PhoneValet Message Center puts amazing phone features into your Mac
Tuesday, September 21, 2004

RandomMaccess Review by Chuck La Tournous

One of the major goals for most Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) entrepreneurs is that they not look like Small Office/Home Office entrepreneurs. The Mac has been a great tool for presenting that uber-professional, multi-national image: slick letterhead, business cards, even websites generally are easy to create on the Mac. So unless a client visits pays you a visit in person, it’s likely he’ll never know that the corner office of your worldwide headquarters isn’t in a glass-and steel-skyscraper, but a converted crawlspace in your attic.

But what if a client wants to (gasp) call you at the office? No problem, as long as you’re there and you can convince the kids to keep things to a dull roar – at least momentarily. But at some point, chances are a client will call at the same time nature does, and as bright as little Timmy may be, his phone skills probably aren’t up to your client’s expectations.

Luckily, Parliant’s PhoneValet Message Center is. In fact, it very likely exceeds them. PhoneValet Message Center (PVMC), is a robust, feature-laden solution, rich with thoughtful touches, an elegant interface and a surprisingly deep integration with the Mac OS.

The heart of PVMC is the USB phone adapter. Hook one end to your phone line and the other to one of your Mac’s USB ports. In a welcome bucking of the trend, Parliant not only includes the cables you’ll need, it even adds a phone jack splitter that you can use to connect an additional cord to your phone or to your Mac’s modem port (for faxing capabilities.)

The included software is simple to install and had our test unit set up in minutes. A wizard asked us a few questions about our preferences and phone numbers (area code, dialing prefixes, local dialing options, etc.) and we were set. PVMC announces incoming calls using Apple’s text-to-speech technology, and shows us the incoming call information in a large, easily readable window. If you like, an included AppleScript will do a reverse lookup for you on the Internet and display the results in your web browser (although we kept encountering “your session has expired” notices using the default website. Clicking the search button again usually gave us the results we wanted).

When a call comes in, other AppleScripts pause iTunes if it’s playing and set our iChat status to away, returning things to where we left them when the call is finished. A minor annoyance: iTunes will begin playing when a call is finished even if it was already paused when the call came in.

PVMC’s included phone log tracks all calls, displays the number and name of the caller, the length of the call, and whether it was placed, answered, unanswered or went to voicemail (more on that in a minute). We copied our entire Address Book of over 300 contacts into PhoneValet in seconds, which gave us added dialing capabilities in a lightning-fast searchable phone book. (The program also gives Apple’s Address Book the ability to dial out.)

The program also includes a the ability to record calls in a high-quality audio format – perfect for meetings and interviews.

PhoneValet Message Center is also a full-featured answering system with up to 11 mailboxes, so you can turn your phone into a system every bit as annoying as a Fortune 100 company (“press one for sales; press two for accounts payable,” etc.) In a brilliantly useful feature for the home office road warrior, PhoneValet will even email your messages to you, so you can be sure to get that important call as soon as possible -- even without having to check in for messages.

Speaking of calling in, PVMC deftly uses AppleScripts for some amazingly advanced capabilities. By calling in, not only can you check messages, you can run scripts that read you the latest weather information from the Internet, or tell you what you’ve got scheduled in iChat. Our second minor annoyance: in our testing, it seems you can either check messages or run scripts, but not both on the same call.

We’ve barely scratched the surface of PhoneValet’s capabilities, and we’re discovering more every day. Parliant has created our favorite kind of utility -- eminently useful, simple enough to use without documentation, yet rewardingly complex and powerful for those who choose to delve into its features. At $200, PhoneValet Message Center is an absolute steal considering its incredible features. It’s a genuine no-brainer for any Mac SOHO, and a compelling product for families.

More information is available at Pariant's website.