Develop your own automated phone applications with PhonePro
Raymond Ga Cote
Most businesses have invested in computers hoping to leverage available time and manpower. While the productivity gains that PCs provide are currently under debate, such technological wizardry as E-mail, on-line databases, and computer-based faxing systems have become indispensable business tools. To these basic office necessities you can now add PhonePro from Cypress Research.
PhonePro, a Mac program for creating automated, programmable voice-mail systems, can help you to work smarter, particularly when you're not around. In fact, you can build an entire business around a PhonePro-based service. With its graphical scripting language you build scripts that answer the phone, present spoken menus, and respond to callers' Touch-Tone entries. Callers c
an leave private voice messages or transfer to another extension.
PhonePro works with any analog telephone system and can communicate with an ISDN phone line using third-party hardware. Cypress Research provides sample PhonePro scripts that can have you operating a simple voice-mail system within minutes of installing the software.
However, PhonePro goes far beyond voice messaging. Cypress Research calls it a telephony applications builder. With PhonePro, you can construct just about any imaginable application involving telephones. I spent a day sketching out programs for answering services, information retrieval, automated wake-up services, and fax-back applications--enough to determine that almost everything I wanted to do was within the realm of PhonePro.
In addition to recording voice messages, PhonePro can identify the source of the phone call using Caller ID and can store call-related information in its integrated database. The database can handle variable-length text strings, numbe
rs, dates, times, and sounds. You could, for example, associate menu choices with caller ID for an order-taking application, or track which information callers are requesting most as a form of market research.
Customers can call in on Touch-Tone telephones or use the optional computer-direct access. With the latter, callers can peruse menus from a terminal program and receive information directly via modem. In addition, PhonePro communicates with FaxPro software, also from Cypress Research, so that callers can request information to be faxed back to them.
PhonePro currently does not allow the fax-back to occur on the same phone line as the originating call. The caller must specify a fax number, and FaxPro makes a separate return call--an added expense for the service provider. It's also awkward for the caller, who must enter additional information. Cypress Research is working on providing same-line fax-back in an upcoming release.
Recorded Sound
You can quickly construct a voice-mail s
ystem using built-in capabilities. PhonePro can record messages and store them in a common directory for later retrieval. All voice recordings are stored in Macintosh sfil format, which can be played back directly by double-clicking on the file from the Macintosh System 7.0 Finder. You can also call in through PhonePro and receive your messages over the telephone.
PhonePro maintains multiple dictionaries of prerecorded sounds. You can easily add complete messages to a sound dictionary, or paste sounds together into longer recordings, such as "You have 2 new messages." All spoken messages must be prerecorded. PhonePro speaks only text stored in its dictionary; it doesn't read text phonetically. Recording sounds requires a sound-capable Mac or a third-party sound board. You can't use the telephone connection to record your dictionary entries.
Since many offices already have an E-mail system installed, an important feature of PhonePro is its ability to work cooperatively with Microsoft Mail 3.0, C
E QuickMail 2.5, and Apple Computer's new AOCE (Apple Open Collaborative Environment) PowerTalk messaging systems. You can mail any PhonePro-generated text or data, including voice messages. But note that a voice-mail system will consume large amounts of hard disk storage and possibly load down your network with long messages containing voice data. A single second of typical voice recording will consume over 4 KB of storage.
If you have an all-Mac environment and only want to transmit small messages and sounds between workstations, you can use Cypress Research's Remote_Mac Control Panel device. This device lets you send messages to a remote computer. It uses the ADSP to send messages to remote machines for display by the Notification Manager. This is particularly useful for sending status information quickly to users even if they don't have E-mail capability, or for transmitting important status information.
Scripting
A typical problem with graphical scripting languages is devising meaningful
symbols. Aside from the tactless use of a mushroom cloud as a fatal-error icon, PhonePro has done a reasonable job of defining suitable icons. One pass through the palettes with Balloon Help turned on is sufficient to understand what each icon represents. Also, once an icon is placed in a script, moving the cursor over the icon when Balloon Help is active shows how the icon's internal settings have been configured.
