobody’s watching a screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this article, I’ll walk you through how to quickly turn your Niagara 4 email alarms into SMS text messages on your phone<\/strong>. Seriously \u2014 if you’ve already got email alarming configured on your JACE or Supervisor, the SMS piece takes about a minute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n text.email<\/a> is an email-to-SMS tool. You send it an email, text.email transforms it into a text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sign up, pick a private keyword for your account, and your delivery address becomes We’ll plug this into your Niagara station’s alarm routing in a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If your Niagara station is already sending email alarms, skip to Step 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If not, you need to add the EmailService to your station and configure an outgoing SMTP account<\/strong>. This is done in Workbench \u2014 not through the web UI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Open the email<\/strong> palette in Workbench. Drag and drop an EmailService<\/strong> object into the Services<\/strong> section of your station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then drag an OutgoingAccount<\/strong> object into the EmailService. Double-click the OutgoingAccount to open its property sheet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [SCREENSHOT: Niagara 4 Workbench showing EmailService and OutgoingAccount in the Services section. Reference: One Sightsolutions has a video walkthrough at https:\/\/onesight.solutions\/how-to-email-alarms-in-tridium-niagara-4\/ \u2014 you may be able to capture your own screenshots from a demo station or Workbench instance.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The OutgoingAccount property sheet needs your SMTP server details. Gmail is the most common choice for Niagara stations, especially on standalone JACEs where there’s no corporate mail server available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Gmail:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n About that App Password:<\/strong> Google killed “Less Secure Apps” access, so you can’t just use your Gmail login credentials anymore. You need to generate a 16-character App Password specifically for your JACE or Supervisor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To get one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Use that App Password in the OutgoingAccount, not your regular Gmail password.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you’re using Microsoft 365 or another SMTP server<\/strong>, the fields are the same \u2014 you just need the server address, port, and credentials from your IT team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One thing to note: Niagara versions before 4.9 don’t support TLS 1.2<\/strong>, which Microsoft 365 now requires. If you’re on an older version, Gmail or a third-party SMTP is your best bet. (text.email also offers a simple SMTP relay<\/a> if you need.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you’re using SSL\/TLS (which you should be), your station needs the CryptoService. Open the crypto<\/strong> palette in Workbench and drag the CryptoService<\/strong> into your station’s Services folder. The default properties are fine \u2014 you shouldn’t need to change anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Without it, you’ll get a This is the one that trips people up the most. If your JACE can’t resolve Make sure valid DNS servers are configured<\/strong> in the JACE’s TCP\/IP settings (the same place you set IP, subnet mask, and gateway). Google’s public DNS \u2014 Right-click on the OutgoingAccount in Workbench and choose Actions \u2192 Send<\/strong>. Enter a To address (your own email), a From address (the Gmail account), and a test subject\/body. Check that the email arrives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it doesn’t, open the Application Director output. Set debug<\/strong> to true<\/strong> on the OutgoingAccount property sheet for more detailed error logging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where Niagara’s alarm system connects to SMS delivery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Niagara’s alarm routing works through alarm classes. On the AlarmService wire sheet, connect the Alarm slot of the alarm class you want to text to the Route Alarm slot of the EmailRecipient<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you only want critical alarms going to SMS, this is where you control it. Create a separate alarm class for SMS-worthy events and route only that class to the text.email EmailRecipient. Your lower-priority alarms can stay routed to your regular email recipients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can set up multiple EmailRecipients with different text.email addresses if you need different people to get different alarms (e.g., route HVAC criticals to the facilities manager’s phone and security events to the building engineer).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Note: If you’re also running a SCADA system alongside Niagara<\/a>, the same approach works there.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Trigger a test alarm (or use the OutgoingAccount’s Send action with your text.email address in the To field). The text should arrive on your phone within seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it doesn’t:<\/p>\n\n\n\n No, email-to-text isn’t the only way to get SMS alerts from your Niagara. