AVT CallXpress Unifies Messaging
April 19, 1999
By Dan Backman
My office voicemail greeting says, "You can leave a voicemail message, but if you'd like to reach me faster, send an e-mail." I'm e-mail-centric, but others inside and outside my organization are telephone-bound--they use voicemail because they can access it from any telephone. In contrast, few people have wireless e-mail, and airline clubs still make money by providing some of the precious few dial-up lines in airports. Throw in those who rely on faxes, and the business case for unifying the disparate worlds of voicemail, e-mail and fax becomes imperative: Invest in increasing productivity and access to all forms of electronic messaging.
AVT's CallXpress Enterprise bridges the gaps between voice and electronic messaging by tying voice processing and PBX integration into a standard e-mail infrastructure. Designed to support Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes environments, as well as integrate legacy systems, such as Microsoft Mail or Lotus cc:Mail, CallXpress offers many levels of integration between your existing voicemail services and e-mail inboxes.
To the desktop user, CallXpress presents an e-mail inbox where voicemail and fax messages appear alongside regular e-mail with icons to differentiate the type of message. To listen to a voicemail, just open a message and click "play." Another benefit to unified messaging for phone-bound road warriors in your organization is its text-to-speech engine, which lets them listen to and manage their e-mail messages or route incoming faxes to a local number.
Although the technology to support unified messaging is hardly new, successfully integrating enterprise messaging and voice services is nonetheless challenging. It means linking fundamentally different areas of expertise in most organizations; IT departments traditionally handle e-mail, while telecom or outsourced groups take on PBX operations. Effective unified messaging requires not only a physical connection between the PBX and the enterprise network, but also integration with your PBX's signaling protocols.
I conducted exclusive tests of a beta version of CallXpress 5.2 at AVT's corporate lab in Kirkland, Wash., and was impressed by the product's feature sets and flexible deployment. In addition to an integrated inbox, text-to-speech engine and add-on fax support, AVT offers support for many major PBX switch types. Although its $35,000 base price is steep for a messaging system, CallXpress is a sound replacement for existing voicemail systems--with the added benefit of e-mail integration.
Communication at Your Fingertips On the back end, AVT's CallXpress server runs on a Windows NT Server and uses a combination of hardware products to interface with the PBX and analog voice channels. In AVT's test environment, CallXpress used a four-channel Dialogic Corp. card for voice support, and integrated with AVT's corporate PBX in analog mode. In this scenario, CallXpress didn't exhibit complete control of some features, such as the message-waiting indicator on the telephone handset and support for caller ID (which is used to label incoming voice and fax messages, if available). However, in another AVT test environment (one that natively integrated with a Northern Telecom Meridian 1 switch), the vendor offered a proprietary interface board that emulated a digital PBX telephone to communicate with the switch, while splitting off audio traffic to the Dialogic boards.
By integrating with the PBX, AVT claims that CallXpress fully emulates a standard voicemail system, including the ability to control the message-waiting indicator and provide support for standard telephone access to the user's voice inbox. CallXpress also can use a telephone in conjunction with an e-mail client. For instance, you can send a voicemail through the e-mail client, but use the telephone to record the voice message (you also have the option of using your PC's microphone and speakers).
In the lab, I sent a voice message, typed in the user ID (which matched a voicemail number found in CallXpress' user directory), and the PBX rang the local phone line. When I picked up the receiver, the telephone beeped and I recorded the voicemail message.
On the e-mail front, CallXpress operates either in an integrated (client-based) mode, in which voicemail is stored on the CallXpress server and unified at the client level via an additional Microsoft Outlook service provider, or a unified (server-based) mode, in which voice mail is stored directly on the mail server's data store.
According to AVT, organizations may decide between client- or server-based unified messaging; each mode has its advantages. For instance, the integrated mode stores voice messages on the CallXpress server, where they are accessible via telephone in the event of an e-mail connectivity problem.
Like most large enterprise applications, CallXpress provides multiple options. For fax support, the product natively integrates with AVT's RightFAX enterprise fax server. (This requires the addition of Brooktrout Technology fax boards.) Likewise, CallXpress provides native support for most major PBX types--implemented through AVT's proprietary interface boards--as well as standard analog support.
For interoperability with other voice-messaging systems, AVT also offers CallXpress NetConnect, a separate product that supports the VPIM (Voice Profile for Internet Mail) standard for voice-message interchange (via SMTP/MIME).
Send your comments on this article to Dan Backman at dbackman@nwc.com.
|
Here
Here
REPORTS
ANALYTICS
Follow 
