February 1999

Price: OpalisRobot software (1 Server license), $795.00; OpalisRobot E-mail Add-on (requires OpalisRobot), $495.00; OpalisRobot Call Add-on (requires OpalisRobot, supports 2-lines), $495.00.

RATINGS (0-5)
Installation: 5
Documentation: 4.75
Features: 4.75
GUI: 4
Overall: A-

Having problems with your CTI server lately? Has your Windows NT machine been acting up? Do you need to remotely monitor your CTI applications and automatically initiate processes or programs (batch files, .EXEs, etc.) depending on certain criteria? Don't you wish a program existed that could automatically e-mail you, or even call your mobile phone, to tell you that something has gone wrong with your CTI server, Web server, or unified messaging system? Well TMC Labs has found a fantastic utility that will greatly enhance your ability to monitor all your Windows NT applications: OpalisRobot from Opalis, Inc. With additional add-ons such as the "E-mail Add-on" and the "Call Add-on," you can add complete e-mail and telephony integration to the core of the OpalisRobot software.

INSTALLATION
Installation consisted of installing from a single CD, which contained OpalisRobot, the Call Add-on, and the E-mail Add-on. We ran the OpalisRobot setup file, and there weren't any settings to choose except which directory to install to and which Windows NT account to use for the OpalisRobot service. Since this was a TMC Labs testing machine, we took the "easy road" and just chose the "administrator" account (highest possible security clearance) rather than having to contend with possible security issues between the Opalis software and Windows NT. After installing OpalisRobot, we installed both the Call Add-on and the E-mail Add-on. Both installations went smoothly. The only real work involved was digging out the license cards in the box and entering the licensing codes.

It should be noted that before we installed OpalisRobot, we knew that we were going to test the Call Add-on, and that we would need a CTI voice-processing board to test this feature. Dialogic was gracious enough to lend us one of their ProLine/2V boards to test in conjunction with Opalis's product. Installing the ProLine/2V was a snap, although Dialogic didn't ship us any drivers with the board. We searched Dialogic's Web site for the drivers, surprisingly to no avail - the drivers were nowhere to be found. A search on "ProLine/2V drivers" only yielded some URLs containing technical specs in Acrobat format as well as over 100 other URLs, which didn't help us at all.

Rather than figure out the intricacies of Dialogic's search engine or peruse the dozens of URLs its search engine returned, we called Opalis, and they directed us to the proper URL on Dialogic's site. They also informed us that the Opalis CD had the latest Dialogic drivers on them! Rather than download Dialogic's drivers (around a 30 MB file), we used the drivers on Opalis's CD, and we commend Opalis for including the drivers with their product. A few other products also include drivers for the voice processing boards that they support, but certainly not enough do this for our tastes!

DOCUMENTATION
The documentation was very good. Important concepts were clearly bulleted, the chapters were well organized, a table of contents and a good index were both present, screenshots were plentiful, and the formatting was right on - utilizing italics, bold, and underlining where appropriate. Also, important warnings or comments were placed in the left margin, which a reader could clearly pick them up when skimming the documentation.

Concepts are clearly explained using "real world" examples, even with a touch of humor. One such snippet from the OpalisRobot manual uses a real-life example to explain the concept of how an event (like hunger) triggers a task (like eating): "What a terrific game! You feel real good (you won!)…. Out of the car and into the living room. You fall more than sit in the armchair, grab the remote, and turn on the TV. You relax. Then you realize you are hungry. Your stomach aches. Unless you are on a strict diet, you make your way to the fridge and help yourself." Another amusing tidbit in the manual was "OpalisRobot is never hungry and it does not eat. Also, it won't cook dinner, but that's just a hardware problem. Nevertheless, it recognizes computer-related events and responds to them with appropriate actions." We applaud Opalis for introducing some humor and real-world examples into their documentation to better explain how their product works. Of course, a manual which is too chatty or tries too hard to be humorous can be more annoying than helpful, but we felt that Opalis's documentation had just the right amount of humor.

One area where we feel the documentation could be improved is in the examples. In particular, we feel more complex examples, such as a multi-user voice mail system, would be beneficial. However, that might take up more pages in the manual than it would be worth. Of course, such examples might be better suited if they were included on the Opalis CD, such that a user could simply load the example into their PC, rather than manually keying in each event and task depicted in the manual.

FEATURES
The OpalisRobot Call Add-on gives you the ability to receive telephone calls from your server, updating you with the latest changes in your network, CTI server, etc., and it allows you to execute tasks to fix any problems. You can call your server and execute important processes via a simple phone call and some DTMF key presses.

Here are some examples, which best illustrate the features and capabilities of the OpalisRobot used in conjunction with the E-mail Add-on and Call Add-on:

Example 1: Press 1 to restart Exchange.
When OpalisRobot has detected a problem on the server, it calls the administrator on his cellular phone and gives him an explanation message plus choices to solve the problem. Press 1 to restart Exchange, press 2 to e-mail the help desk, press 3 to reboot the computer, press 4 to launch the backup, etc. No more weekend drives to the office!

