| Call accounting is an essential tool for just
about any business, large or small. Monitoring and reporting on call
records helps corporations not only protect against fraud, but also better
manage personnel and increase productivity. Another use for call
accounting is to bill clients and projects back for phone charges incurred
on their behalf, which would be necessary for attorneys or government
contractors. Yet another important application is the sharing and resale
of long-distance and local phone calls, such as in the hotel/motel
industry, hospitals, and shared condominiums/office spaces. Someone has to
divvy up the phone costs and Ma Bell certainly isn�t going to do it for
you.
And finally, a call accounting system can motivate your salespeople.
After all, the more phone calls they make, the more they sell. One
technique for motivating your sales people is to hang a list of their
phone calls on the wall, and award those with the most calls made in a
given time period.
TriSys Telecom�s Tapit 2000 call accounting package helps address the
need to collect and analyze call records and print reports for tracking or
billing purposes. The Tapit software integrates to the PBX via SMDR, a
standard among most PBXs.
INSTALLATION
Installing Tapit 2000 consisted of a single CD, which auto-ran once
inserted. We were prompted with a screen consisting of eight buttons (most
of which were slide demos or help files). We chose the �Install Tapit
2000� button, and the only items we needed to choose were which
directory to install, and whether or not we had a serial number. Next, we
launched the Tapit Setup utility that was installed in the Tapit 2000
Program Group. We configured the COM port settings (baud rate, parity,
stop bits, etc.) to match the settings on the Comdial PBX we were
integrating with. Using Tapit�s SMDR monitoring utility (called SMDR
Monitor32) we were able to view call activity live as it occurred. This
also served as a test that the Tapit 2000 software was communicating with
the Comdial PBX. Overall, installation was a breeze.
DOCUMENTATION
The documentation for Tapit 2000 was very good. It was well organized and
proceeded in a logical order, from installation, to setting up users and
departments, to generating statistical reports. Screenshots were
plentiful, and both a table of contents and index were available. We were
able to quickly lookup key features or figure out how to configure trunks,
departments, or print reports. We didn�t have any complaints.
FEATURES
Tapit 2000 features real-time data collection, automatic report
scheduling, export to time and billing packages, ANI (caller ID) support,
as well as graphical reports (pie, line, and bar graphs). Tapit 2000 comes
with several built-in reports, including longest calls by extension, most
expensive calls by extension, most frequently dialed numbers, general
summary reports, account code reports for project billing, departmental
reports, trunk utilization, and area code reports. Customized reports can
also be created as well as scheduling automatic reports to be created.
Other features include automatic account code allocation, password
protection, fraud alert detection with triggers and alarms, and the
ability to perform call editing. Also, you can purchase optional V&H
pricing tables for calculating phone costs.
OPERATIONAL TESTING
The main graphical user interface for the Tapit 2000 program with the
�Users� window on top is displayed in Figure 6. The first step in
testing the software was to see how user-friendly the GUI was and how
quickly we could add users and departments. The fields which can be
assigned to a user include last name, first name, authorization code,
surcharge per minute, surcharge per call, multiplier percentage,
extension(s), and department.
The first minor annoyance we found was when we were using the interface
to add users, departments, or clients. For example, the procedure to add a
new user involves first clicking on the New User button, which clears the
fields. Then after typing in the user information, there is no clear,
intuitive way of saving the data. There is no �Update� or �Save�
button.
We determined that the interface automatically saves your changes when
you close the window, switch to another user, or click on the Exit button.
While this is fine for adding just a single user, it would be a bit
annoying if you had to close the window each time you add a user.
Fortunately, this is not the case. You can just click on the New User
button when you are finished putting in the data for the current user.
This will automatically save the current user you are adding and then
clear the fields for adding an additional user. In any event, it took a
while to get accustomed to this automatic save capability.
One of the first items we noticed was the ability to attach multiple
extensions to one user. This is an important and useful feature, since
users may have multiple corporate phones or extensions. On a related note,
we noticed that a user could only be assigned to one department. We felt
this was a flaw, albeit a minor one, since a user can be part of multiple
departments, each with its own extension. It would be nice if it were
possible to map each phone extension to a department, rather than mapping
each user to a department. This would allow a call accounting report by
department to be more accurate. In some organizations each department is
given a phone budget, so having an accurate departmental breakdown of
phone charges is crucial.
Once we set up extensions and departments, as well as some sample
clients, we proceeded to test the real-time collection of PBX data from
the Comdial�s SMDR-compliant serial port. We made a few test phone
calls, and could see the phone number displayed in the SMDR Monitor32
program.
Since an organization needs to make sense of �dialed� phone
numbers, such as which area codes are called the most and by whom, Tapit
has been designed with a �dialing patterns� feature. For example, you
could code �10NNNTTTTTTTTTTT� to map perfectly to the dial string �10288-1-203-555-5555.�
The letter �N� is used to map to any one character not part of the
dial string, and �T� is used to represent one digit of the telephone
number. Tapit 2000 comes with other special mapping characters to allow
for complex dialing pattern rules. Another benefit of using dialing
patterns is that you can eliminate internal extension-to-extension phone
calls from the call accounting reports.
