| Communicate! i2000 is a complete communications
software package designed for a SOHO environment. With an interface that's
designed to look like a modern speakerphone, Communicate! i2000 has
valuable features for both the home and business user. It integrates
standard telephone features with additional functions that make personal
computing more efficient. It enables the average user to combine the most
important desktop functions into one interface that's easy to understand
and navigate.
INSTALLATION
The hardware installation was quick and easy since it only consisted of
installing a voice/data/fax modem into a Windows 98 PC. The first modem
that we attempted to use was an internal model that was not on the
product's compatibility list, and we did experience a few problems with
this modem, most likely due to that factor. Specifically, e-mails were
being delayed for unusually long periods of time, and faxes were not being
delivered or received at all. After working with technical support to try
to determine the problem, we replaced the modem with an external U.S.
Robotics voice/fax modem that was on the compatibility list, and that
seemed to resolve the issues. The only other configuration that we needed
to do for the modem was to make it active via the setup utility in the
software once the application was installed.
The software installation was also simple and straightforward. The
first step was the installation of the core application. The only
information we needed to input was a username and password that would be
used for logging in. Once the application installation was completed,
there was a quick restart of Windows before the IBM text-to-speech engine
was installed, which completed the second step of the software
installation.
When we launched the program for the first time, there were several
configuration options that needed to be set. First, an external e-mail
address needed to be available for testing the e-mail features. We needed
to create an e-mail account that supported POP3 server compatibility. It
took some time to get the account set up and tested. We ended up using an
existing Mindspring ISP account with a HotPOP e-mail address for testing.
Once the account was created, we proceeded to set the appropriate options
in the setup utility of the program. The setup utility had several
configurable tabs including those for voice, data, fax, and Internet
options. Among these options were user settings for hardware, dialing
preferences, user accounts, telephony and voice services, and various
phone line settings.
DOCUMENTATION
The documentation included with Communicate! i2000 consisted of a
user's guide. We found it to be well organized, easy to read, and
intuitive. It contained plenty of screen shots and examples, though it did
fail to provide in-depth explanations for some of the features. Overall,
it did provide us with answers to most of our installation and setup
questions.
FEATURES
Communicate! i2000 includes several advanced telephone and unified
messaging center options. In addition to supporting desktop and broadcast
faxing, some of the other advanced features include:
Support for audio and video mail -- The user can send an audio
or video e-mail to any address.
E-mail forwarding -- The ability to auto-forward e-mail to
another e-mail address or as a fax message, auto-forward voice messages as
audio mail, or auto-forward faxes to another fax number or remotely
retrieve them as an e-mail attachment.
Text-to-speech e-mail recognition -- Users can type in a voice
mail greeting and it will be played back to them with one of several
computerized voices.
Remote video monitoring and room monitoring -- Users can
remotely watch a room and have a notification sent to them when motion is
detected. A picture can also be captured and sent to them via e-mail.
Fax back -- The user can create an automatic fax back service
with custom voice prompts that enable callers to retrieve documents from a
touchtone phone via document numbers.
Call Answer wizard -- The user dictates how messages and faxes
are handled. For example, you can choose to answer each call differently.
You may want to give a specific response to callers based on such factors
as day of the week, time of day, distinctive ring, caller ID, or any
combination of these.
OPERATIONAL TESTING
As mentioned earlier, the first modem that we installed was a standard
internal fax modem that was not on the compatibility list. We experienced
several connection problems with this modem. At the start of our testing,
we noticed that some of the e-mails we were attempting to send out were
not appearing in any of the logs. According to the manual, each message
should appear either in the inbound or outbound log regardless of if it is
successfully delivered or not. Similarly, the queue status button should
display a list of all outbound jobs waiting to be sent, but our e-mail
jobs were not consistently displayed as pending. When an e-mail did go
through it seemed to take an exceptionally long time, even with several
repeated attempts to manually check for messages. We attempted to change
the interval time in the configuration settings to update every minute,
however the minimal value that it would allow us to input was ten minutes.
We had similar results with our fax testing when we connected the modem
directly to an outside line to test the caller ID function and the faxing
capabilities. When we attempted to send faxes from our PC to our office
fax machine via the outside phone line, we had some trouble getting the
faxes successfully to the fax machine. The jobs were delivered to the
message queue where they remained with a status of "Previewed;
Ready." Selecting the option to release all jobs did not have the
desired result, as the jobs remained in the queue.
