TELEFLEXAWARD 1988
Computer Telephony Encyclopedia
Teleflex,
the product that started the billion dollar GUI / IVR application generator
industry, years before Windows was released. Teleflex had so may first's that
created the business; videophones, and even connections to "MS Mail"
with reading emails on the phone to passing voice messages to your emails.
Articles TFLX:
1)
Encyclopedia;
The FIRST
2) Macworld 89
3) Macintosh Guide Teleflex 89
7) MacUser 92
11)
Voice
Processing
Lab Report July
94
12) Tidbits Feb 95
TFLX keeps working 6.7 EarthQuake
Links
... Macintosh programmers nevertheless continued to have difficulty developing
multi-line systems. One Macintosh product managed to get around this limitation.
Duet By Magnum software Corporation (Chatsworth, CA 818 701-5051 www.magnumcorp.com)
is as its name implies, a hybrid of two IVR products. TFLX for Macs and DAX
for DOS PC's.
Back in the Dark Ages of Mac computing (the mid 1980s) there came the first GUI / IVR app generator, Teleflex. Teleflex was a winner in the first annual 1988/89 Media Dimensions Inc. Awards for the Most Innovative Voice Applications. The name was shortened to TFLX the following year.
Even in 1988 the program had startling similarities to the most advanced app generators of today, giving users the ability to create incoming or outgoing voice or touchtone apps such as voice messaging, voice processing, IVR, text-to-speech and audiotex. The user could record his or her own messages or use the digitized supply provided. Apps were –- and still are –- programmed with Magnum's proprietary Picture Programming Language (PPL) which involves linking Task Icons in a flowchart, a process similar to other, later app generators.
The problem with this scenario was that the Mac was limited to a single line. Although one could install five or six individual TFLX lines, this requires a Macintosh, a site license and a TFLX II hardware unit per line. If you needed lines capable of sharing a database they could be networked together
In 1994, RAM Research in Concord, CA came to the rescue with there PC DAX voice processing software for multiple lines that works with an extraordinary number of voice / fax boards and modems from such companies as Brooktrout / Rhetorex, Intel / Dialogic, Bicom, Eletech, Pika, Music Telecom, JTDual, and Talking Technologies. Like the V'ger in the first Star Trek movie, the resulting software collision between DAX and TFLX led to Duet.
One now uses Duet as follows; You create your voice mail, order entry, fax on demand, or IVR app on the Mac with the TFLX GUI picture Programming Language. You can even record your sound files and save them in PC voicecard-compatible file formats on the Mac.
You then generate a runtime version (a “"script”" )
and transfer it and any voice files to an MS-DOS computer using something
like Apple's PC Exchange. The runtime controls the DAX software on the
PC running DOS, which can handle from 2 to 128 phone lines, depending upon
its configuration (the minimum configuration is a 33Mhz 386 DX with DOS, which
can handle from 2 to 128 phone lines, depending upon its voice cards or voice/fax
card).
The Mac can be used for other applications until you want to make revisions or additions to the program. Of course, if you have a Mac and don't need more than a few lines, you can purchase TFLX separately (packages complete with cards range from $495) But if you want to develop PC apps too, you're going to have to buy a PC and a MAC. Although it all works, one would feel more comfortable if Magnum could port TFLX's GUI app generator over to DAX.
This is not to bemoan the TFLX-half of Duet's abilities. TFLX itself can do just about anything any other app generator mentioned in this article can, and then some. TFLX was not only the first IVR and fax on demand system for the Mac, it was also the first to work with video phones –-it can accept caller input as voice, touchtone, video picture or fax. Still if you don't mind spending the money on keeping an extra platform around, Duet will do the job
Also the idea that a no-programmer can create at least a simple IVR fax and Web-based application with the powerful code generator dwelling beneath an attractive, easy-to-understand call flow interface is now becoming a real possibility.
In order for an app-gen to be so incredibly user-friendly, tremendous programming effort must go into their development, since they must essentially act as a cross between an extremely high level language (so high a lever that an app can be represented visually by rebus-like icons connected by lines) and an automatic programmer, usual in the form of “"wizard"” software that guides you through the app-building process.
Link to Computer Telephony Encyclopedia page 14 and 15
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