Handpicked Software

Voice mail has come a long way since those cassette answering machines that had a habit of eating your tape (just as you played back the message from your boss), and you probably traded in your old phone/digital answering machine combo for your telephone company’s voice mail a long time ago. But you’re a Mac user. You have a very capable computer sitting there, not far from the phone line. Isn’t it time you got the software to turn it into a feature-rich message center and automated personal telephone assistant?

That’s where PhoneValet from Parliant comes in. PhoneValet provides voice mail, just like your telephone company does, answering calls with your own recorded message or text message read by OS X’s Text to Speech feature (so you can let Bubbles or Deranged or Zarvox greet your callers). PhoneValet will even let you create unlimited individual mailboxes on a single line (it can also handle multiple lines), so you can have a mailbox for each member of your family. You won’t have to skip through everyone else’s messages to find your own and, as you’d expect with any answering machine, you can screen calls or retrieve messages remotely.

But PhoneValet goes far beyond standard voice mail. PhoneValet is so powerful—and solid—that it garnered a Macworld 2006 Eddy Award. And that was for version 4.0. This new version adds even more features, making it the ideal telephony solution for your small business.

Installing PhoneValet is a snap. You don’t even need a modem—just plug the included Telephone Adapter into a USB port on one end and a phone line on the other and you’re good to go. It will even work with VOIP services like Vonage, and you can share voice and fax on the same line. With so many features, it does take time to configure PhoneValet to your specifications. Fortunately, the documentation is thorough and clearly written, and once it’s set up PhoneValet just works.

When a new call comes in, PhoneValet announces the caller and displays a window with Caller ID information. Call Profiles let you give individual callers personalized treatment, alerting you with a unique ringtone, answering calls immediately instead of waiting for a certain number of rings, playing the caller a custom announcement, or routing them directly to a specific mailbox. You can also use Call Profiles to block unwanted calls, telling telemarketers and spurned lovers not to call again, and then hanging up on them.

You can also create Call Trees, routing calls to the proper voice mailbox or department, or to special announcements (such as office hours). Call Completion Technology™ plays hold music for your callers while paging the proper person or department through your computer’s speakers or, if you have the optional PhoneValet Anywhere software, through any Mac or PC on your network. If you have Call Transfer, PhoneValet can automatically forward calls to another number (your cell phone, for example).

PhoneValet’s tricks aren’t limited to incoming calls; it can also perform magic when you want to make a call, dialing any number from almost any application using the Services menu; from the call log, phonebook, or Address Book; from the menu bar; using AppleScript; or by voice using Apple’s Speech system. You can also record both sides of a phone conversation and save it in the archives. You can automatically record all calls (incoming and/or outgoing) or calls for only specified callers, or start recording manually. Audio can be stored as 3GPP, AAC, or WAV files (one minute of 3GPP audio takes only 76 kb of disk space, and the format is QT compatible).

PhoneValet offers two views of your calls. The main window (above) includes three tabs, displaying your OS X Address Book entries, a PhoneValet phonebook, and a log of all calls. A separate New Calls window (below) displays information about recent calls, but I found the window too bulky to leave open on my desktop. I’d prefer a more svelte interface in one integrated window with multiple views, like iCal’s Daily and Monthly views, for example.

You can make notes for phonebook entries or logged calls in the main window. Logged calls are automatically timed and PhoneValet can generate custom call reports, making it perfect for time tracking and billing. Data can be exported as comma- or tab-delimited files for easy importing into Excel. Recordings and logs can be burned to a CD or DVD for archiving, and the log will prompt you for the archived CD when you do a search in the future.

PhoneValet may not look sexy, but the delight is in the details. It’s designed to work the way you work, automating tasks to make managing calls almost effortless. For example, you can mute PhoneValet’s sounds during specified times, so it won’t announce callers and disturb you at night. Using AppleScript, PhoneValet can pause iTunes and change your iChat status when a call comes in. Scripts can automatically notify you of the location of an area code, copy messages to a PhoneValet playlist in iTunes for copying to your iPod, or read today’s iCal events to you when you call in remotely.

At $170, PhoneValet doesn’t come cheap, but the price tag is worth it (you’re probably already paying seven or eight bucks a month for your telephone company’s voice mail, which does only a fraction of what PhoneValet is capable of doing). If you have a small business, it’s a small price to pay to sound like the big guys. Unfortunately, you’ll need to shell out another $170 for a license and Telephone Adapter for each additional line. If you have multiple users and want to give them access to your PhoneValet data and call announcements through a network, you’ll also need to buy PhoneValet Anywhere ($50 if you order at the same time as PhoneValet, or $60 ordered separately).