Subject: From: Date:

Re: [ECS] Phone messages Bill Walters Mon, 21 Sep 1998 23:00:04 -0500

---

Daniel and anyone else who cares -

I'm with you and what you are thinking......  I have already done some
preliminary "digging" into the phone messaging system.  I'm thinking of
writing a simple (?) BATCH or BASIC program to track the number of messages
stored and using ecs events to play them individually with /NW
operator....  Don't know if it will work or not, but worth looking into.

As I understand it, Mark is using the ECS.LOG to "dig" out information on
individual messages and when you set "Speak-Messages" to PLAY, it cycles
thru the ECS.LOG, speaks the date/time and caller, then looks up the
individual message number.  It then is "waiting" for possible commands,
which is why you cannot set SPEAK-MESSAGES to PLAY/NW, as it is reading the
ECS.LOG and lots of other stuff......

I agree with you that there is a possibility of "doit yourself" through a
combination of event control and system programming.

Here's what I've dug out of Mark's excellent technical documentation so far
(or so I think!):

Phone messages ARE stored in individual files and they have the following
format for names:

xxx xxxx.RPA
  +     +     +---------  Phone-Interface-A extension
  +     +-------------- 0001, 0002, 0003, etc to total number of messages
recorded
  +------------------- 000 (default mailbox)
                                  001 (mailbox 1)
                                  002 (mailbox 2)
                                    .etc., etc., etc.

So, if you ARE NOT using individual mailboxes, messages will have 1st 3
digits "000", and next 4 digits will be the message "number", depending on
the number of messages you have stored (saved, not played? I don't really
know).

Think that when your "phone event" has a message recorded indicator, it
could write to a file (? how I don't know yet) with the
date/time/caller..... Or, if you don't care about that information (I don't
- I can get it from the phone log if needed) the PLAYBACK event could
execute a DOS program to "count" the number of "000xxxx.RCD" files, then
individually play them with a /NW state.  Playback event would then monitor
for Delete/Skip/etc....

Dunno, but it's a starting point......   What do you think?

Bill Walters


Daniel Dubay wrote:

> Hello Mark,
>
> ECS is very versatile in every aspect except phone messaging.  Would it
> be possible to have phone messages recorded to individual files instead
> of to the message log?  A text file could be associated with each
> recording and displayed in the log screen (F4) as is currently done.
>
> ECS would create text items and voice recordings with the same name as
> available (ie log0001txt, and 0001.rcd).  This would allow the
> following:
>
> 1)people could choose what items to play from any session type.
> 2)the NW option could be used.
> 3)items could be individually deleted from sessions other than remote
> phone sessions and computer screen.
> 4)speak messages could be configured to play back all messages similar
> to currently for those who still wanted to use it.
> 5)If current error messages were entered as text items this would allow
> error checking (compare text items).  This is a feature currently
> lacking in ECS.
>
> Just my 2 cents.  Anyone else?
>
> Dan Dubay

---