While it could be used as a basic voice mail system, Telephony Office-Linx can do a lot
more. Specifically, it can connect a business telephone system and a local-area network,
combining its own powerful messaging features and the flexible networking features of
Windows, to provide an end-to-end messaging solution.
Telephony Office-Linx provides both excellent PBX compatibility and unified messaging
capabilities. For example, Telephony Office-Linx’s e-mail exten-sion allows for voice
and fax messages to be delivered to the user’s inbox, and it is compatible with
Microsoft Exchange, Novell GroupWise, and Lotus Notes, as well as other MAPI-compliant
e-mail products.
Telephony Office-Linx interfaces with Telephony LAN-Linx, a power-ful messaging client.
Once it is con- nected over the network, Telephony LAN-Linx provides desktop call control,
caller ID, screen pops, PIM (Personal Information Manager) capabilities, and multimedia
inte-gration.
INSTALLATION
We received Telephony Office-Linx as a turnkey system installed on a 133 MHz Pentium
PC with 16 Megs of RAM run-ning Windows 95. The telephony board was a Rhetorex 232, a
two-port analog model (Dialogic boards are supported as well).
We interfaced the system to our Comdial DXP switch by plugging two analog lines
configured for voice mail into the Rhetorex board. Then, we attached the five-user
LAN-Linx Sentinel key into the parallel port and booted the PC.
Integration Wizard
To configure the system to work with our Comdial DXP, we used the Telephony
Office-Linx integration wiz-ard, which presented us with a list of pop-ular PBXs and
models to choose from (Figure 1). The wizard lets the installer quickly set up the system
rather than fuss with different parameters to integrate with the target PBX. Basically,
the wizard sets system parameters such as timing, tone signals, and command strings.
Telephony Office-Linx
Normally, the Telephony Office-Linx program resides in the Startup group, ready to
serve as soon as the system is booted up. Upon startup, we were pre-sented with the status
screen, which indicated the system’s various modules were initialized. The status
screen con-tinued to provide updates on the system while the program was running. This
screen was accompanied by Telephony Office-Linx’s main window (Figure 2). From this
window, you can configure the entire system, setting up system parameters, group boxes,
mailbox accounts, auto-attendant options, and company information.
Telephony LAN-Linx
We had already attached a five-user security key to our Telephony Office-Linx’s
server, so we were able to set up five accounts as LAN-Linx users. After setting up the
accounts, we moved to one of our Windows NT Workstation 4.0 machines and installed the
LAN-Linx software. The installation went smoothly. First, we specified the user’s
mailbox num-ber, then, prompted by the program configuration screens, we adjusted var-ious
parameters, such as message deliv-ery frequency, PIM integration with Outlook, and voice
mail greeting options. We were also asked to specify a voice device, the telephone set, or
the PC multimedia system.
DOCUMENTATION
The Telephony Office-Linx documen-tation is well organized, and it thorough-ly covers
hardware and software instal-lation. This includes system planning, installing and
configuring telephony boards, installing and configuring the Telephony Office-Linx
software, and integrating with the PBX or telephone switch. There was also an additional
manual describing integration with our particular PBX, the Comdial DXP.
While the installation sections and the extra manual were comprehensive, the system
configuration and management documentation could have been better. We would have liked to
have seen more in-depth coverage on setting up the sys-tem with users, plus more examples.
The Telephony LAN-Linx documen-tation was adequate, giving us barely enough information
to set up the sys-tem. We feel that a product as capable and full-featured as Telephony
LAN-Linx deserves much better and more comprehensive documentation. That said, we should
note that the user inter-face is very friendly, so it may reduce the need to refer to
print manuals.
Online help was satisfactory for Telephony Office-Linx and Telephony LAN-Linx, although
we wanted it to be more comprehensive. Context-sensitive help is available from most
modules, but it is inconsistent within the various screens. We look forward to beefed up
print and online documentation for both Telephony Office-Linx and Telephony LAN-Linx in
future releases.
FEATURES
Telephony Office-Linx Features
Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 sup-port.
Support for 2 to 32 ports.
Support for Rhetorex and Dialogic telephony boards.
E-mail integration with major e-mail packages through MAPI.
Voice and fax processing, including a full-featured voice mail system.
Integration with all major switches.
Desktop messaging through the LAN-Linx client.
Easy local and remote administra-tion.
Telephony LAN-Linx Features
- Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows NT support.
- On-screen call notification (screen pop), including caller ID.
- Full GUI interface for mailbox man-agement.
- NetBEUI and TCP/IP support.
- Support for telephone set or multi-media PC as voice device.