Example 2: Read my e-mail.
Using the optional text-to-speech engine, the Call Add-on will read any text on the line: the latest e-mail you received, credit situation of a customer, status of network jobs, etc. (Note: This feature was unavailable at the time TMC Labs did the review, so contact Opalis for availability.)

Example 3: Voice-to-e-mail.
When you're away from your desk, the caller records a .WAV message, and this message is sent by e-mail to any SMTP-compliant mailbox (Exchange, Notes, CC: Mail, etc.). Then, you read your voice messages in any e-mail client using your sound card.

Example 4: Forgot something, call your server.
If you forgot to launch today's production job, or run your backups, just call your server. Using menus you defined, it will let you run any of your network jobs from your phone.

A quick feature list (by no means complete) includes the following:

• Ability to schedule tasks/events by day, to schedule them every day, and to select "exception days" such as holidays.
• Several program execution modes: background normal priority, background low priority, and interactive (program interacts with user, requiring user input).
• Send task and event succeed/failures to an event log.
• Send a popup message (similar to WinPopup) to another machine running OpalisRobot. Useful for MIS to send quick messages to each other.
• Execute a RAS action, such as dialing your ISP. Useful for scheduling when to retrieve Internet e-mail.
• System shutdown capability - useful for shutting down a server if certain conditions are met (such as 100% CPU utilization), or you can execute a system shutdown via the telephone interface via the optional Call Add-on.
• Execute a query or a file containing queries (SQL Server only) in a PODBC or SQL Server database.
• Execute a ping check. If a remote TCP/IP computer is not responding (such as your Web server, proxy server, etc.), you can be notified immediately.
• Monitor disk space utilization (50% full, 25% full, etc.).
• Monitor a Windows NT service. Useful for checking to make sure all your vital services are started, and if not, you can take corrective measures.
• File management capabilities include the ability to copy, rename, or print files.
• All tasks/events have "result codes" which allow the Opalis user to check the success, failure, or other various "result code" conditions.

OPERATIONAL TESTING
OpalisRobot is broken down into two components: the client and an NT service. The client can run under Windows 95/98 or NT. The service has to run on a Windows NT machine, since it is installed as a Windows NT service. Essentially, the service runs silently under Windows NT, waiting for events to occur which the user has specified. When an event occurs, a task is initiated, such as launching a program, sending an e-mail, or dialing out to a phone number.

A very user-friendly wizard interface lets you choose whether you want to create an event, task, Call Add-on, or an E-mail Add-on object. Simply by double-clicking on the appropriate icon, you instantiate the object and are then taken to a screen where you can modify the properties for that particular object. The object is then placed onto the development area in the appropriate folder you chose. Essentially, the OpalisRobot interface and the interface for designing tasks/events are similar to a graphical application generator.

Changing the properties for an object (task, event, Call Add-on, etc.) is done quite easily via screens with well-organized tabs. All of the objects included an Activity and Options tab; however, each of the objects also contained its own specific tabs - for instance, the E-mail Add-on had a "Connect" and "E-mail" tab for setting various e-mail settings.

After placing two or more events or tasks in the main development area for OpalisRobot, you can "link" these events or tasks together to perform complex functions depending on various criteria or result codes. "Links," which are essentially lines connecting one event or task icon to another event or task icon, allow you to define a sequence of tasks that will occur depending on your specified criteria. Using "links" to interconnect various events or tasks, you can use Boolean logic (ANDs and ORs) to determine various actions, i.e., tasks. Thus, you can trigger an action (task) only if condition1, condition2, and condition3 are all met (Boolean AND). Conversely, you can have it so that a task is executed if any (Boolean OR) of the conditions are met.

We found that creating various tasks and events and interconnecting them with "links" does not require any programming knowledge whatsoever. Instead, a basic understanding of some MIS concepts in a visual environment is sufficient to create complex applications, due to OpalisRobot's user-friendly interface.

We created some simple procedures, which did everything from launching Internet Explorer to e-mailing files with attachments, depending on various criteria. After playing around with some simple tasks, we proceeded to try utilizing all three elements of the Opalis software at once in a designed event/task scenario. Thus, we needed to integrate using at least one E-mail Add-on task or event, a Call Add-on task or event, as well as the main OpalisRobot application. Our first snag occurred when we received an "Access violation error occurred at address…" when we tried selecting the Activity tab of a call starting point icon, which is part of the Call Add-on module. After a few tries we were able to access this tab screen; however, we then noticed that the time specified in the Range field was five hours later than our system clock.

