The evoice3000 Communication Server is a PC-based PBX that features a built-in voice
messaging system, browser-based call/message control and administration, IVR, and even
voice over IP. In addition, the integrated messaging system delivers popular features such
as Caller ID, Direct Inward Dialing, voice mail, auto attendant, and e-mail integration.
The PBX board (manufactured and designed by e-Voice) provides 48 ports and can be expanded
to 144 ports.
INSTALLATION
For the installation, a couple of e-Voice representatives brought a turnkey server with
Windows NT and all of their software pre-installed. When we connected the server to a TMC
Labs monitor, keyboard, and mouse and then attempted to boot the machine, the screen was
blank. The e-Voice representative joked, “I guess that loud bang we heard in the
luggage compartment of the plane was our server being tossed around!” After about
half an hour of troubleshooting, we determined that the server was pretty much “dead
in the water.”
Fortunately, TMC Labs has spare machines at the ready for just such an occasion. Like a
pit crew at the Grand Prix, one of the TMC Labs engineers sprang into action. First, he
unscrewed the cover to the spare PC as the e-Voice representative took out several
hardware components from the evoice server. As each hardware component was removed from
the now defunct server, it was handed to the TMC Labs engineer, who quickly inserted it
into the replacement server PC. Hard drive. Network card. Telephony trunk board. Extension
board. And the clock said it had been less than five minutes. Like a well-oiled machine,
we had the hardware transferred and the new server up and running. Mario Andretti’s
pit crew has nothing on TMC Labs! (The e-Voice representatives had a flight to catch,
which explains why we had to move fast.)
Several mailboxes were already preconfigured, although we made some modifications to
some of the mailbox settings. Modifying the mailbox settings was very easy using the
well-organized tabular graphical user interface (GUI). Overall installation was a snap.
DOCUMENTATION
The documentation was quite extensive and consisted of an evoice3000 system administration
manual, client manual, unified messaging manual, user/administrator/voice mail guides,
console manual, and application notes. At first glance, the documentation seemed to meet
our very stringent requirements — everything from extensive screenshots to explaining
each facet of the GUI was done very well. What troubled us, however, was that we found
numerous grammatical and spelling mistakes. Just one or two errors we might have let pass,
but that was not the case. In the unified messaging manual, on page 16 alone we found six
mistakes.
And these typos weren’t limited to just the documentation: we found them in
various GUI screens as well. The extensive number of mechanical errors reduced an overall
good documentation score (as well as the GUI score).
Out of all the documentation manuals, the administrator manual was the most detailed.
It included a glossary and hardware installation instructions. There was an adequate table
of contents, but no index or tab dividers for each major section in the manual.
On a more positive note, we should point out we liked the user voice mail guide, which
includes a tree-like chart with arrows to indicate how to traverse the voice mail system.
A similar tree-like chart for the administration of the voice mail is also available.
FEATURES
The evoice3000 Communications Server features fax on demand, audio-text, and individual
personalized greetings based on caller ID. Follow-me with remote call forwarding allows
the system to find you from preset phone numbers. Unlike many competing PC-PBXs,
evoice3000 supports T1, DID, and analog trunk interfaces. Another nifty feature is that
with the caller ID login feature you can save time by logging in with the telephone number
as your password.
Another critical feature is evoice’s ability to automatically connect the trunk
lines with the extension lines to provide phone service in the event of a power failure.
Call screening and support for SCSA and MVIP bus for connection to other telephony cards
are standard features. As an added bonus, evoice includes e-mail to voice mail via
text-to-speech. ACD functionality is included and features up to 40 ACD groups, with 80
members per workgroup. Fax-on-demand capabilities are available via a Class 2 fax modem.
Other features include:
- Conference calling for up to six parties.
- Centrex transfer.
- Call waiting to handle multiple incoming calls using PC or phone.
- Distinctive call waiting tone (internal, external, and operator calls ).
- Do not disturb.
- Windows telephony client software with database integration and screen-pops.
- Live recording during call session (PC or phone control).
- Call waiting (PC and phone control with audible alert tone or voice prompt).
- Unified messaging with Microsoft Outlook.
- Up to 144 ports.
- PCI format VoIP card.
- Scalable VoIP connections, starting from 8 ports, supporting up to 48 ports.
- Built-in H.323 stack.
- On-board voice compression with G723, G729 codec support.
OPERATIONAL TESTING
The evoice3000 PC-PBX handles power failures by transferring CO lines 1 and 2 to extension
ports 1 and 2 directly for each PBX board. In the event that the server shuts down but
power is maintained to the PBX board, all current connections are maintained. This is a
nice feature in the event of an operating system crash.
We noticed during our tests that after opening an e-mail/voice mail form, followed by
clicking on the forward button, then clicking on the To: address box, none of the other
voice mailboxes are listed. In order to forward a voice message to another evoice3000 user
you have to type “#” followed by the box number, such as “#101.” We
found this tedious and would prefer a direct integration with Microsoft Exchange’s
address list to allow a user to pick recipients by name.
