AAUG Reviews

By Jon Snelling, AAUG Member
Reviewed 4/06

PhoneHerald, by Parliant Corporation, is a broadcast dialer solution for the Macintosh. A broadcast dialer allows a computer to automatically call a series of predefined numbers without supervision. Broadcast dialers have many uses such as information broadcasting, advertising, and surveying. Parliant offers a nice combination of hardware and software as part of their PhoneHerald package. The hardware connection is USB based and a user may attach several of them to the same computer to allow multiple calls to be made simultaneously. The PhoneHerald integrates with PhoneValet, also from Parliant and both softwares use the same hardware connection.

The hardware installation is very simple: hook the hardware adapter to a phone-line on one end and to the computer’s free USB port on the other. Software installation is a bit of a different story. When installing the software I was presented with a message telling me about some sort of database that the software was dependent on and asking me whether I would rather they install it /Users/Shared/OpenBase or /lib/OpenBase…

After the install I ran the software for the first time and began the task of determining which code went where. The first code I was asked I assumed was the code which I had requested from http://www.parliant.com/freecalls. That code didn’t work, neither did either of the two numbers printed on a label on the hardware interface. Finally, I stopped trying to find the answer in the User Guide and instead found the answer on the back. Of the two numbers printed on the back of the booklet, one was the correct one to allow me to continue.

After installation and rebooting I was greeted by a friendly looking interface containing only a handful of buttons. The intuitive appearance was only skin deep, and I soon found myself confused. Adding a simple set of calls was no simple task and I found my self experimenting extensively and trying to follow the quick start in the User Guide. While the User Guide is well written and easy to read, I found that the pictures in the User Guide were often different than what I saw on my screen. For example the book shows a window for adding names and numbers to dial while my window only shows a name field. I tried several times to add a second column, tell the software that is was a phone field and finally add my number, but I was repeatedly blocked from starting the job because the software told me that I had not filled in a number. I didn’t get any further when I updated the software to the newest version, which was an enormous 160mb download. I’m not sure what of a huge number of different attempts finally caused the system to work but somehow it did finally dial.

Once the software began to function, I was pleased. The software designers obviously considered the use of their product inside a corporate phone system and provided me the option to automatically dial 9 to get an outside line. The three voices provided in the software are good quality although the setting to control which of the three (or one of Apple’s) should be used is buried 5 clicks deep through three different windows. The software includes a powerful interface to piece together call scripts that include both static and dynamic content such as the recipient’s name, but I would like to have had the ability to define the scripts in an external text file and import them. That feature would allow for increased portability. With the ability to define call scripts in an external file, power-users could also use other programs or (create their own programs) to generate complex dynamic menu systems.

One example that came to mind that I hoped to be able to experiment with (but wasn’t), was to get people who were willing to volunteer for a survey to write down their name and the time they would that would be most convenient to be called. I would then have the broadcast dialer call them and present them with a multi question survey. For example: On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being best, how satisfied are you with some product?. While this scenario can be done with the current functionally of the software, it is clumsy to implement and requires huge numbers of click and manual setup. With the ability to externally generate call scripts, I would have had no problem generating a call script corresponding to a survey of the week.

I feel that I am being too harsh in my appraisal of this software if I do not mention that it is currently in its first release. Given its infancy, I believe that it has already made incredible progress and has incredible potential. I expect to see the software improved incredibly in short time and become an enormously useful tool for both personal and business users. That being said, I have a few recommendations for the developers of this product.

I see this interface trying to provide a balance of power and simplicity that, while well intentioned, seems to tie the hands of both novice and power users. It seems to be too complex for a novice or hurried user to quickly setup a call list yet is too limited for a true power-user to sufficiently customize. If I were designing the interface for version 2.0 I would split into two types of setup. I would have a “Simple” tab which was geared toward simplicity and speed rather than allowing (forcing ? ) the user to configure every part of the call. On the other side I would have a “Advanced” tab which provided the power user all of the tools that they needed to create complex uses for the product such as the example I mentioned above. Also from a power-user perspective, the software seems to have absolutely no AppleScript compatibility which further hurts the ability of a power user to automate setup of the software. Considering the whole point of the software is automation it makes little sense to replace the hours of dialing with hours of clicking to set the software up.

To my fellow Mac User Group Members, I would not recommend purchasing this software in its current stage. Though it shows immense promise and deserves our continued consideration, I don’t believe it to have reached a level of stability and functionality where the $400 price can be justified. While the subject of price has been brought up, I feel the need to put in my two cents on the pricing scheme. The current licensing system that is being used packages 200 calls with product. After those 200 calls are used, I will be left the proud owner of a product that is as expensive a 500 Gig Hard Drive from CompUSA, yet is worthless without purchasing more calls from Parliant. While the cost of the initial product is high enough that many people would find it too expensive, I feel that being required to purchase ‘the right’ to make more calls is absurd. Normally licensing of this type is reserved for cases where there is constant and direct use of the companies time and resources (such as downloading the virus updates that the good people at Norton slave all month to collect) not cases where you already own the software and the hardware and require no support from the company to facilitate each call. I imagine that I would have a similar response if I dropped $699.99 on Adobe Photoshop CS 2 only to discover that my purchase allowed to me to edit and save 200 files before purchasing another file modification license from Adobe.