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iLink– Fall, 2002
Fall, 2002 Newsletter
Table of Contents
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iMS
Quotable Fall, 2002: "The
business person who resists chaos will find in
time his business will only grow brittle and irrelevant."
— Mel
Zeigler
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If
you are interested in obtaining more details about
any of the products or information contained in iLink,
please contact us. We
are interested in your comments and suggestions
and would like to incorporate them in future issues
of iLink.
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iMessaging
to provide first Voice Kiosk at a Users Group
Conference |
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 The
fall 2002 conference in Denver, Colorado, will be the
first COMMON Expo to provide attendees with voice-based
show information. The attendees will have access to
a "Voice Kiosk" powered by iMessaging Systems,
Inc.'s iVoice™ product.
This Voice Kiosk, also known as the Expo Info Line,
will allow attendees to locate booths and listen to
information about particular vendors and their respective
products prior to canvassing the Expo show floor.
With
the COMMON Expo expected to showcase approximately
100 vendors of IBM AS/400 software, peripherals, services
and utilities, officials expect roughly 3,500 attendees. "From
the vendor perspective, we believe that the primary
challenge regarding the COMMON Expo is awareness of
what solutions, products, services and companies are
available," notes Michelle Downer, iMessaging's Marketing
Coordinator. "While the COMMON Expo Guide & Map provide
some of this information, there is really no easy way
that we have encountered for a COMMON attendee to easily
find out, for example, what companies have fax software
or what companies specialize in EDI. We believe that
a simple and powerful solution to provide this information
is iVoice™ and the Expo Info Line!"
The
concept of the Expo Voice Kiosk is to provide a voice-based
information tool, whereby Expo attendees can simply
pick up a telephone and, through a series of intuitive
commands, be presented with specific information regarding
Expo vendors, their booth locations and their products.
The "Expo Info Line" Kiosk will hold a prominent position
just outside the Expo entrance, so it will be visible
and highly accessible to attendees.
 The
COMMON management team and iMessaging will team up
for this first-ever offering at the upcoming COMMON
show and Expo in Denver, Colorado, beginning Sunday
October 13.
About
the COMMON User's Group
COMMON is the world's largest group of IBM
and IBM-compatible information technology users. The
organization is comprised of 6,500 individual and corporate
members representing more than 23,000 IT professionals
involved with the application of IBM AS/400, Netfinity
and related platforms within a wide variety of business
environments.
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| iVoice™ Efficiency
Delights Viterra Energy Services |
| "I
was very pleased with the speed and efficiency
of the installation. iMessaging came in
on a Sunday and installed the hardware
in about an hour. We then worked with ASI
on some programming issues..., and the
system was up and running. On Tuesday,
we had test calls going into it, and by
Wednesday, it was already servicing customer
inquiries for both locations!"
— Jose
Cintron, Viterra Energy Services
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Viterra
Energy Services (www.viterrausa.com)
needed a reliable and leading-edge Interactive Voice
Response solution to replace an older system. Viterra
began their search and assembled a list of several
voice response vendors found on the Internet and
recommended by business affiliates. "For me, what
really set iMessaging apart from the rest was the
excellent follow-up and follow-through of our sales
representative. Follow-up was always consistent but
not intrusive," states Michelle O'Dea, IT manager
for Viterra's US operations. "In the final review,
we had boiled it down to two products with similar
costs and capabilities. We went with iMessaging because
of the excellent service we received."
Once
the decision was made to go with iMessaging's
iVoice™ solution, the implementation team
jumped into action to execute a very aggressive schedule
that had been established by Viterra management.
Those primarily involved in the implementation project
included Mr. Ronnie Stepp, of Associated Systems,
Inc. (ASI) (www.assocsys.com)
(click here for a brief explanation
of ASI's services), Mr. Jose Cintron, of Viterra's
IT group, and iMessaging's technical team.
 Ronnie
Stepp, VP and Partner of ASI, is the vendor and consultant
supporting Viterra's iSeries 400-based utility billing
software (please see sidebar). To complete the implementation,
the iVoice™ system needed to interface directly
with ASI's EasiBill software, and Mr.
Stepp was commissioned to program the voice application
for Viterra.
Mr.
Stepp summarized his introduction to using the iVoice™ APIs
as follows: "After I reviewed the sample code and
iVoice™ APIs, I expected the programming to
be straightforward and the system to come up quickly.
I was pleasantly surprised to see how easy the system
did install and, of course, much of that was due
to the involvement of iMessaging's technical specialist." Accelerating
Mr. Stepp's learning curve with the system was iVoice™'s
exclusive host-controlled design. The iVoice™ solution
provided an environment where he could leverage his
extensive iSeries 400 and RPG skills and background
without having to be concerned with telephony issues.