Reports
The most important feature of any call accounting package is its reporting
capabilities. Power, user-friendliness, the number of built-in reports,
and ease of designing custom reports are all critical elements of a good
reporting package. Tapit 2000 has made their reports feature very powerful
and easy to use. The reports are broken down into categories, with a list
of reports contained within each category.
Since we wanted more extensive call record data for more meaningful
reports, we then deleted the database we created and installed a sample
database which was included on the Tapit 2000 CD. We tried some of the
built-in reports and the resulting report was formatted very well and easy
to comprehend. After choosing a report, you have the option of selecting a
date range, extension range, departments, inbound/outbound/both, and other
criteria. If you leave the criteria fields blank, it essentially chooses
all the data (no filtering applied). The interface for filtering data by
applying certain criteria was very easy to use and we were quite pleased
with our sample report.
For our next test, we examined the report designer for creating custom
reports. We weren�t as impressed with the report designer. The report
designed consisted of choosing �detail�or �summary,� then the
primary and secondary sort field, and finally which fields to add to the
report. Secondary options such as ascending or descending sort order and
page breaks were also available. While this interface was adequate and we
admired it for its simplicity, it seemed too weak for those technically
minded MIS administrators who want a little more control over the data and
report design.
Graphs and charts are also an available feature within Tapit 2000 via
the Statistics menu. We noticed a bug when printing the �Top 20 Values�
graph by user. The bar graph looks fine, except for one thing: the X-axis
on the bottom only lists every other user name under each bar of the bar
graph.
We�ve seen this happen with Microsoft Excel, and the problem is that
the user names are long enough that if they all were put on the X-axis,
they would overlap. To make more room, many programs skip every other item
name on this axis. Also, within Excel anyway, you can increase the page
size to legal, or print in landscape mode to be able to �stretch� the
X-axis enough to fit all the names.
Unfortunately, Tapit 2000 doesn�t allow you to stretch the size of
the graph even if you increase the paper size, making this particular
report almost useless. As an alternative, we determined that we could
print out a similar graph by choosing �by extension� instead of �by
user.� Extensions are generally only 3-4 digits, and they were able to
fit underneath every bar in the bar graph. However, it was a bit of a pain
to have to look up each extension in order to determine how each user
performed individually.
Another solution to this problem is to select a smaller set of users to
display. For instance, you could select just the sales department, or a
range of extensions to display on the graph. With 10 or fewer users on the
graph, there shouldn�t be a problem fitting all the names.
Another nice feature added to the reports is the ability to
automatically schedule reports to be run with no user intervention.
Options include scheduling daily, weekly, or monthly; the time to run the
report; whether to print it; and the file name to print it to.
We noticed that the database file used ended with a �.mdb�
extension. Thus, our final test involved opening the database directly
from Microsoft Access 2000 to check out the tables and database structure.
If we could open the database directly, we could also use Access to run
our own SQL queries or use Access�s report designer. Seasoned MIS
administrators might like to have this capability to manipulate the
database directly.
When we opened the file, it said that it was an earlier version of
Access, and that we would need to convert it if we wished to make changes,
otherwise it would open as read-only. We wanted to be able to add custom
access reports and SQL queries into the database, so we converted the file
(after backing it up). We knew that converting the database probably would
confuse Tapit 2000 and cause it to fail, but we figured it was worth a
shot. Sure enough, when we loaded Tapit 2000, it didn�t like the newer
version of Access, claiming that the database was corrupt.
TMC Labs attempted to hack Tapit 2000 to accept the new Access 2000
engine. We tried overwriting the Microsoft Jet Engine files, as well as
some ODBC .dll�s with the latest versions but were unsuccessful. We were
stuck with Tapit 2000�s utilization of the Access 2.0 engine. We could
still view the data and run SQL queries, but we couldn�t save any
information, including our custom queries.
Tapit 2000 also has a client code feature, which allows you to assign
certain phone numbers to a client. This allows you to then bill clients
based on phone calls made to those numbers whether it�s an outbound call
or even an inbound call by matching the caller ID information.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
When we tried the uninstall/reinstall option, it didn�t work. It
just kept giving us an error message �Tapit 2000 Setup was not completed
successfully.� We checked the C:\Tapitw32 folder to see if it deleted
the program, and it was still there. We�d like to see the uninstall
feature working properly in a future release.
Another suggestion is that perhaps TriSys should add an �update� or
�save� button to the add user/department/client interface, just to set
an administrators� mind at ease that the data is actually being saved
before closing the window. As previously mentioned, we�d like the
graph/chart feature to display all user names at the bottom of the chart.
A little bit more user control over the graph/chart feature might
facilitate this. Another suggestion that might help is to have another
button in the Statistics window called �Top 10� in addition to the
default �Top 20� button. Twenty user names just didn't fit on the
chart, but certainly ten names shouldn�t be a problem.
Finally, we�d like Tapit 2000 to convert to the latest Microsoft
Access engine to allow more technically savvy MIS or telecom
administrators to have full read/write access to the data directly using
the latest version of Access.
CONCLUSION
Tapit 2000�s feature-set is very good with a strong reporting module and
very good documentation. It�s also one of the most user-friendly
software programs we have ever tested. Overall, TMC Labs was very
impressed with Tapit 2000 and would highly recommend this call accounting
software package. |
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