- Message broadcasting from the desk-top.
- Variety of folders for voice and fax messages.
- Full-featured PIM (Personal Informa-tion Manager).
OPERATIONAL TESTING
We started by making a call into the system to test the interface. We chose the Port
Activity option from the View menu, bringing up a screen showing the two available ports.
At this point, we could make our call into the system. Indeed, the default auto-attendant
greeted us and prompted us to enter an extension number.
When we had a connection, the Port Activity screen confirmed the status of our call.
Since we hadn’t yet created any mailboxes, we hung up. We noticed the port went back
to idle, sig-nifying good integration with the PBX. That is, the line-drop was detected
quickly and correctly.
Voice Mail
To set up the mailboxes, we first logged into the system as an installer. We noticed that
Telephony Office-Linx’s mailboxes are organized as fea-ture groups. Each group of
mailboxes provides shared parameters for their subscribing mailboxes. From the Mailbox
menu, we chose the Group item and were presented with the mailbox Group screen displaying
Group 1 para-meters.
From here, we redefined some of the parameters. For example, through Transfer
Supervision, we arranged for blind transfer (by choosing None). Also, we selected Get
Caller ID. Next, from the Mailbox menu, we chose the Create item, specifying 1 for Feature
Group, creating a range of mailboxes from 155 to 170 based on group 1. When we brought up
the Mailbox Status screen from the View menu, the display confirmed that the mailboxes
were added to the system.
To set up a mailbox account, we dou-ble- clicked on a mailbox (we chose number 168),
bringing up the Mailbox screen, which allowed us to set up the mailbox parameters. From
here, we set the user name, password, transfer options, and other parameters for mail-box
168.
After setting up the mailbox, we dialed into the system and logged into the mail-box.
The tutorial prompt quickly took us through some of the personal options, such as
greetings and password. We were pleasantly surprised that Telephony Office-Linx allowed
for three types of greetings: personal, busy, and gone-home.
We then set up another mailbox in the system and made a few simultaneous calls into the
system under various conditions (such as busy, no answer, or gone-home). All calls were
handled successful-ly. The caller was always given the appropriate options, including the
option to leave a message.
Auto-Attendant
Many voice mail systems set up the auto-attendant as a regular
mailbox. Telephony Office-Linx, however, takes a different approach. It associates the
auto-attendant with a company. This allows Telephony Office-Linx to support several
companies sharing the same PBX or switch — a great advantage. With this feature, the
callers would never know that they were actually going through the same system. Further,
the users in differ-ent companies would be kept separate from each other.
From the Company screen, we set up our business hours,
auto-attendant phras-es, operator extensions, and key map-pings. This screen shows yet
another strength of Telephony Office-Linx: sup-port for a wide variety of languages from
Farsi to Cantonese (and of course English).
The system can be easily set up with menus and submenus
designed to guide the caller through a desired path, collect information, give
informational mes-sages, provide a faxback service, or sim-ply send the caller to a
submenu. Not exactly a full-fledged IVR, but good enough for simple applications. The
auto-attendant and the menu features passed our tests without any problems.
System Parameters
From the System Parameters screen, we were able to define many
switch interface and run-time parameters. At first, we were intimidated by the sheer
number of parameters. We got used to it though. We decided we were happy to have such a
detailed approach to set up, as well as so many opportunities to tweak the system.
The Systems Parameters screen also let us bring up the
INI file to set up other startup parameters for the system. We’re not particularly
fond of INI files, howev-er. We hope to see a registry-centric approach for all system
parameters, including startup parameters.
Advanced Features
To start things off, we decided to take advantage of the e-mail
integration of Telephony Office-Linx to interface it with our Microsoft Exchange
environ-ment. From the Mailbox Status screen, we double-clicked on extension 168 and
entered the Mailbox screen. From here, we clicked on the e-mail Options tab to set up our
user with e-mail connectivity. However, we found that all the fields were disabled.
The documentation wasn’t much help here, so we
placed a call into Esna Technologies’ technical support. It turned out we had a
version of the product that didn’t provide MAPI support. Esna quickly e-mailed a
different version. We also received the LAN-Linx player for Exchange, which would allow
the Exchange user to play voice mail mes-sages on their multimedia PC. After a quick
program install (which entailed replacing the EXE file), we proceeded to make some changes
to the INI file.
Next, we returned to the Mailbox screen. From this
screen’s e-mail Options tab, we entered specifications appropriate to our user’s
purposes. We specified that we wanted the voice mail to be attached to the mail message.