We attempted several fixes to remedy these problems, including
reinstalling updated modem drivers, installing an updated version patch
for the Communicate! software, and confirming the e-mail account
information. Further testing led us to make a change to our dial-up
information in the Internet Options>Connections tab of Internet
Explorer. We selected "Never dial a connection" so the modem
would use Communicate! software to access dial-up networking and not try
to use the built-in Windows dialer to connect. This seemed to clear up the
problem, and from that point on, e-mails and faxes were sent out and
received in a timely manner. To confirm that we could receive faxes, we
set the modem's inbound capabilities to auto-detect in the phone
configuration settings menu. This enables the modem to determine whether a
call coming in is a fax, voice, or data message and act accordingly. We
placed the document into the fax machine paper tray, dialed directly into
the test PC's phone line, hit Start, and crossed our fingers. Success! The
modem recognized the message as a fax and downloaded it for viewing.
Next, we walked through the setup for the custom voice menu by using
the call answer wizard. The wizard went through a series of steps that
helped us create multiple mailboxes with custom voice menus, greetings,
and prompts for each menu. The built-in test feature was a definite plus
and made the testing go much quicker as we were able to use it to simulate
an incoming call. The custom recordings prompted us to input a selection
via a numeric keypad. The appropriate greeting was then played. We also
created a test folder, which contained a group mailbox with a fax back
menu.
One feature that we were impressed with was the text-to-speech option.
We found this feature to be very interesting and useful. Its accuracy with
text recognition was almost faultless (though it didn't seem to recognize
common abbreviations for words, such as "pls." or
"msg.," and just recited the actual letters in those cases). Its
pronunciation of the typed text was clearer than we expected in the
simulated call situations.
We used the text-to-speech option as the greeting for the mailbox and
typed in an appropriate greeting. For the fax back menu, we choose the
system default of Auto, which plays a pre-recorded system greeting. When
we dialed into the test PC we received the greeting that we had set. The
only complaint we had was that the messages for the initial mailbox
greeting and for the mailbox prompts were not very clear and there was no
available option to change the voice selection, referred to as the engine
mode. We did try to change to other engine modes via the general settings
configuration page, but when we placed several additional test calls, it
seemed to default to the standard greeting.
We received similar results when we dialed into the Communicate!
software to retrieve our voice mail messages. We had previously set up a
user with administrative rights and a mailbox capable of receiving voice
and fax messages. We dialed in, pressed the "#" key, and entered
our user ID and password when prompted. Next, we selected voice mail
options and entered the mailbox ID for our mailbox. We selected the
message retrieval option and were told by the system that we had new
messages. At this point, the new messages should have been played back one
at a time using the text-to-speech feature, but all we heard was silence.
It did seem to register that we had new voice mail messages since we were
still given the same message options of date/time stamp, save as new,
etc., but we were never actually able to get the messages to play back. We
didn't have a problem hearing them through the speakers, however, when we
played them back directly on the Communicate! PC.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
We found a few areas of this product that are worth mentioning as Room
for Improvement items. First, we definitely think that the refresh mode
for checking incoming/outgoing messages should be improved. The way it
works now is that you have to right click on the Modem Manager in the
system tray and select the check mail option from the pop-up menu. Because
of all of the problems that we ran into early on in our testing, we
noticed that the refresh utility is important in a messaging product such
as this one and should be made more accessible.
Another area of improvement is the message queue window. Specifically,
the queue status column is not very intuitive. When we tested sending and
receiving faxes, we could view the job in the Message queue, but its
status was only reported as "Previewed; Ready," and it never
gave us any indication that there was any process going on behind the
scenes. Also, neither the online Help file nor the user's guide explained
what the different status values indicated. When a message was labeled
with a failure status, it didn't elaborate as to the reason for the
failure. We had guess why the message did not successfully go through.
The last suggestion for improvement is for an auto connect feature that
would be able to perform in a less intrusive manner. The dial-up
networking dialog box pops up at regular intervals to reconnect and check
for incoming and outgoing messages. If you select Cancel, the dialog box
still pops up giving you the option to connect. The user must repeatedly
choose Connect or Cancel, which can get to be inconvenient if you're
trying to work without distractions. A possible solution might be to
minimize the connection dialog box when the connection time-out is
reached. This way, the user can choose to connect when it's most
convenient.
CONCLUSION
Overall we found Communicate! i2000 to be a very good product with
several useful features that are beneficial to home office and small
business users. Its distinctive interface design helps you navigate easily
through your office information in a less tedious and more efficient way.
There is a learning curve involved, but once the initial setup is done and
you have familiarized yourself with the advanced features, it can be a
valuable tool to help you increase your productivity and organize your
business.
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