Just think about how we take so many things for granted in our day to day working life with barely so much as a second thought.

Like checking voicemail on one system, albeit often via the ‘phone on our desk, sending and checking faxes via either an application on the PC or – still commonly – via a dedicated fax machine and then sending emails from Outlook or some other email client. Add telex – still heavily used in shipping and other transport industries – and the chances are that there are four separate messaging systems, five if you include regular post, to navigate around daily.� Wouldn’t it therefore be great if there was one unified messaging system – a single outbox and inbox – for sending and checking all your “messages” whatever form they are in, other than the old stamped envelope variety of course. That’s from the user’s perspective, but for a network manager too there are many huge benefits to unified messaging. The first is from a pure management perspective. Fewer systems mean less support requirements. It also means less training, both for support engineers and users themselves. It simplifies networking requirements too, all of which add up to a lower cost of ownership and a high chance of increased reliability. In practice, then, there are clearly many reasons why unified messaging should be high on any CIO’s list of projects to investigate, so let’s see how it works out in practice.

CallPilot Reviewed

First things first. An important point to clarify is that of the difference between an email server, a mail or message router and a true unified messaging server or system. First, a unified messaging system does not replace something like Microsoft Exchange Server or a Lotus Notes server. On the contrary, it should be designed to work alongside these mail servers and integrate tightly with them. Currently, the majority of Internet email routers are based on "freeware" messaging software with UNIX-variant operating systems running on general-purpose server platforms. Typically these alternative mail router solutions require significant setup time and ongoing administration from highly trained email experts. What is clearly required is something designed specifically for the purpose while being very easy to operate from a users and network managers perspective; an architecture which provides genuine unified messaging. Which is precisely what Nortel has attempted to provide with CallPilot, now heavily revised from the somewhat feature-limited original, in v1.07 format.

CallPilot is a total unified messaging solution, hardware and software. But it is not a “shrink-wrap”, off-the-shelf product. Configurations will vary widely from one customer to another, the important point being that you don’t have to reinvent your network strategy in order to accommodate the system. And because it supports a number of different mail systems it also means that you can have a mix of different mail servers, such as Exchange and Notes, and it is not an issue to CallPilot. The system simply does not impact on the mail servers at all, or dictate the use of one rather than another. In terms of overall impact on the networks, Nortel claims this to be relatively light too and this proved to be the case during testing. To quote some figures, in practice a 30-second message send or download created around 100KB of data traffic, while a directory download used around 20KB per 100 users. Even a fax download was not excessive (around 176KB for a four-page fax). General “management” traffic such as new message notifications are minimal, around 1KB in size.

At the heart of the “product” – effectively an NT-based server engine - is the ability to bring together voicemail, email and faxes into a single entity. Thereafter the possibilities are very wide-ranging, such as the support for a number of different mail/messaging clients and a choice of “mailbox” access methods – tone-dial handset, PC or voice-activated. Currently CallPilot supports the mainstream PC mail clients; namely several variations of MS Outlook and Outlook Express, Novell’s GroupWise (v5.5) and Lotus Notes (v4.5+), as well as Netscape Messenger 4.5+) and Eudora Pro 4.02+ Internet clients and a generic web client. In each case, the feature support is slightly different and is at its most complete with Outlook, though we also tested in with Outlook Express, Notes and GroupWise. With the latter, for example, CallPilot adds voicemail functionality into the standard inbox view. With Notes, it adds an additional view and a CallPilot address book. IMAP and LDAP support is built into the client. IMAP replicates with the Notes mail so it is possible to work offline with the Notes client. From a user perspective, it means that a single messaging client such as MS Outlook can be their sole source of all messages, regardless of their type. It also means they can perform all fax duties from their PC. Faxes and voicemail appear in an inbox as would an email and can be read or listened to over the phone, and replied to just as you would reply to an email. So, as far as the user is concerned, everything is simplified, yet they still have a choice. If they want to use the phone handset to send commands to the CallPilot server they can do so, either locally or remotely, or if they prefer to use the PC they can do so.

For the network manager there are other benefits. A key role for the CallPilot is message management. And there is more to this than providing effectively a single collection and viewpoint for email, voicemail and fax. For example, not only can faxes be forwarded electronically from the PC but can also be given voice annotations. It is also possible to enable fax buffering so the fax “machine” never appears to be busy. Email style distribution lists can also be created for fax distribution.

One of the most interesting features of CallPilot is the optional speech activated messaging, based around speech recognition. This is best thought of as an extra user interface for CallPilot. It enables users to manage CallPilot messages with spoken, natural language commands. CallPilot recognises the command and acts accordingly on the spoken directions. It is therefore designed to be of benefit to users working in hands-free mode, or with pulse-dial handsets. Even with touch-tone phones it means there is no need to remember a touch-tone command set, often a tedious business, if you can use your voice instead. Training requirements are therefore minimal. Importantly the user can� “train” the system to recognise accents and pronunciations via a custom commands set. The commands set is extensive, and any command can be assigned to any digits. Commands include message actions such as play envelope, delete, restore, undelete, reply to sender or all, forward, call the sender and dial another number. Record controls include record and re-record the message, so a message can be changed entirely by speech activation, for example. There are also extensive mailbox navigation commands within the custom command set. Obviously, where speech is concerned, not only do variations on accent from region to region need to be supported but so do different languages. Currently CallPilot voice recognition support includes French, German and Italian languages, as well as three variants of English: US, Irish and, well, English! A Japanese language version is also due for release shortly. For the general voicemail system (welcome messages and similar) a broader range of languages is supported and this is set to become very broad in the future.

There are two further applications available with CallPilot, Application Builder and Reporter. The former is a graphical tool for developing multimedia applications such as “intelligent” call routing systems or personalised voicemail systems, including fax as well as voice. So, for example, if you want to front-end your company with an automated assistant rather than a receptionist, you can create a complete system with Application Builder to front-end the CallPilot. Reporter, on the other hand, provides the back-end information. It enables you to create and print both summarised and detailed reports about the use and functionality of the CallPilot system. Data is downloaded from the server to the administration PC and then used by whatever report you create. For example, this might be a channel usage report, identifying the number of incoming and outgoing calls received and sent during a specified period of time, complete with time spent on hold, for each available channel on the CallPilot.

In general, the ability to use a single mail client for all your messages is a real boon in itself, both from a user and from a management perspective. We would like to see the same, complete level of functionality available on every mail client supported by CallPilot including browser-based access, as is available currently with Outlook and we know this is a planned enhancement for later in the year. Overall, however, CallPilot in its v1.07 incarnation, has developed into a very flexible unified messaging system which is definitely worthy of evaluation.

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