VSR's SUPER COVOICE CALL CONTROLLER

Make no mistake, Voice Systems Research's (VSR - Rocklin, CA - 916-624-6300) COVoice is not simply a voicemail / auto-attendant system. Built with special phone-emulation technology, it's a true CT call controller for Mitel PBXs. In other words, it makes the PBX a slave to the computer telephony PC processor, instead of the other way around.

It thus wins for PBX dominatrix "Product of the Year."

Think near complete control over how your calls are handled. Unlike Mitel, VSR's computer doesn't put constraints on you. Just tell it how you want it to move your calling customers around. It's called computer telephony - TAPI or TSAPI or CSTA or SERSIT or any other call-control acronym you can think of .not required.

The quick story:

A little more than a year ago, Pika Technologies released an interface card for Mitel PBXs called the "TRANS-4M" (literally "transformer for Mitel"). This card provides a virtual Mitel SuperSet 4 phone at each of its 4 ports.

VSR combined the card with Rhetorex Quartet or 432 voice cards, creating the integration between the PBX and the PC that their auto-attendant / voice-mail application runs on. VSR used its knowledge of the internal working of the Mitel PBX to add functions normally available on a SuperSet 4 phone, but not previously available from an auto attendant. This includes:

  • · Scheduling switching between day and night operation of your PBX and / or dialing in from the outside to change it;
  • · Scheduling or changing remotely the forwarding parameters of some or all of your phones; for example, to set your phone to forward to your voice mail without the 786 rings that everyone else seems to have;
  • · Turning ACD groups on and off remotely or by the clock or from the outside (so callers aren't still directed to ACDs after hours if an agent forgot to log out);
  • · Enabling selective routing of inbound trunk calls; for example sending a specific trunk directly to different extensions at different times of the day or the week.
  • · Enabling re-routing of calls from any extension to a number of different destinations (such as extensions, menus, mailboxes or outside numbers) based on the different conditions under which they were received; for example, forwarded always or on a busy or on a now answer.
  • The TRANS-4M card also provides a faster (20% to 30% by our estimation) and cleaner response by COVoice to inbound calls and to disconnects. Faster response translates into higher average port availability for the same number of ports. This means COVoice can handle a higher inbound call volume than other systems with the same number of trunks.

    • Overall, VSR takes a schedule-oriented approach to its system architecture, instead of the more usual mailbox-oriented approach everyone else uses. Calls go first through a "schedule processor" called Channel Control, which reads - and "understands" - all the proprietary Mitel signal information in the call. It checks its scheduling for any related conditions and only then processes the call. You can have any number of possible schedules.

    We could go on and on about the power of COVoice. We know first hand of its major strengths. We use it here ourselves to gain some power over our rather unwieldy Mitel switch. For more details, read Ron's testdrive in the August issue of Computer Telephony, page 18.

    COVoice is simply the best auto attendant - excuse us, CT call controller - for Mitel PBXs.

    By Ed, Harry, Rick, Stuart, & Zippy
    Computer Telephony, December 1996