AI.CLIVE@MCC.COM (Clive Dawson) (11/30/88)
I've been meaning to tell you folks about this for sometime now, but
the message from our moderator about the store-and-forward feature
mentioned by Illinois Bell has finally prodded me into action.
My sister in Minneapolis was chosen to participate in a test-market
evaluation of ATT's new Call Delivery System. By using her calling
code number, I've been able to play with this system from Texas.
Here's how it works:
1. Dial the 800 number which gives you access to the system.
2. Punch in your calling code.
3. The system asks whether you want to send a new message or
review the status of previous messages. (Press 0 or 1).
4. To send a new message, enter the area code and number of
the destination.
5. Choose whether the message will be delivered to whoever
answers, or whether you want personalized delivery (in this
case, you are given a chance to speak the name of the person
you want to reach, and when delivery is attempted, a human
attendant will verify that the person is available before
your message is delivered.)
6. Choose the date/time that you wish delivery to begin,
and how long you want the attempts to continue. (Default
is NOW + 2 hours. Anything other than the default is
punched in via the keypad.
7. Choose whether you want the person to be able to record a
1-minute response.
8. If so, choose whether you want this message to be delivered
back to you. If so, provide the call back number. If not,
you can still hear the response by dialing in later and
checking the satus of your previous messages.
9. Record your message.
All in all this is pretty nice system, although they have several kinks
that will need to be ironed out. The procedure outlined above is VERY
tedious, especially after you know what's going on. Each item of info
is laboriously repeated, giving you a chance to confirm it ("We heard...
If this is correct, press 1; otherwise, press 0.") Fortunately you
can "type ahead", although this sometimes messes up the default choices.
Delivery of the message happens like this: when you answer, a voice
identifies ATT Call Delivery Service, and announces the message,
which is played twice. (This is sometimes VERY aggravating. It's
useful if you need to copy down and verify some information, but
there is no way to abort the second playing if you got it all the
first time. Then, if the sender has chosen to let you record a response,
you are given a chance to do that. If delivery is to a particular
person, a human attendant will ask whether X is available, where X is
the actual recording of the sender's voice speaking the recipient's
name. When X comes to the phone, the message is played. [We used
this feature in an interesting way: my mother was in the hospital,
and we requested personalized delivery to "Room 635". It worked fine.]
Calling in to check the status of previous messages works like this:
After dialing the 800 number and providing your calling code, you
press 0. Each message that you (or anybody else using that calling
code) has recorded in the last 24 hours will be mentioned. You will
be told whether the message was delivered, whether delivery is still
pending, or whether delivery failed within the specified window. If a
response was recorded, you will hear it as well. (Note that if you
requested a call-back, you will receive a phone call telling you of
any success or final failure, so the only reason for checking status
is to find out about messages which are still pending.) Messages are
dealt with in reverse chronological order, and you can press # to skip
to the next message at any time. We discovered a cute way to make use
of the status feature, useful when two people who are on the move need
to communicate. Person A delivers a dummy message to him/herself.
When the dummy message is delivered, person A records a response which
is actually the REAL message intended for person B. Person B can then
call the 800 number to check on the status of messages, and hear the
intended message. (Note that original messages are not heard during
the status session; only responses are.) This is all rather tedious,
but there have been times when this has come in very useful.
I've had a lot of fun with this system for the last 3 months or so,
in spite of the human interface problems which will hopefully get
solved in the production version.
Of course the whole thing has been totally free up to now. I'll be
very interested to see how much they will actually charge for it when
the system becomes globally available.
Cheers,
Clive
P.S. Anybody who wants more info should dial 1-800-33-TRIAL.
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