Increasing
the complexity of the project was Viterra's desire
to consolidate two voice systems into a single platform.
Viterra maintains two primary IT operations, one
on the east coast in Jacksonville, Florida, and the
other on the west coast in San Diego, California.
Both sites run very similar operations, including
the iSeries 400, ASI's EasiBill software
and call center environments. Collectively, the team
devised a communications architecture utilizing the
iSeries 400's DDM (distributed data management) and
Viterra's VPN. The idea was to have a single iVoice™ platform
to service calls for both locations, with the added
advantage of saving on the initial cost of the system,
implementation and system maintenance.
Jose
Cintron, Viterra's east coast Network Manager acted
as the customer link for the project and notes, "I
was very pleased with the speed and efficiency of
the installation. iMessaging came in on a Sunday
and installed the hardware in about an hour. We then
worked with ASI on some programming issues for about
6-1/2 hours, and the system was up and running. On
Tuesday, we had test calls going into it, and by
Wednesday, it was already servicing customer inquiries
for both locations!"
Viterra's
voice response applications provide account status
information to their client base of tenants from
across the country. "The voice applications we use
today are working very well, and the future offers
unlimited possibilities," noted Mr. Cintron. "We
are already in the process of adding support for
Spanish, and we are considering the possibility of
eventually passing all calls through the iVoice™ system
to collect tenants' account numbers up front, thereby
assisting our customer service reps in handling the
calls."
Ronnie
Stepp, of ASI, concisely summed up the iVoice™ implementation
advantages in four points:
- "With
the system using TCP/IP and batch jobs, it properly
utilizes the iSeries resources, resulting in very
low overhead.
- There
exists a broad application interface and design
potential with applications such as outage reporting,
interface to a credit card clearing-house, service
cut-ons and -offs and many others.
- iVoice™ came
with great sample source code and ease of modification,
as well as great backup documentation. We basically
took the sample code, tweaked it for our use and
were on our way.
- Most
importantly, the assistance with setup, both on-site
and through telephone support for the AS/400 and
telephony issues, was superb."
The
critical element of the iVoice™ implementation
project was clearly the teamwork and focus provided
by each of the respective teams of ASI, Viterra Energy
Services and iMessaging Systems. Without cooperation
on everyone's part, the aggressive implementation
schedule never could have been met. Total elapsed
time from order to the time the system was servicing
calls was 21 days!
"We
are very happy that we chose iMessaging for this
project," states Mr. Cintron, "There were a couple
of other vendors out there that we could have gone
with, but I definitely feel that iVoice™ has
provided Viterra with the best solution available
at a reasonable cost."
To
arrange a demonstration of iVoice™, please
contact our sales team by calling 866-iMS-LIVE, or
sending an email to info@iMessagingSystems.com.
Or, for more details on the advantages and benefits
of iVoice™ - Advanced Interactive Voice Response
- click here.
About
Associated Systems, Inc. (ASI)
Associated
Systems, Inc. is a software and service provider for
the utility industry, with products focused on billing,
work order and financial management systems. ASI clients
include utility firms in the water, electric, gas and
multi-utility environments. ASI products and services
give utility managers the most sophisticated tools
available to manage billing services, administer effective
service work orders, provide good customer service
and support and improve their business processes. Viterra
Energy Services is the largest user of ASI's EasiBill solution.
Viterra's typical monthly billings exceed 500,000 from
Viterra's east- and west-coast iSeries 400 operations.
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This
issue's topics:
• Playing an Entire Voice Passage
• Detecting
Nonresponsive Callers
• ¿Habla
Español? ¡Sí, Señor!
 Welcome
to our enhanced Technical Corner. This is an
ongoing section in the iLINK newsletter to help
our customers get the most out of their iMessaging
products. Since this is for you, we welcome any
comments on how we can improve, as well as suggestions
for new articles. Please email your thoughts
to info@imessagingsystems.com.
Playing
an Entire Voice Passage
Do you have a voice prompt that you want to always play in its
entirety? Perhaps a legal disclaimer message that you do not want
the caller to skip over? If so, you can provide for this quickly
and easily using the "@SKIP" parameter. If this variable is set
to 'N', the iVoice™ system will not allow the caller to interrupt
the speech. Just remember to set it back to 'Y' for the next prompt,
or the caller will be forced to listen to all the following prompts
in their entirety also.
Detecting
Nonresponsive Callers
While
the majority of people in North
America use touch-tone telephones,
there are still some people who
use pulse or rotary telephones.
Unfortunately, they may dial into
your iVoice™ application,
and you should be prepared for
it. The easiest way to handle this
is to use the "@RTCDE" field. Assume
your welcome message says:
"Welcome
to ABC company. For English, press one. Por
Español, prima dos. If you are calling
from a rotary phone, please wait."