Touchtone Tranfers (or Just A Little Bit Longer)
During the screen name process, the auto-attendant says “Please record your
name after the tone. When you are finished press any key.” When we tested this
procedure by stating our name and then tapping a touchtone key on the phone, it
didn’t transfer the call. All we heard was silence. We pressed the touchtone key a
bit longer, and then the call was transferred. We were a bit unhappy that we had to press
the touchtone key for a fairly long time in order for the evoice3000 to recognize the
tone.
Just in case it was a fluke, we made another test call and then quickly tapped a DTMF
key after recording our name. The same result — it wouldn’t recognize a fast
touchtone being played. We’d like to see a faster response time to recognize
touchtone key presses. Also, we would like to suggest that the name screening process
automatically detect silence and then transfer the call. Thus, if a caller says,
“This is John Smith calling” and then doesn’t say anything, the evoice
system should detect the silence and automatically transfer the call.
Designing GUIs
The graphical user interface maintained a consistent look and feel throughout all
of the evoice software modules. However, we felt that the GUI could be improved in several
areas. For one, within the “evoice3000 CT client,” under the “Call
History” and “Messaging” tabs, you could not sort by the column headings.
By default it always sorts by Date/Time, which is fine, but you may want to sort by
longest message, caller ID number, etc. Also, within the Messaging window, to add to the
memo field you have to right-click and then choose memo field. It would be nice if could
also just double-click on memo field to add a memo to a voice message.
evoice3000’s CTI client application allows you to control your incoming calls,
including transferring callers to voice mail, putting callers on hold, recording a
conversation, and other functions. One useful feature of the CTI client application is
that it allows you to monitor other employees’ extensions to see if they are idle or
on the phone. This way, you will know if a coworker is preoccupied before you transfer a
call.
Overall, we liked the CTI call control application; however, we did feel that the GUI
could be improved. We found that it lacked some “pizzazz.” For instance, the
icons were a bit dull in color and design. We examined the operator console just like the
CTI call control application, and we found the GUI to be fairly simple to use but also a
bit dull.
Web-Based Access
Next, we examined the Web-based interface, which can be used for administration as well as
by the users for setting their various preferences. When a regular user logs on, all of
the administration features are hidden and only options such as call forwarding, message
notification, and greetings can be changed. We tested the ability to change and record a
greeting remotely. Up to three greetings can be recorded or changed via the Web interface,
as well as re-recording the name greeting.
We attempted to record the greeting and another browser window was spawned, followed by
a security certificate to accept a piece of code that downloaded. After accepting the
certificate, we noticed that some Java classes tried to execute but failed. We determined
that this Windows 98 client did not have the Windows Java VM installed, so we downloaded
it and attempted to record a greeting again. This time we received a different error, a
dialog box that stated, “Failed to create MCsocket.” After several
troubleshooting tricks with no success, we moved on to our other tests.
In The IVR Zone
The IVR system is very powerful in the evoice3000 platform. Its support of ODBC
connectivity allows you to design tables to store PINs, account information, fax document
numbers, and more, which the caller can access. The GUI to design the IVR menus and
submenus is very easy to use and features a graphical tree-like structure for designing
the call flow. Our only complaint was that we couldn’t put descriptions next to each
menu option in the tree.
Miscellaneous
We examined several other items as well. For instance, we examined the dialing patterns
feature, which was extremely powerful, allowing you to set various dialing rules, such as
“1,9,0,0” to block 900 numbers. Also, you can set least cost routing rules to
route phone calls over an IP network. For example, if you had a branch office in Los
Angeles and dialed a California number from your office in New York, the evoice3000 would
actually make the call through a CO line in the Los Angeles office. Then using Internet
telephony capabilities, it would transmit the voice over any IP network from the Los
Angeles evoice3000 to the evoice3000 system in New York. This valuable cost-saving feature
makes the evoice3000 an excellent choice for companies with multiple branch offices.
We tested several other aspects of the evoice3000 system, but we don’t have
adequate space to discuss them all here. Overall though, we were pleased with the
performance and feature set of the evoice3000, and it did very well in our tests.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
The good news is that the evoice3000 PC-based PBX is one of the most feature-rich phone
systems TMC Labs has ever tested — just about every feature you can imagine has been
thrown into this system. The bad news is that just about every feature you can imagine has
been thrown into this system. Perhaps we should explain.
Right or wrong, our experiences with evoice’s error-prone documentation and
spelling errors in their GUI leave us a bit wary. If the documentation and GUI were not
checked for 100 percent accuracy (and both of these are fairly easy to check for errors),
then how do we know that there was proper and adequate testing of the software code? Of
course, “linking” mistakes in the GUI and documentation to possible errors in
the software code may be a bit presumptive, but we do feel that a product should be finely
polished with no apparent defects. A defect in the documentation or GUI may prejudice
anyone’s opinion of the reliability of the software code.
In all fairness, we should point out though that we did not discover any bugs during
our tests, other than the auto attendant erroneously detecting the wrong DTMF digits and
then transferring us to the wrong extension on a couple of occasions.
CONCLUSION
There is a lot to like about the evoice3000. TMC Labs applauds e-Voice’s attempt to
add so many features, including VoIP, CTI desktop call control, and built-in ACD
functionality, which make this product a strong contender for just about any
business’s telephony needs, including call centers. A little more polishing on the
GUI and documentation will make this an even stronger contender in the PC-PBX market, but
overall, TMC Labs liked this product and would recommend it.
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