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S N E A K P R E V I E W

Adomo Brings Your E-Mail to Life

March 5, 2003
By Don MacVittie

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What if your remote users could send and receive e-mail over the telephone from anywhere, conducting business without a screen? Adomo makes it possible with its AdomoMCS for Exchange--an e-mail-to-voice gateway for Microsoft Exchange 5.5 and 2000. I tested AdomoMCS in our NWC Inc. labs in Green Bay, Wis., and, despite the product's problems with deciphering foreign accents, I was pleased with its ease of use and efficiency.

AdomoMCS requires Microsoft Exchange as the primary mail-transfer agent. Additionally the majority of users' e-mail must go to addresses listed in Exchange/Active Directory Services. The device works with Exchange and ADS, taking your e-mail users, phone numbers and contacts from the ADS store or Exchange contact lists and making them available via the telephone. This appliance gateway connects to phone lines and accepts voice calls. The product runs an IVR (interactive voice response) system that answers the phone and communicates with users.

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When a user calls the Adomo gateway, he or she is prompted for his or her name and passcode, which can be entered on the telephone keypad or spoken into the phone. After the user is validated to the system, the gateway tells him or her how many new messages are waiting. The user can have the gateway "read" the messages or forward them or the user can respond to them immediately. He or she also can use the IVR interface to create new messages and appointments and to list contact information.

AdomoMCS uses many single-word and short-phrase commands. It dealt well with different accents on the single-word commands but sometimes stumbled on phrases. In particular, my 14-year-old daughter's light Russian accent caused problems. I found that the system consistently misunderstood more than 20 percent of her attempted phrase commands.

To create or forward e-mail, you name the Exchange users you wish to contact, say "no more users," then speak the body of the message. Subject choice is limited, and the body of the message is sent as a Windows .wav file. To create an appointment you list the attendees by the display name in Exchange and again state "no more users." Spoken comments are attached as a .wav file to your invitation. Users can set alerts that will forward a text message to their phones or beepers if the messages are from a certain person or are given a certain priority.

Configuration of AdomoMCS for Exchange can be complex because of its links to Exchange and ADS, but Adomo's online help is good. Users control creating the account on which the gateway relies to access both Exchange and ADS. The good news is that you know what the user name is and the account's rights. The bad news is that you have to configure the user name and rights yourself. The next stumbling block--a requirement that you create the COM+ object needed for phone notifications--will be eliminated in future releases, according to Adomo. Although the company provides excellent instructions on how to accomplish this task, the necessity is unexpected and unwelcome when installing enterprise-class software.

Good

• E-mail-to-voice capabilities for Exchange users
• Should improve on-the-road productivity

Bad

• Limited support for users not in Exchange contact lists
• Voice recognition has trouble with some accents

Vendor Info
AdomoMCS for microsoft exchange, $25,000 for a 12-port server. Adomo, (866) 220-4009, (408) 996-7086. www.adomo.com

To let you send a message to someone not in Exchange, Adomo provides a cumbersome spelling interface for the address. Although the product is sensitive to background noise, Adomo filters it more effectively than many products I've used. After five failures to understand a command, however, the gateway hangs up.

The gateway comes with a variable number of phone ports, but you don't want to pay for more lines than you need. By hanging up on callers that it deems are not going to be understandable, the product keeps the lines free for productive calls.

The gateway responded well during testing, and the advanced features, such as text-message notification, are vital to anyone who needs to prioritize incoming messages.

Don MacVittie is an applied technologist at WPS Resources. Write to him at dmacvittie@nwc.com.

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