Set
@PMIND and @PMAXD to 1, the @PEREQ to 'N' and
the "@PTOUT" variable to a low number like 5
seconds. After this prompt, you can check the
@RESP1 field to see if the caller selected 1
or 2 for English or Spanish. If neither option
was selected, check the "@RTCDE" field to see
if a return code of "TIMEOUT" was returned. In
this case, you can forward the call to an operator
using the iForward command. If you want to get
fancy, you could check the day of the week and
the time to see if there is an operator available,
and if not, play a message asking the caller
to call back during regular business hours.
¿Habla
Español? ¡Sí Señor!
Can you speak Spanish? If so, then the iVoice™ system can
as well! iMessaging designed the iVoice™ software with the
ability to support multiple languages. With a few simple modifications
to your application, you can have it speaking Spanish, French,
Italian or Portuguese (and English, of course). All that is required
is someone who knows the language to translate your prompt files
and record them for you.
Depending
on your approach, you may not even need to change
your iVoice™ application. For each line
of the iVoice™ system, you can specify
the default language that is to be used. As a
result, you can quickly and easily set some of
your voice lines to process calls in English,
while the other lines process calls in another
language such as Spanish. Needless to say, if
you do this, you should have two hunt groups
defined and publish separate numbers (one for
English and another for Spanish) for your customers
to dial.
 While
the preceding method is quick and simple, it
does pose one problem. You have to determine
what your call volumes will be for each language
and configure your lines accordingly. A better
method is to make a few minor changes to your
iVoice™ application so that the caller
can select their preferred language. This way,
all the voice lines become multilingual, and
only a single hunt group is required. In order
to do this, you simply need to add a prompt at
the beginning of the call. It could say something
like "Welcome to XYZ company. For English, press
one. Por Español, prima dos." Check the
prompt to make sure that a valid response was
received and, based on that response, set the "@LANG" variable
to "ENGLISH" or "SPANISH" as requested by the
caller.
Note: Be
sure to remember to set your default language
back to English at the beginning of each call.
The best way to do this is to set the "@LANG" variable
back to "ENGLISH" just before or just after the
iANSWER command.
Now
that your programming changes are done, the last
step is to create your Spanish voice files. This
is done on the iVoice™ controller using
the "iVoice™ Prompt Recorder" program.
Double-click on the icon to start this program.
Click on the "New Language" button. You are now
prompted to enter the name of your new language
(Eg: Spanish). You will now have a list of the
default voice passages to record in the new language.
You must also re-record all your existing voice
passages in the new language, being sure to use
the same voice file names. Once that is done,
you are ready to start your multilingual application.
For
more detailed information, please contact iMessaging
Customer Support at: 603-424-7788 or support@iMessagingSystems.com.
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With
15 years of experience in computer software development,
Guanmin Xu first joined our organization in 1998 when
we were known as RMTi. She has been involved in several
product development and enhancement projects, such
as iVoice™, RMSemail, RVSvoice and RFSfax. While
her primary focus is AS/400 (iSeries 400) platform
development, Guanmin has worked closely with several
of our customers on specific application development
projects involving our products. Most recently, Guanmin
has been working on iVoice™ enhancements and
customer application projects.
After
graduating with a degree in Computer Science from the
Graduate College of FUDAN University, China, Guanmin
began her career as a software engineer at the Shanghai
Computer Institute. Two years later, she moved to Tokyo,
Japan, and joined a software firm called TOSTEMS Inc.
Guanmin remained with TOSTEMS for almost 8 years, working
on many projects including the development of finance
and business management systems, as well as an auto
building and bridge design system.
Guanmin
and her husband currently live in Vancouver, BC and
are expecting the newest addition to the iMessaging
family early next year.
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 We
are pleased to announce that our Grand Slam Promotion
is back, just in time for another exciting playoff season!
When you purchase any iMessaging product or refer a friend
or colleague to iMessaging, you will receive either a
$1,000 maintenance credit or an official Major League
Baseball team jersey and hat (your choice of team).
To
enter, simply call, fax or email us with your name
and company information; or, have your colleague reference
your name and company when contacting iMessaging. If
we complete business prior to 12/31/02, your company
will receive a maintenance credit of up to $1,000.
Or, you can take home the MLB hat and jersey of your
favorite team.
For
more information, call 1-866-467-5483.
Congratulations
to our Grand Slam Promotion Winners!
There
is no limit on the number of winners...
the season doesn't end until 12/31/02!
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10/10/02 - The
McGraw Group (installed
a second 8-line iVoice™ system)
10/10/02 - Clipper
Express (installed a 4-line
RFSfax system)
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