Lotus notes gets voice, fax mail

Business Systems Group (BSG), a Lotus Business Partner - Premier Member, has been selected to locally distribute PhoneSoft`s Unified MailCall, a voice mail, unified messaging and auto-attendant system for Lotus Notes.

According to Robin Morris, director for EMEA/Far East of the US-based independent software vendor, the system allows users to send and receive any type of message - voice mail, e-mail and faxes - from any telephone, desktop PC, notebook computer, or over the Internet. "On the road or in the office, Unified MailCall increases productivity, consolidating all communication in the Lotus Notes inbox," he says.

Steve Dunbar, marketing manager of Lotus Development SA, says the primary advantage of deploying Unified MailCall is return on investment. "For existing Notes installations the requirement for additional training is negligible and, since it works directly with the existing Notes inbox configuration, system administration is simple. Coupled to this, the immediacy and convenience of retrieving all communication from a single central store improves user efficiency."

To outside callers, the system sounds like a standard voice mail system. "It answers incoming or forwarded calls, plays company greetings and options, transfers calls, allows spelling by name, takes messages, pages users, etc." adds Morris.

BSG (Africa) MD, Greg Reis, describes the business value to be found in this technology as support for customer relationship management (CRM) applications. "It provides a single message repository which assists in enhancing customer service by providing travelling staff with remote access to voice, fax and email messages, who then can ensure customer attention at all times " he says.

"Voice messages arrive as Notes documents with voice recordings (.WAV files) attached. The system includes complete mail reading and automatic text to speech conversion capability - allowing users to retrieve and respond to messages stored in the Notes inbox by telephone. "PhoneSoft lets users who do not have access to a multimedia PC to click a button which immediately rings their telephone and plays the selected message back."

Dunbar concludes by saying he sees the appointment of BSG as beneficial to the local Lotus Notes customer-base. "Unified MailCall satisfies the growing demand for a single retrieval and store method for voice, fax and e-mail. And it allows that place to be the Lotus Notes inbox." "It is also affordable, available today, and operates within the existing Notes messaging infrastructure," he adds.