Using Encore with your phone system (TAPI)
Encore now has the facility to interact with phone systems. In order to make use of this you will need one of the following (or something with equivalent functionality):
- A server and a TAPI capable phone switch.
- A voice capable modem or telephony card attached or built into your computer attached to a phone line. This will require a headset or speaker microphone combination attached to the unit. You may require a TSP (see below) or you may be able to use the Unimodem 5 TSP provided by Microsoft.
- A TAPI compliant ‘soft phone’ where the ‘phone call’ is handled via the internet or using a router/switch. Again, this requires headphones etc on the machine in use.
TAPI (Telephony Application Programming Interface) is a Microsoft/Intel interface which allows computer programs to ‘talk’ to telephone systems. You will need your operating system to support TAPI (preferably TAPI 3.1) and the device needs to be fully TAPI compliant otherwise some features may not work correctly. Setting up your phone system to use TAPI is a complex task and we would recommend using the services of someone with the appropriate expertise. In carrying out the setup, they should be aware of the following:
Considering only the first of the above options, i.e. a server and TAPI phone switch, you will also require:
- A link between your computer network and the TAPI switch (this may be a connection to the network, or a serial or USB cable).
- A TSP (Telephony Service Provider - basically, a driver that links your phone system to the computer system) which works with your particular phone system. This will need to be correctly installed - either on the domain server that your workstations are attached to, or on a domain that is in a two way trust relationship with that domain. The TSP may come with its own specific installation instructions and some general instructions are also given below.
- The client set up to do remote TAPI - use the Run command option on each client (note that Terminal Server is a separate client) and type tcmsetup /c server1 server2 where server1 & server2 are the names of the domain servers you have set up as TAPI servers. This may not work if your users do not have Domain Administrator rights – in that case you will first need to run tapimgmt on the server which allows you to associate specific phone lines with their users. According to Microsoft, tcmsetup should work on any client from Win95 onwards. However we have only been able to ‘see’ phone lines on Win2000, Win XP and under Terminal Server. We have not been able to get a Windows Millennium machine to ‘see’ phone lines even though the user has Domain Administrator rights. This issue is currently unresolved – it is possible that Windows versions earlier than 2000 cannot be readily configured for TAPI.
Additional
information
If you do have problems, here is a link to a page for a freeware TAPI driver browser (Estos Tapicaps) that includes a trace option to determine what is happening with a TAPI line: http://www.estos.com/dl/index.htm
For further information on setting up a Windows 2000 telephony server (believed to be also applicable to Windows 2003), see: http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/advanced/help/default.asp?url=/windows2000/en/advanced/help/sag_TAPIchecklist_pstnserver.htm
Installing a TSP
In order to install any TSP on a server you will, as a minimum, need to do the following:
connect the server and the phone system; disable the telephony service; restart the server; install the driver; change the telephony service back to whatever start option it was originally, and finally restart the server.
If this has worked, the telephony management console (run tapimgmt.msc to see this) will show a number of telephone lines associated with the TSP. If you are doing this on a workstation, go to the Control panel, Phone and Modem options, advanced tab. As mentioned earlier, please remember that you will need to associate users to TAPI lines in the telephony management console in order for the users to ‘see’ the lines (users with domain administrator privileges should see all the lines without this setup).
Setup within Encore
The telephony setup screen will enable you to associate your current Windows machine name + Windows log in user name with a specific TAPI line (it was necessary for us to use this combination as all Terminal Server clients have the same machine name).
You will also need to set phone options on individual workstations, both in Windows and in Encore. You can do all of this from within Encore via the Setup/Telephony menu option:
Settings to make in this window are:
Do incoming TAPI for this company. When the first user signs on to Encore, a special numbers table (used to recognise incoming callers) is constructed containing contact numbers from any relevant Encore companies. Tick this box to include this company in the numbers table.
Phone line. Select your own line no/extension from the pull-down (note that this is specific to the Windows machine name + Windows log in user name combination, and does not need to be set for each company).
Automatically dial the phone number…. Tick this box if you want the system to dial out as soon as a contact no is selected in Encore, rather than showing the Phone Dialler screen (see later) and then requiring you to press Start call.
Do incoming TAPI for this station. Tick this box if you want incoming caller information to be displayed. For this to work, Do incoming TAPI for this company (described above) must also be ticked.
Reset TAPI. This button is used to restart the Windows TAPI process should any problems occur.
Windows phone options. This button shortcuts you to the Windows phone setup screen (which can also be reached via the Control panel/Phone and modem options icon):
In this screen, your workstation/phone line is set as a location. If this is a first time setup, then you can use the New button, otherwise use the Edit button to change location details on the following screen:
Fill in your country and area code here, as well as any special digits you require to get an outside line (this is normally 9 for a UK phone system).
Using Encore to dial a phone number
On the Encore contacts screen, numbers classified as the type Telephone no. or Mobile no. will have a button with a telephone icon next to them in the Action column of the contact grid.
Clicking on this button launches the following Phone Dialler screen and enables you to dial the phone call.
This screen will show you the number selected, as well as the number to be dialled (formatted according to your dialling rules). Click on the Start call button to initiate the call or the End call button to end it. If you need to edit the number first, you can type directly into the Number field. If you do not have your dialling rules set up or the formatting cannot correctly decipher your number then it will not dial, and you will need to correct the problem. Note that the number to be dialled (as in the example shown above), must have a space in it (should be after the dialling code), otherwise Windows will not apply its dialling rules correctly (e.g. may omit the outside line digit).
As mentioned above, if the Automatically dial the phone number…. option is activated in the Setup Telephony screen , then you will not need to click on the Start call button.
Incoming Calls
In order for Encore to display incoming call information, your TAPI phone device must be able to decode caller ID information, and your telecom provider must be supplying that information. If that is the case, then Encore will try to identify the caller.
On the Windows toolbar system tray (at the bottom right hand corner of your screen), you should see an icon for the Encore reminder system:
Once incoming call information has been passed to Encore (note that the speed with which this is done can vary quite a lot), a small information bubble appears above this icon containing text such as ‘01234 567890’ is calling. Click on the bubble to search for relevant matches in Encore. If there is only one match, the relevant customer, supplier or prospect record will open automatically. If there are multiple matches, you will get a screen like this, listing the matching records:
Note that the contacts listed can be from obsolete records, or from company files other than the one which is currently open. Click on the required Select button to open the relevant enquiry screen. If this is in another company, you will be automatically switched to that company (unless any Encore screens are open which prevent the current company from being closed).
If there are no matches in Encore, you will see this screen:
Note that you cannot answer the incoming call from within Encore – this still has to be done in the usual way. This option may be added at a later date.
