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The evolution and convergence of once disparate forms of communication has
dramatically changed people’s lives within the past decade. The
boundaries of traditional communications have often been tethered by newer
technologies, allowing us to roam freely about the planet without the
worry of missing an important conversation. Technology’s allowance of
ubiquitous communication can just as easily enable a PDA or cell phone (or
hybrid) to ring at your child’s baseball game, extending the office to
just about anywhere a communications device can be carried. This premise
seems to be the epitome of one of the hottest buzzwords in our industry
today — mobility.
Mobility is the basis for the alexis Enhanced Service Platform (ESP).
Designed as a scalable, “revenue-generating” business solution, ESP
allows communications to reach subscribers via multiple mediums, and
allows subscribers to access communications services and data from their
unified inbox. alexis ESP enables application service providers (ASPs) and
Internet service providers (ISPs) to offer hosted unified communications
features along with the help of the alexis personal assistant. alexis
recognizes voice commands as well as touch-tones.
TMC Labs acquired an account from the Globally
In Touch hosted service to test drive its end user functionality.
Globally In Touch is the name given to alexis’ hosted ESP product
featuring unified communication. Along with a user name and password to
access our account, we were also given a direct dial phone and fax number
with a local area code and an e-mail address. We put alexis ESP to the
test utilizing its speech recognition capability, follow me forwarding,
conference calling, and many more of its unified communication features.
DOCUMENTATION
Documentation was written for the Globally In Touch product. As previously
mentioned, this service is primarily a demo for alexis, as they host it
themselves. However, it impresses us that alexis took the time to create
such a complete user’s guide. It did assist in the preparation of our
review, as the prepared material was well organized, but more importantly
very concise and clear. We thought it helped define a well thought out
product.
FEATURES
The features depend on the services purchased by a company or carrier.
Since the Globally In Touch account assigned to us was clad with the
entire suite of unified communications features, that’s what we’ll be
reporting on here. If you haven’t gotten a sense of the product yet, or
are unfamiliar with alexis and its product line, here’s a brief
overview. alexis produces a variety of products to phone-enable a company’s
e-mail server, or provide an entire virtual PBX and unified communications
system. alexis ESP is a carrier-grade solution that allows service
providers to offer alexis features and functions to a potentially
unlimited number of subscribers, according to alexis. Fundamentally
speaking, a carrier employing the alexis ESP solution provides subscribers
with the service of accessing their communications via the telephone or
using a Web-based interface. The Microsoft and Nuance text-to-speech (TTS)
and speech recognition technologies employed by alexis help subscribers to
access voice, e-mail, and fax messages, reply to e-mail, and retrieve
messages and phone numbers.
Other features include:
- Use of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).
- E-mail account with Microsoft Web access functionality.
- Unified inbox including fax capability and voice mail.
- Call control including conferencing, transfers, park, do not
disturb, and more.
- Follow-me forwarding.
- Remote message notification via wireless devices.
- Voice-activated speed dial.
OPERATIONAL TESTING
TMC Labs always enjoys testing unified messaging products. Often it
becomes a case of subscribing to a company’s service or hardware for a
week or so, and attempting to use it in lieu of our usual methods whenever
possible. alexis is no exception, especially with such an intriguing
product. alexis has blended a unique set of features into their product,
creating a very useful real-world solution for the way people live their
lives today.
As we have mentioned, our Globally In Touch account supplied us with
user name and password information along with one number access for
telephone and fax calls, and an e-mail address. We all know the principle
of unified communication — one number, one way to stay connected.
Actually, our first instinct was to log onto the Globally In Touch Web
site and poke around a bit. The GUI is very intuitive, and we couldn’t
help but to do some configuring at first glance.
Web Access
Figure 2 is a screen capture of the inbox. As you can see from the icons,
voice mail is incorporated directly into the “inbox” interface. The
voice messages are transcribed as media files, which are easily played
using stock accessories from any recent Windows OS. E-mail is standard,
and works the same as any Outlook inbox except that it is accessed via the
Web. As such, you’ve got to refresh or click the Check For New Messages
icon on the toolbar to see new e-mail right away.
Figure 2: Unified
Communications inbox.
The Folders and Shortcut buttons also supply the user with more Outlook
standard fare including Calendar, Options, and Contacts. Contacts, alexis
recommends, should be among the first things to be configured and entered
by a new user. Since they cannot be added via the phone interface, Web
access is the only way to enter new Contact information.