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Though it might as well be…<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you’re a Niagara veteran, you might have used a trick where you’d put There are HVAC-Talk threads going back over a decade (and longer!) of people sharing that technique for getting SMS out of their Niagara stations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those gateways are all dead now. Verizon shut down vtext.com<\/a>. AT&T killed txt.att.net. T-Mobile killed tmomail.net. The carriers pulled the plug on email-to-SMS<\/a> due to something called A2P 10DLC compliance, as well as because of spam abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If your Niagara station is still configured with a There are third-party SMS drivers on the Niagara Marketplace that use dedicated hardware (cellular modems with SIM cards) to send texts directly from your JACE or Supervisor over the cellular network. SMSEagle and the Smartnode driver are two of the main ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They work, but they require physical hardware on your network<\/strong>, per-device licensing, and a SIM card with a cellular plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a large campus with strict air-gapped networks, that might be the right call. Same goes for full incident management platforms like PagerDuty<\/a> if you need escalation chains and on-call schedules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But for most facilities running standard Niagara with internet access, both are significant overhead for what amounts to “tell me when something breaks.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n You could theoretically write a custom Niagara module or set up an external service to forward emails to an SMS API like Twilio. But sending application-to-person (A2P) SMS in the US now requires registration (registering your business, your message purpose, and waiting for carrier approval).<\/p>\n\n\n\n That’s the same process whether you’re sending 5 facility alarms a month or 50,000 marketing messages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s also another system to maintain and another system that is fragile enough to regularly break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n text.email handles the compliance burden and system maintenance so you don’t have to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n text.email exists because the carrier gateways died and nobody replaced them with something simple. The existing alternatives either require hardware, API integration, or an incident management platform that’s wildly overkill for “my AHU tripped a freeze stat, wake me up.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Plans include 200 SMS messages per month. For a typical building running critical-only SMS alerts, you’ll rarely approach that cap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can test it right now without signing up: send a pretend alert email to<\/strong> Niagara’s alarm class system makes it easy to segregate what gets texted vs. what stays on email. The key is keeping your SMS alerts reserved for things that need a human response within the hour. Otherwise, alert fatigue sets in and the texts become just as ignorable as the emails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Route your critical alarm classes to the text.email EmailRecipient. Leave everything else on standard email where it belongs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ready to get these alerts going in the next few minutes?<\/p>\n\n\n\nTridium Niagara Text Alerts: Table of Contents<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Setting Up Tridium Niagara Text Alerts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Step 1: Sign up with text.email<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
yournumber@yourkeyword.text.email<\/code>. Any email sent to that address arrives as an SMS.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStep 2: Make sure email service is configured on your station<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Add the EmailService<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Configure SMTP settings<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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smtp.gmail.com<\/code><\/li>\n\n\n\n\n
Make sure CryptoService is installed<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Valid CryptoService not found<\/code> error in the Application Director when the station tries to send email.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCheck DNS on your JACE<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
smtp.gmail.com<\/code> to an IP address, you’ll get an UnknownHostException<\/code> in the console and emails will silently fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n8.8.8.8<\/code> and 8.8.4.4<\/code> \u2014 works if your network team doesn’t have a preference.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTest the connection<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Step 3: Create an EmailRecipient for your text.email address<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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yournumber@yourkeyword.text.email<\/code>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\nStep 4: Route your alarms to the EmailRecipient<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Step 5: Test it<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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yournumber@yourkeyword.text.email<\/code> \u2014 the keyword is the one you chose during signup.<\/li>\n\n\n\nWhy Other Methods to Get Text Alerts from Niagara Aren’t Ideal (Or Don’t Work at All)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The old “vtext.com” trick is dead<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
yournumber@vtext.com<\/code> in the To field of an EmailRecipient and get text messages via Verizon’s email-to-SMS gateway. AT&T had txt.att.net<\/code>. T-Mobile had tmomail.net<\/code>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n@vtext.com<\/code> recipient, the emails are going nowhere. You won’t get an error and they won’t bounce \u2014 it’s just silent failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat about the Niagara Marketplace SMS drivers?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Why building your own SMS pipeline is disproportionate to the problem<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Get Your Critical Niagara Alerts on Your Phone Today<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
yournumber@text.email<\/code> and you’ll get the text in seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhich Niagara Alarms Are Worth Texting?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Always text<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Consider texting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Leave on email<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Tridium Niagara Text Alerts: Next Steps<\/h2>\n\n\n\n