FacetPhone Takes Voice Mail to New Level
New Email Methodology Introduced for Group Distribution Lists
March 31, 2004
FacetCorp (Plano, TX, USA), a leading provider of IP-PBX telephone systems, announced
significant enhancements to the FacetPhone voice mail system. With the release of
version 2.2, FacetPhone lets telephone system users manage voice mail in the same
way they handle their email. FacetPhone now includes voice mail distribution lists
and the ability to forward and reply to an individual or group.
For many years, people have enjoyed the ease of sending email to a group list of
recipients, as well as the ability to reply to the entire group. FacetCorp has
taken this email paradigm and moved it to the voice mail system on their
state-of-the-art IP-PBX phone system. Now it is easy to set up voice mail
group distribution lists. The administrator can set up group distribution
lists that are available for use by any member of that group. And individuals
can set up their own distribution lists available only to them. The distribution
lists can be created via the FacetPhone graphical user interface on the PC, or it
can simply be done with the Telephone User Interface (TUI - the push buttons on
the phone!). Once a distribution list has been created, users can send group
messages by going into their voice mail management from the telephone (either
from their normal extension or from any phone anywhere) and simply recording
and sending their message. When a user receives a voice mail message sent to
a group, they can send a reply voice mail either to the sender or to the entire
group of recipients. Likewise, they can forward the voice mail (with an optional
prefix message) on to a specific user or group of users.
Prior to FacetCorp creating this voice mail distribution list capability,
companies were forced to use email for most group communications. But, some
remote and/or traveling employees do not have immediate access to email, which
makes communicating with them especially challenging. Now, voice mail is on
the same footing as email and users can decide which medium is best suited for
a particular message. Martha Gregory & Associates (MGA) headquartered in Louisville,
Kentucky has been a beta test
site for the new FacetPhone voice mail distribution lists. “At MGA, we have
over 50 dietitian and nutrition expert employees who work in a mobile environment
where they travel from hospitals, to doctors’ offices and to nursing homes,” said
Joe Venezia, Vice President of MGA, Inc. “It is critical that we be able to
verbally communicate with them in an efficient manner and with a consistent
message. It is also important for them to be able to easily communicate with
corporate employees and other field associates. The FacetPhone voice mail
distribution list feature has been a fantastic solution for our company.”
Even before FacetPhone added the voice mail distribution lists, it already had
one of the best voice mail systems on the market. Often referred to as visual
voice mail, FacetPhone lets the user “see” all of their voice mail messages on
their computer. So a user does not have to listen to all the voice mails in
sequence just to get to an important one on the list. They just click on the
one they want to listen to first. Once they listen to a message, they can take
a few seconds and type in a short note to themselves about that VM message for
their future reference. Then they will never need to listen to the same message
again. And of course the ability to forward voice mail messages as email WAV
file attachments is a heavily used feature. Also new in version 2.2 is a more
intuitive interface for voice mail navigation with the TUI. Now from the
telephone while listening to voice mail, the user can press 4 to repeat or go
back, 5 to reverse the order of the messages, or 6 to skip and go to the next
message. By using the keys in a logical way … left is back, middle is reverse
and right is forward … the user quickly becomes more productive when they begin
using FacetPhone.
There is no charge for existing FacetPhone customers to upgrade to Version 2.2. New customers should
contact FacetCorp for pricing, delivery and other information. 1.877.FacetGo (1.877.322.3846) or
info@facetcorp.com.
www.facetcorp.com
FacetPhone Feature Summary
- Telephone User Interface (TUI):
- The FacetPhone system uses standard analog telephones of the customer's choosing. From the telephone
instrument, users may dial, answer, put calls on hold, transfer calls, park calls, pickup parked calls,
conference call, page and manage their voice mail.
- Graphical User Interface (GUI):
- The FacetPhone GUI provides a useful and powerful desktop PC interface into the phone system.
Presence and availability management, graphical call control, instant messaging, visual voice
mail management, conference calls, call recording and graphical administration are all provided
through this interface. However, FacetPhone is designed for people to use a standard telephone
for normal voice communications. The FacetPhone GUI interface is available for any desktop device
supporting Java.
- Presence & Availability Management (PAM):
- Using the graphical user interface on the PC, FacetPhone provides an instantly informative display
detailing which employees are available, on the phone, busy, at lunch, out of town, etc. FacetPhone's
PAM functionality is available not only to operators but to all users as well. Operators and users may
"see" the availability status of people within a department, the entire company, or any other group the
administrator allows. Operators (and optionally users) may visually monitor phone lines and extensions.