PhonePro's scripting language is a good example of how well graphical programming can work for creating applications within a narrow functional environment like telephony. It's easy to get it running out of the box and create simple applications; more complex programs with full error control will take some effort.
A moderately complex script easily overflows a 21-inch monitor display even without a lot of error-handling routines. It helps that scripts can call other scripts and multiple scripts can be open simultaneously for editing, but having several zoom levels would be useful for
seeing an overall program flow.
Once a script is complete and tested, you can create a captive version--basically a compiled representation. Compiling provides security by ensuring that changes can't be made to a production system.
PhonePro can also be used to develop applications such as for telemarketing stations that require a user interface. PhonePro provides a front-end designer that creates a consistent user interface.
Limitations
PhonePro does have some annoying limitations. Although it is simple to program using the graphical scripting language, moving beyond the simple demonstration applications and adding the proper error handling is a formidable task. Don't expect to sit down in the morning and have a fully functioning multiuser database response system by afternoon. Plan on devoting a week or two to the project.
The current version of PhonePro (1.2.0) supports only a single-line phone system. This limits the number of calls you can take in a day and means you can't
average the cost of a computer system across multiple phone lines. Cypress Research reports that it is working on a multiple-line system for future releases.
Another potential difficulty is that AppleTalk operations can interrupt PhonePro long enough to make it lose pieces of telephone recordings, especially when file sharing is active. I've seen this problem with other communications applications that transfer large amounts of data at high speeds. To fix this, PhonePro has an option to automatically disable AppleTalk during recording and playback. The trouble with this approach is that applications connected to the server may drop their connections when the server does not respond.
Although I saw this problem with the standard AppleTalk network active, I did not experience any difficulty when connected through an Ethernet network. The lesson is that voice capture requires a dedicated machine so as not to lose information transmitted by the modem.
Promised Futures
According to Cypress
Research, PhonePro responds to the core Apple Events and also the entire Telephony Suite, although the company provides no documentation on the Telephony Apple Events. Cypress Research says it intends to provide further support for the Database Suite of Apple Events, as well as communications with other applications through Apple Events, in a soon-to-be-released upgrade.
By the time you read this, Cypress Research should also have released Voice Messenger, a stand-alone voice-messaging system, and Fax Messenger, a stand-alone fax callback system that integrates with Cypress Research's multiuser fax send/receive server, FaxPro II. FaxPro II also integrates with PhonePro.
Previous releases of PhonePro have required special Cypress-provided hardware to connect a Mac to the phone line. The latest release can run with an off-the-shelf Supra V.32bis fax modem equipped with the latest voice upgrade ROM. The Supra proved to be a reliable voice-processing modem, even though I've had numerous problems mak
ing reliable high-speed data connections on my phone lines. According to Cypress Research, Supra will offer a $99 stand-alone version of PhonePro with its $49 ROM upgrade. This is a single-user, run-time-only version of PhonePro that will take voice-mail messages for you.
Cypress Research sells the software-only version of PhonePro for $349, which includes the latest voice-feature ROM upgrade for Supra V.32bis fax modems. FaxPro II retails for $550.
If all you need is a simple phone-answering function, it doesn't make sense to replace a $150 answering machine with a $2000 Mac running PhonePro. However, there are thousands of legitimate and potentially profitable uses for PhonePro. Logging incoming calls and information requests, providing immediate fax feedback, and constructing a custom telemarketing workstation are just a few.
PhonePro has changed the way I view my telephone lines, and I've happily adopted it as a tool to make my company run smoother and more profitably.
Th
e Facts
PhonePro................$349
Cypress Research Corp.
240 East Caribbean Dr.
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
(408) 752-2700
fax: (408) 752-2735
Illustration: A moderately complex PhonePro script overflows a 21-inch monitor's display. All the available program icons fit into seven tool palettes. This sample reads a series of names and phone numbers from a database, calls each person in turn, presents a series of luncheon options, and then places each order in a text file along with the name of the person who ordered it.
Raymond GA Cote, a BYTE consulting editor, is vice president of product development at Appropriate Solutions, Inc. (Peterborough, NH). He can be reached on the Internet at
rgacote@world.std.com
or on BIX as "rgacote."
Desktop Telephony