We double-checked our system clock settings, including the time zone, but we couldn't resolve the time differential, so we called technical support. They told us the time difference was a known issue with their older version and to download a newer version. The newer version solved the Access violation errors we were periodically getting, but the time difference stayed five hours ahead. We were told not to tinker with the default settings for the time range, but in order to get the Call Add-on to answer the phone in our newly created application, we "tinkered" anyway. It actually wouldn't take our changes, so we took a different approach and adjusted our PC's system clock to match the start time specified in the time range. After some trial and error, we were finally able to get the Dialogic ProLine/2V board to answer the call, press some DTMF keys for the PIN, and then record a message, thus successfully testing our integrated application.

We were in the process of speaking with Opalis's technical support and their development team to resolve the time differential, but due to deadline requirements on our end, we were not able to get it 100% working at the time this review was completed. However, to be fair, we were told that the product has been up and running perfectly in several large organizations, so we didn't let this issue affect this product's overall rating or performance scores. Since we were at least able to get the application to work, albeit with a bit of a hack (adjusting the system clock), we felt this product worked to our satisfaction. Also, just before we completed this review, Opalis told us that the reason the time difference occurred was due to the developers using GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) as opposed to local time. We did happen to notice that our system clock had a time zone setting that was five hours behind GMT, which certainly explained the minor problem we were having. Another patch was sent to us, but not before we completed the review process.

In any event, building applications that used the Call Add-on was very easy, just by connecting these basic objects together:

• Telephony starting point: Dial or answer any telephone. Use CLI (Calling Line Identification) to decide which calls to answer or not to answer.
• Play message task: Play pre-recorded .WAV files (quality depending on Dialogic hardware used).
• Record message task: Record and save .WAV files to user-defined path.
• Play DTMF task: Communicate with other telephony hardware (answering machine, voice-response systems, etc.).
• Receive DTMF task: Receive DTMF tones and make decisions using OpalisRobot's intelligence.
• Hang up task: End telephone calls.
• Menu wizard: Easily build menus with endless choices, convenient default options, and quick access (the user can press the tone before the end of the menu message).

We created a sample application that waits for a caller to dial in (answer mode), then waits for a certain DTMF code/PIN, and finally, executes a task depending on a DTMF digit entered. One nice capability is that you can "link back" to any object/icon to execute more tasks or repeat the execution of the same task. Thus, you can repeat an IVR menu or, from a single phone call, execute multiple tasks one at a time. Another nice feature is that Opalis Call Add-on includes an object that plays a message and receives DTMF tones all in one step, i.e., it uses a single object. Thus, you don't need to place a "Play Message" Call Add-on object, and then a "Receive DTMF" Call Add-on object separately, although this is also an option.

The logging capabilities of OpalisRobot were superb! Result codes and other valuable information can be sent to the log. It also auto-refreshes every few seconds, so you can test your application and watch the log to see if all the steps are performing properly. It's also very easy to access the log. You can switch from the development screen (tasks, events) to the log, simply by clicking on the Log tab.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
We couldn't find an "Undo" feature for undoing a mistake, such as deleting a folder by mistake. On a related note, we noticed a message that states "Do you wish to save your changes" anytime you exit OpalisRobot. We thought maybe this was the answer to our prayers - i.e., it would allow us to undo an accidental mistake. To test this theory, we deleted a folder on purpose, exited OpalisRobot, and chose "No" when prompted to "save changes." When we went back in, the folder was deleted, hence the save feature probably is only for saving global settings, and not for saving folders, tasks, or events. If you do make a mistake, you have to start all over.

We noticed that when we resized OpalisRobot, closed the program, and then went back in, our window size settings for the OpalisRobot program were not retained. We'd like the capability to preserve our last windows settings in the next release of OpalisRobot.

Another great feature addition would be the ability to watch the various tasks/events and links in the development area get "highlighted" as they are being executed. This would provide a graphical representation of how the processes are running, which might be easier to inspect than using the log file. Also, in the development area, an auto-arrange feature for the folders, and perhaps for the interconnecting objects, might be useful.

Finally, as previously stated, it would be nice if some complex examples were provided on the CD or in the documentation. Maybe Opalis can even provide some of these examples on their Web site. Even better, perhaps Opalis can allow OpalisRobot users to upload their favorite OpalisRobot applications to Opalis's Web site for others to download as freeware, shareware, etc.

CONCLUSION
CTI servers, CTI applications, PC-based PBXs, and various Windows NT applications are becoming more complex each day. "Up-time" is certainly a crucial element on any CTI server, which might be running your voice mail, auto-attendant, and call switching functionality. Hence, the ability to be informed immediately of a failure on a CTI server or other telephony system via e-mail or telephone would be a valuable addition to any MIS's, VAR's, or interconnect's arsenal. TMC Labs highly recommends OpalisRobot and its corresponding add-ons to anyone running mission-critical applications on the Windows NT platform. In fact, we were so pleased with this product, we are considering using it in-house to monitor our Windows NT servers running critical applications. Opalis offers a free-trial period, and the program is downloadable from their Web site, so you have nothing to lose in trying the program out. Check it out at www.opalis.com.