Re: xAP Switchboard - fantastic 'must have' HA app :)

[James <james@xxxxxxx>]

lists@xxxxxxx wrote:

>Sounds very interesting.
>I have a couple of questions you may be able to answer:
>If I have outlook running on 3 different PC's, and presumably XAP
Desktop
>too, will it popup on all three?
>
>
Incoming calls will be displayed on every suitable xAP display apps
whether that is xAP desktop, Watcher, MCE plugin, spoken via TTS app.
Also while this happens any matches with an Outlook address book will
cause that contact to popup.  Think of Switchboard as a master contacts
list, it holds a copy of every Outlook's contacts list as well as it's
own internal list. Calls both incoming and outgoing get matched against
this master list and can match any number of contact, not just the first
found.

So, say, in an office of 10 pcs each running xAP desktop, outlook with
the plugin. Of these 10 users, 6 of them know Fred and have his contact
details in their outlook. Next time Fred calls all the pcs will display
an incoming call alert "Incoming Call from Fred 020 232 232" and
also
the 6 users who know Fred will have Fred's contact pop up and have call
info added to the notes field. So all the network users benefit from the
central contact list because without it the initial display would just
be "Incoming Call  020 232 232" and those that know Fred get his
info
on-screen.  If a call comes in that isn't matched then through the web
interface you can simply click create new record next to the call, enter
a name and then you get an option to either create internally to
Switchboard or create the record in any active Outlook.

>And will it update the notes fields on all three?
>
>
it will

>
>
>>In the background, xAP SwitchBoard seamlessly synchronises full
contact
>>information between the xAP SB database and the outlook contact
list
>>including full address information.
>>
>>
>
>Going back to the above scenario, the new caller is not in outlook.
>The person at PC 3 decides to create an Outlook contact for this
person.
>Will the contact be synchronised to the XAP addressbook and then on to
the
>other two client outlooks also?
>
>
It this case the contact will get synchronised with the central
database. Any future telephone calls will now be matchable against it
and also any previous calls that match will get their log entry updated
with the new name. What it won't do is to create copies of this record
on other Outlooks. Any changes to either the contact in either Outlook
or the web database will get synced up so they will always match. I do
intend to add an LDAP interface to the switchboard database, this will
allow all Outlooks to have direct access to the Switchboard database in
a way very similar to the Exchange global address list. Which should
help integrate things further.

HTH

James