And with Roaming Extensions users may login to FacetPhone from any extension or location, including a
branch office or home office. FacetPhone automatically routes calls for a user to the proper telephone,
and the PAM display reflects the user's current physical location. With Call Forwarding, users may
have their calls automatically forwarded to any phone number, and again the PAM display will reflect
this status for their phone.
- Voice Mail & Unified Messaging:
- FacetPhone supports all the standard voice mail features through the telephone.
But through the graphical user interface, voice mail becomes particularly useful and easy to manage. When the user receives
a voice mail message, the FacetPhone GUI gives an immediate indicator on the user's PC screen.
- Security: FacetPhone VM security is provided through a user Personal
Identification Number (PIN).
- Voice Mail Phone Light: FacetPhone automatically manages the voice mail waiting indicator
light on telephones that have this feature.
- Multiple Greetings: The user may define multiple voice mail greetings for different situations
depending on their user status.
- Graphical User Interface to VM: The user interface allows users to visually sort and manage
their voice mail messages.
Each voice mail message has the callerID information, date and time of the message, text notations associated with
the message, and the message duration.
- Add Text / Comments: Users may add text comments to any voice mail message as a short visual
description of the message content.
- Playback: Voice mail messages may be played on the telephone or the PC speakers.
- Voice Mail Distribution Lists: Much like email distribution lists, voice mail lists can be created for
the entire company or by individuals for their own use. Once the distribution list is created, users can send group
messages by going into their voice mail management and simply recording and sending the message. When a user
receives a voice mail message sent to a group, they can send a reply voice mail either to the sender or to the
entire group of recipients. Likewise, they can forward the voice mail (with an optional prefix message) on to a
specific user or a group of users.
- Voice Mail Forwarding To Email: Users may choose to have their voice mail forwarded to their
email account as an audio attachment. Voice mail may be forwarded to email on an ad-hoc or continuous basis,
giving the user an easy-to-manage unified messaging system.
- Voice Mail Notification via Email: Users may opt to have a special notification only email (without
the actual audio attachment) sent to them whenever a new voice mail is received. This will give them an instant
alert via email, cell phone or pager with the callerID information.
- Mouse Click Return Call: Users may place a return call to the sender of the message with a single mouse
click.
- Informational Only Mailbox: Mailboxes may be defined to provide informational messages without
recording any voice mail. This can be useful as an end point for the auto attendant routing to a group mailbox.
- TUI Access: The FacetPhone VM system is completely available to users from
a standard telephone. Users may access this system locally or remotely. When dialing out from
their extension, a stutter dial tone indicates new voice mail messages have been received.
- Automated Attendant:
- Utilizing FacetPhone's powerful and flexible Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system,
the auto attendant feature is available for use by both the main reception lines and departmental
groups. Auto attendant is also supported at the user/extension level through the
voice mail system. All greeting prompts are completely customizable by the
company and group. Some of the auto attendant features are:
- Reception: FacetPhone is designed to be used with or without a receptionist
answering the inbound phone calls. The auto attendant for the main reception lines can be turned on
or off as needed. It can be on during normal business hours and provide automated routing of all calls.
Or, it can be activated only for after hours and holidays. It can also be used as a backup to the receptionist
where it is activated only after a predetermined number of rings.
- Group: At the group or department level, the FacetPhone auto attendant can be on
all of the time, or activated for non-business hours, departmental meetings, lunch hours, etc.
- Dial by Name: The FacetPhone auto attendant allows in-bound callers to route
their call to the appropriate person without knowing their extension. This feature allows for either first
or last name directory look up.
- Dial by Extension: In-bound callers may quickly route their call to the appropriate person
if they know the correct extension number.
- Dial by Group: FacetPhone will allow in-bound callers to route their call
directly to the auto attendant of a group or department.
- Voice Mail: Of course, callers may be routed directly to a user's voice mail,
or voice mail management.
- Informational: The FacetPhone auto attendant can also be used to play specific
informational messages (without allowing for a voice mail to be recorded) based on telephone menu prompts.
- Automatic Call Distribution (ACD):
- The FacetPhone ACD provides for automatic call routing to the next available agent in a group
or department. It includes call queue management when all agents are busy, "sold on hold," and caller opt-out of
queue option.
- CallerID* Support:
- FacetPhone provides complete support for callerID. The company name (if available) and
phone number of the calling party is provided to the user in multiple ways, depending upon individual preferences.
