March 1999

Price: Around $295.00.

RATINGS (0-5)
Installation: 3
Documentation: 4.5
Features: 4.5
Operational Testing: 4.75
Overall: A-

Call control through a PC promises not only to simplify standard functions - substituting an intuitive drag-and-drop environment for the convoluted process of inputting codes using a telephone keypad - but it also allows for easy integration with other PC-based functions. Instead of juggling a handset, phone manual, keyboard, Rolodex, and a pencil and paper, users of PC-based systems have enhanced functionality at their fingertips, controlled with simple mouse clicks or keyboard strokes. Such functionality is exactly what CT Pro offers: the features of a deluxe telephone, but with added enhancements that only a PC can deliver. You can connect a simple analog phone to the telephone line, by way of passing the connection through a PC that hosts CT Pro. You then get deluxe, "facilitated" operation of the phone.

The main idea that underlies CT Pro is that if it has the number you wish to dial in its "working library," it retrieves and starts dialing the number for you, with you providing only the minimal number of keystrokes or mouse-clicks. In some cases it builds that library for you automatically by "absorbing" dial-ins from your caller-ID. Additionally, if a customer or sales prospect calls you, CT Pro, with the help of your caller-ID, can immediately pull up the relevant history in a screen-pop and put it in front of you as you speak. Also, if you adopt CT Pro as your new contact manager, you do not need to completely re-enter data from your old contact manager. It will import this data. Even more important, to a limited extent it will even "attach" itself to an old contact manager program and augment its phone capabilities.

INSTALLATION
CT Pro (Model PS-SWL-100) installed smoothly on a Windows 98 PC. During the install process, it requested several phone-related pieces of information, such as area code, country code and dial-out digits. It also requested approval of placement of the "dialer icon" on the title bar of the active window. This is one of the most useful features of CT Pro, as it means that the auto-dialing convenience follows the user through many different windows, so we answered "yes" to this option (NDISWAN TAPI Service provider). CT Pro also installed in a straightforward fashion on a Windows 95 PC.

In addition, CT Pro also installed smoothly on a Windows NT Server PC. However, the first attempt to make a call with the help of the dialer resulted in the message: TAPI Make Call Error, Resource Overcommitment. After another attempt, we turned to the CT Pro troubleshooting procedures. However, we found this process somewhat frustrating, as there seemed to be a circular loop in the troubleshooting hypertext. Probably what was needed was an installation of the TAPI 2.1 Service Provider for Windows NT, since Windows NT 4.0 comes with an older version of TAPI. We felt that the CT Pro software should have detected which OS we were using and updated the appropriate files (including TAPI) as necessary.

DOCUMENTATION
The documentation that accompanied CT Pro was clear and valuable, and diagrams were present where they were needed. Since the product is simple, each function had tutorials of just a few paragraphs. They were adequate to enable a computer-literate secretary or salesperson to use CT Pro without difficulty.

FEATURES
CT Pro promised productivity increases via its Dialing, Call Log, Pop! third-party interface, and Address Book/Data Exchange features.

Dialing
You can replace your desktop phone and allow CT Pro to do your dialing, and you probably should, because CT Pro requires significantly fewer keystrokes when placing an outgoing call. Suppose, for example, that you decide it is time to phone "Marilyn Murphy." With CT Pro, you just start keying in M, u, r, p. . . . As you key in the letters, CT Pro offers you its "best guess" dialing candidate. When you see that it has guessed correctly (usually this requires no more than three or four keystrokes), just press Enter, and you are dialing. If somehow you made an error - say you were intending to call one "Cooper" and you picked the wrong "Cooper" instead - just point to the Call icon on the screen and right click. A "Drop Cooper?" balloon appears, with the mouse pointer already positioned on it. If you left-click once, the call ends.

Call Log
CT Pro lets you see every call that comes in and out. You can drop the non-essential ones and just save what's important. The names and numbers on which the log is based are either added by you, individually, imported en masse from your previous contact manager, or automatically caught via caller-ID as people call-in. This is a great time-saving device for all users. However, the real power behind the Call Log is that it provides a screen-pop as your phone rings (see Pop! feature). This quickly allows you to see all the conversations that you have had with that caller, along with valuable notes you may have taken along the way.