We also had to make sure that the Exchange client was running on the system for correct
e-mail delivery. (Telephony Office-Linx would use the running Exchange client session to
send the voice mail messages through Exchange as they arrived.) We then left a voice mail
for the mailbox, and voila, we had a new message in the user’s Inbox delivered from
the Telephony Office-Linx server.
The e-mail body contained a file with extension LNX. This is
Telephony Office-Linx’s proprietary ADPCM voice file, compressed for efficient e-mail
delivery. Since the LAN-Linx program had already set up the file associations, we
double-clicked on the file and listened to the voice mail message on our multi-media
speakers — a true unified messag-ing experience.
The e-mail integration is compatible with any MAPI-compliant
e-mail pack-age, making Telephony Office-Linx a versatile and flexible product when it
comes to unified messaging. The e-mail integration was easy to set up once we received
help from technical sup-port. However, better documentation for Telephony
Office-Linx’s e-mail integration is clearly in order. If not for the help we received
from technical support, we would have never got it to work.
Another area of the e-mail integration in need of improvement
is allowing for the proprietary voice file format, LNX, to be exported to more well-known
formats such as WAV. This would certainly make it easier for the voice mail recipient to
forward the voice mail file to other par-ties who may not have or want to have the
LAN-Linx player, even though the player is available, for free, at Esna Technologies’
Web site. We also hope Telephony Office-Linx provides support for Internet e-mail
protocols, specifically SMTP. This would be a great feature for people who don’t use
MAPI-compliant e-mail packages.
Messaging Client
LAN-Linx is an impressive and power-ful program, and we think any
Telephony Office-Linx user should be equipped with it. It comes with an array of
capabili-ties, allowing the user to take full con-trol of his/her mailbox and handle
incoming calls from the desktop. In addition, a full-featured PIM (Personal Information
Manager) is provided to keep information on the callers and it is also used for caller ID
screen pops.
Launching LAN-Linx was simple, since the installation
program had installed a shortcut on our desktop. We entered our account’s password
and brought up LAN-Linx’s main screen. From the main screen, we could quickly inspect
the number of messages in the mailbox and make plenty of changes to our mailbox
con-figuration. For example, we could set notification, forwarding, and retrieval order
for messages. Clearly, we had our hands on a serious productivity tool.
Other features included the ability to activate call
screening, forwarding, and paging. We could also set up distribution lists and
notification lists. We especially liked being able to tell the caller, right from the
desktop, that the user had gone home or that he/she would be back in a certain number of
minutes or hours.
Clicking on the Msgs button on the toolbar, we were presented
with the Messages screen displaying several fold-ers for new, saved, archived, and even
deleted messages. The bottom portion of the screen displayed more information about the
individual messages with some of the information being supplied from the LAN-Linx’s
address book. Fax mes-sages would also arrive in the same area.
Another feature of LAN-Linx we test-ed was the message
broadcast, which we used to record a message and broadcast it to a list of mailboxes that
we selected from the available mailbox list. We accomplished all this from our desktop.
We also examined the Contacts program accompanying LAN-Linx.
We found that it was a very efficient and useful PIM application. Moreover, the
integration between the messages and the PIM in LAN-Linx was excellent, one of the best
we’ve seen, and we were very impressed with its rich fea-tures and user-friendly
interface.
An impressive side benefit of keeping a contact list is
LAN-Linx’s caller ID functionality, which pops up with the caller’s name when
the caller ID of the caller matches an entry in the contact list. Voice mail messages
delivered to LAN-Linx and the user’s e-mail applications are also tagged with the
caller’s name derived from the PIM’s phone book.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
Unfortunately, at the time of our review, 32-bit telephony board
drivers were unavailable for Telephony Office-Linx. Thus, our tests were limited to
looking at Telephony Office-Linx on Windows 95.
Esna Technologies assures us, however, that full 32-bit
compatibility will be available soon. Esna Technologies added that its sys-tems deployed
on Windows 95 have been very stable, running undisturbed and requiring little or no
maintenance. Indeed, the system appeared very stable to us during our tests.
TAPI compliance is another feature that we would have liked to
have seen in Telephony Office-Linx, and we are happy to report that it is also being
implemented for future releases. Finally, as mentioned earlier, the product could broaden
its appeal considerably by introducing SMTP e-mail integration capability.
CONCLUSION
While it can be used as a basic, reliable voice mail system,
Telephony Office-Linx/ Telephony LAN-Linx also lets users take advantage of an impressive
and unbeatable array of powerful and capable CTI and unified messaging functions. We were
equally impressed with its ease of integration with a wide variety of products. |
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