- Telephone Instrument: If the telephone instrument supports callerID, the information will be displayed
on the telephone.
- FacetPhone GUI: For calls from the outside, the operator or user gets a small
FacetPhone screen pop on their PC with the caller's company name and phone number. For calls
from another inside extension, the user will get a similar screen pop on their PC with the
caller's name and extension.
- Voice Mail: Any voice mail messages received will retain the associated callerID information.
- Windows Applications: Users may optionally configure FacetPhone to provide screen
pops through their Windows applications such as Outlook, Goldmine and any TAPI enabled application such
as Act!. With these applications, FacetPhone provides the callerID information and they
automatically pull up a matching record in their database if one exists.
- UNIX Applications: Linux / UNIX based applications may take advantage of the FacetPhone
UTAPI protocol to query FacetPhone as the call is coming in. In real time,
FacetPhone will send any callerID data to the application which can then screen pop the
corresponding database record. To take advantage of this feature some minor changes would need to be made to
the Linux / UNIX application.
* The callerID service must be purchased separately from the customer's local phone service
suppler.
- Computer Telephony Integration (CTI):
- Computer Telephony Integration is the ability of the phone system to interact with the company or employee
computer system(s). An IP-based phone system is particularly well suited for CTI. FacetPhone
uses CTI to communicate with Windows, Linux and UNIX applications.
- CTI Windows Applications: FacetPhone supports Computer Telephony
Integration (CTI) with Windows applications through Microsoft’s Telephone Application Programming Interface (TAPI).
TAPI provides a standard way for Windows applications to interact with a telephone system. Users can dial
from their TAPI enabled application (such as Act!) and also perform “screen pops” which automatically brings
up customer information based on the callerID data provided by the phone system.
In addition, FacetPhone supports the proprietary telephone interfaces
provided by the popular Outlook and Goldmine applications.
- CTI UNIX Applications: FacetPhone supports Computer Telephony
Integration (CTI) with UNIX applications through a new protocol developed by FacetCorp. This
is called UTAPI, for UNIX Telephone Application Programming Interface. UTAPI allows publishers of UNIX
applications to easily modify their code to allow telephone dialing and callerID customer lookup (see
screen shot above of sample callerID "screen pop" implementation). Want to learn
more about UTAPI?
- FacetWin Interface:
- FacetWin has completely integrated support for FacetPhone so that FacetPhone customers
who are also using the FacetWin terminal emulator will be able to dial out from
FacetWin without making any changes to their Linux / UNIX application. The user simply highlights
the number on the screen they wish to dial, and then right clicks the mouse for the dial option. Or, the
user may quickly predefine fixed fields on the screen for one click dialing without the need for highlighting a
phone number.
- Enterprise Instant Messaging (EIM):
- Instant messaging, or text chat, can be conducted between two or more users logged into FacetPhone.
This feature is particularly handy for those quick co-worker communications where someone doesn't want to intrude with
a phone call or wait for an email response. It is also very useful for short, quick communications while you are
on the phone. FacetPhone EIM excludes all parties that are not on the corporate network resulting
in a more secure, productive work environment.
- Branch Office & Telecommuters:
- FacetPhone fully integrates users that are in branch offices or are telecommuters via the Internet.
Remote locations can become simple telephone extensions, so users may dial inside extensions or outside numbers just as
they would from their central corporate location. They get complete access to the FacetPhone GUI and
TUI interfaces. Operators and other users on FacetPhone can see their remote status through the presence
management screen.
- Administrative Controls:
- FacetPhone is designed to be completely managed and administered by the customer.
Through the FacetPhone GUI, the user may control their: user location/work status, voice mail greeting
settings, and unified messaging directives. The manager may control: users, groups, lines, stations, and gateways.
About FacetCorp:
FacetCorp is a privately held company located in Plano, Texas, USA. FacetCorp develops business
communications and networking solutions with an emphasis on premier customer service. FacetCorp's
products include FacetPhone, FacetWin, FacetWin DT, and FacetTerm. FacetPhone is a complete business
communications system for small to medium sized businesses. FacetWin is the all-in-one Windows to
UNIX/Linux software connectivity product. FacetWin DT is a low cost terminal emulator for serial
connections. And, FacetTerm provides multiple sessions for character-based UNIX or Linux applications.
FacetCorp can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.facetcorp.com.
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FacetWin and FacetTerm are registered trademarks of FacetCorp. FacetPhone and UTAPI
are trademarks of FacetCorp. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are
property of their respective owners.
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