Pop!
One especially useful feature that has already been touched on is the Pop! feature, which presents a screen-pop of caller information when an incoming call is received. Pop! is compatible with a number of Personal Information Managers (PIMs), including ACT!, GoldMine, Lotus, and Outlook. The Pop! third-party interface feature also allows you to create keystroke macros to customize for the interface you are working with.

TAPI
CT Pro is also TAPI-compliant, which makes it compatible with any TAPI-compliant switch, including Lucent's PassageWay, Nortel's Meridian MCA, or TelAdapter. CT Pro also supports NEC's Dterm PC or PC Telephony Adapter and Siemens' Optiset NI-1200 ISDN phone, and is compatible with Centrex or regular analog lines for the dialer unit.

OPERATIONAL TESTING
To begin testing its outbound features, we entered a list of names manually and let CT Pro dial. The rapidity of outbound calling, including when we entered names manually, keystroke-by-keystroke, was impressive, even when there was a long list of names to choose from. The addition of names to the file via caller-ID turned out to be less than useful for us, only because we do not ordinarily make outbound calls to those particular people. Therefore our "Names and Numbers" list started getting cluttered and needed frequent trimming. This problem had nothing to do with CT Pro, however. Had we used it where it was intended, the feature would have been greatly appreciated.

The Call Log was very helpful. It was easy to see a summary of calls to the individual, or to pick the last call made and study the recorded content before calling again. This feature would be useful for a sales representative or help-desk agent, as well as for a busy tech editor trying to keep track of contact information and products scheduled for review.

Another feature of CT Pro that we found helpful was the "Mini-Dialer." Picazo claims that the Mini-Dialer works with any Windows-based product to facilitate dialing. Actually, we found that it will work fine even with old DOS products, if they are run from within a Windows environment.

The Mini-Dialer manifests itself as a tiny icon (a phone dial) attached to the title bar of the active window. Thus, it is seen at all times and can be clicked when you need it. If you haven't highlighted any names within your current (non CT Pro) app and you click the Mini-Dialer icon, you get the standard CT Pro screen, because your active window switches to CT Pro. However, if you highlight a phone number, even in an ancient DOS application like Professional File (Software Publishing Corp., 1982), then CT Pro will take the text - for example, "(718)555-9876" - add the appropriate initial digit ("1" for long distance, etc.), and dial out automatically. For years, we would have committed murder to get such a feature - now, no one need die.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
While the install was pretty easy, a single-page installation guide would have been helpful, as we started off not being aware of several items, such as the important "dialer icon," or even the hardware requirements for CT Pro. This product is intended to be sold through Picazo's VARs, and presumably the hardware requirements will be made available to them more directly. We found the minimum requirements readily available on the Picazo Web site.

We attempted to uninstall CT Pro on Windows NT, Windows 98, and Windows 95 machines (due the unforeseen modem problems), and this process resulted in sloppy uninstalls. Certain files and folders were left on the hard drives. Upon attempts to re-install, enough material was left behind that CT Pro itself asked: "Do you want to use the previous installation, or do a fresh installation?" This is inappropriate. Successful uninstalls should leave no trace of the original.

While the product ran fine under Windows 95/98, we could never get it to run under Windows-NT Server. Moreover, the CT Pro diagnostics got us into a maddening circular reference path that caused us to abandon the effort and just evaluate the Windows 9x environment.

CONCLUSION
This product works great, and it was a pleasure to use. Traditionally, gaining CTI functionality like screen-pops requires the installation of a CTI server linked to the PBX. With CT Pro, this functionality can be obtained by simply installing the software on the desktop PC, and CT Pro can be installed only on those desktops that need it, reducing expenses and maximizing the return. With its integration and an assortment of PIMs and its TAPI compliance, we found CT Pro to be a very useful, and easy-to-use, product.