An Object-Oriented Solution for Windows Telephony

The Windows Telephony API (TAPI) is one of the most significant parts of the Windows Open Services Architecture (WOSA). Thus, utilizing TAPI is the only way to go to insure a well-behaved Windows telephony application that has access to a broad variety of telephony hardware and interacts well with other TAPI telephony applications. However, as you and other application developers quickly determine, TAPI is very complex. Arguably one of the most complex of the many Windows APIs.

The ExceleTel TeleTools product line addresses the rapidly escalating need to quickly incorporate computer telephony into existing applications -- or to build new telephony oriented applications from scratch. For example you can easily add the ability to do screen pops utilizing Caller ID, dial from within a database application, add an interactive voice response (IVR) system to your database, create a market survey system, a sophisticated soft-phone, conferencing systems and much more.

ExceleTel TeleTools is the premier development tool for writing Computer Telephony (CT) applications for Windows. Thousands of developers around the world have discovered that the feature-rich ActiveX and VCL controls found in TeleTools allow them to build sophisticated, robust and reliable telephony applications in a small fraction of the time normally required.

As an example, with the click of a mouse and three lines of code your application can access Caller ID information. Playing a wave file over the phone line can also be achieved with as little as three lines of code.

ExceleTel TeleTools reduces your time to market with sophisticated applications that can link the world's millions of computers and billions of telephones. TeleTools provides straightforward object-based access to most TAPI functionality. This lets you concentrate on the core functionality of your applications rather than getting bogged down in call backs and other low level TAPI details. With TeleTools, you are the provider of the software that individuals and organizations are counting on to enhance customer service, productivity, and communications.

ExceleTel TeleTools is not an end-user application program that provides CallerId, voice mail, screen dialing, etc. TeleTools is a telephony programming toolkit for beginning to advanced developers who want TeleTools and ExceleTel's extensive computer telephony experience on their team.

TeleTools works through Microsoft's Telephony API (TAPI) to provide hardware-independence (the freedom to work with telephony devices from many manufacturers).

TeleTools includes both ActiveX and VCL controls, so it works with most Windows software development environments.

What's New?

• Play and Record to memory buffers as well as to disk
• Fast forward, rewind or pause recording or playback
• Seek any position in a wav file by time, index, even percentage
• Trim before or after position and allow splitting or joining wave files
• Save embedded information and text inside wav files

With development tools like:

• Visual Basic
• Delphi
• C++ Builder
• Access
• Visual FoxPro
• Visual C++
• Java Script
• and others that support ActiveX controls

And TAPI ready telephony devices like voice boards, PBXs, phones, voice modems, and others from:

• MediaPhonics
• Dialogic / Intel
• Siemens
• Nortel
• Brooktrout
• Creative Labs
• MultiTech
• and many others

You can add or build:

• Dialers
• Screen pops
• Call control / soft-phones
• Voice mail
• Auto-attendant
• IVR
• Call timers
• Call recorders
• Survey systems
• Call center apps
• Follow-me functions
• Conferencing systems
• You name it

Extensive call control capabilities, including handling multiple simultaneous calls and access to many advanced PBX-type features makes development of advanced desktop soft-phone type applications much easier.

Unattended or hybrid applications including multi-party conferencing, IVRs, follow-me systems and more also benefit from the new multi-call capabilities as well as the new Gather Digits and Call Parameter functionality.

ExceleTel TeleTools is available in several editions: Express, Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. Each edition supports an increasingly larger feature set. A comparison of the feature set found in each edition. The Component Reference section of TeleTools help file also includes references to the editions supported by each property, event, and method.

ExceleTel TeleTools contains the following components:

• etLine -- encapsulates the TAPI Line device -- this deals with the telephone line and such things as dialing, hangup, sending and receiving DTMF tones, Caller ID, and more.
• etPhone -- encapsulates the TAPI phone device -- this deals with control of the locally attached telephone, including handset, headset, speakerphone, volume control, and hookswitch functionality.
• etPlay -- encapsulates play aspects of the Windows wave API -- this component is optimized for playing audio files over telephony devices.
• etRecord -- encapsulates record aspects of the Windows wave API -- this component is optimized for recording audio files from telephony devices.

Features

• Multiple Active Calls Per Line
• Supervised Transfer
• Call Waiting
• Three-way Calling
• Multi-party Conferencing
• Call Forwarding
• Gather Digits
• Call Parameters

GatherDigits functionality has been added to allow for easy collection of multi-digit DTMF responses for requirements such as entry of account numbers, monetary values, etc.

New Call Parameters properties have been added, including NoAnswerTimeout which makes handling no answers on out-bound calls much easier.

Extensive call control capabilities, including handling multiple simultaneous calls and access to many advanced PBX-type features makes development of advanced desktop soft-phone type applications much easier.

Unattended or hybrid applications including multi-party conferencing, IVRs, follow-me systems and more also benefit from the new multi-call capabilities as well as the new Gather Digits and Call Parameter functionality.

To support this greatly expanded feature set, over 100 new properties, events, and methods have been added in this release alone. The etLine TeleScope has also been enhanced to support this additional functionality and redesigned to make common tasks even easier to perform. Naturally the help file and sample programs have been extensively updated to reflect these enhancements as well.

Please note that availability of some of these features is dependent upon the TAPI support of the underlying telephony hardware or system.

ExceleTel TeleTools Product Comparison Chart