We liked placing calls from the Web interface. Instead of using a
headset and mic while sitting in front of your computer’s monitor, you’ll
need a phone (either cell or PSTN, it doesn’t matter). Here’s how it
works: When logging onto the service the interface provides the user name
and password fields, along with a field for Remote Number. Simply add the
phone number that you’d like to be contacted at when you sign on. When
dialing via the GUI, alexis calls the phone number you provided at log on,
and when you pick up the handset alexis dials the number you’re
attempting to reach.
Conference calls were equally as simple to administer. In fact, during
our Web demo with an alexis representative we were able to “conference
in” an additional alexis employee by entering their number in the dial
string field and clicking on the “Conference” icon. The rest of the
Web access call control works in much the same way when transferring,
putting a call on hold, or ending a call. alexis says a single conference
call can support up to 10 people.
Phone Access
A large part of the alexis appeal stems from the ability to “read”
e-mail, compose e-mail, and utilize Outlook contact information via the
telephone. An additional facet to its appeal is the true one number
functionality. We’ve encountered other CASPs that are set up much
differently. One number for accessing your account, another number as your
principle contact, and long numeric passwords make for lots and lots of
digits to remember.
Phone access provides subscribers with quite a few options. We found
alexis to react very well to all of the spoken commands. The commands take
a little getting used to at first if you’re not used to dictating e-mail
or using spoken commands to search your inbox for specific types of
messages, but we got the hang of it in short order. The main menu also
allows users to quickly scan messages, compose messages, find phone
numbers and addresses. Speed dial programming allows users to access their
most used contact information by recognizing the names of people you’ve
added to your Speed Dial folder. Saying “place call” and then choosing
a name in the speed dial folder will get you connected, hands free. alexis
additionally saw fit to include pocketsize cards to assist you, should you
forget the correct way to prompt the menu. Otherwise, the Help menu can be
accessed by saying, “Help” after any prompt. Subscribers can also make
changes to their account via the phone such as changing passwords,
greetings, types of notifications, and call forwarding options.
Follow Me/Find Me
Follow Me/Find Me is also a very compelling feature. alexis allows you
to activate this feature via the phone, provided the required information
is already entered into your account using the GUI. As with the standard
follow me type of feature, alexis allows a subscriber to configure this
feature so that a call placed to their account will ring through to
several, or many predetermined locations.
alexis does several things that we don’t see too often with their
Follow Me/Find Me feature. First and foremost, if someone should happen to
pick up the phone (at home for example) while alexis is dialing through
the Find Me phone tree attempting to locate the subscriber, it doesn’t
necessarily interrupt the thread of communication. Instead, alexis offers
several options when the call is picked up: “Press one to take the call,
or press two to send to voice mail.” This allows anyone who has
inadvertently picked up a Follow Me call to simply hang up, allowing
alexis to continue on by dialing the next number in the phone tree.
Actually, there’s one more direction in the aforementioned prompt, “To
repeat the caller’s name again, press nine.”
This brings us to the second portion of the Follow Me feature that we
really liked, and additionally, found most useful. alexis announces the
name of the caller before the call is connected. Having the option of
knowing the caller’s identity is a definite plus.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
Generally speaking, we didn’t find too much that could be done
differently at the time of testing. Speech recognition and TTS both worked
wonderfully. VoIP versus PSTN? We couldn’t tell the difference. The
small luxuries such as caller announce and speed dial via voice help
define a well-thought out system.
However, as usual TMC Labs did note several things we theoretically
would have done a little differently. As dynamic as the existing phone
access is to a subscriber’s account, there are limitations. It is
possible to access contact information over the phone such as numbers and
addresses, however, adding a new contact via the phone doesn’t seem to
be an option. It could prove to be a powerful and fast resolution to
adding important names and numbers while on the road, or away from a
computer. Similarly, while a user is able to change account information
via the phone and dial through alexis to place calls, it doesn’t appear
that they’ll be able to use the conferencing feature unless a subscriber
is parked in front of a computer terminal with Web access.
CONCLUSION
Aside from our fairly petty complaints, we liked the product and its
service. A user-friendly GUI, simple call control and intuitive
administration appeared to demonstrate a well-built solution. As long as
the speech commands were adhered to, everything seemed to work quite well
via phone. E-mail and the unified messaging inbox also seemed to work
exceptionally well while we were testing. Follow Me forwarding and Remote
Message notification were also high performers.
Overall we were impressed with the product. alexis says that its
product, ESP, is a totally scalable solution that unifies e-mail, voice
mail, fax, and telephone creating one central point of communication
accessible at any time, from anywhere to subscribers. alexis says that
their technology is simple, “talk and listen” as they put it. In our
experience there’s slightly more to it than that, it appears to TMC Labs
that alexis has developed a powerful product while managing to keep its
design intuitive and user-friendly.
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