Indigo-PhoneValet Integration

Posted on
Sun Aug 01, 2010 2:47 pm
berkinet offline
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Re: Bug swatted!

BillC wrote:
...Finally got around to troubleshooting this (again!) and found the error that causes the script to die, plus another bug.

Great! Good detective work. That has been an insidious problem.

Posted on
Sun Aug 01, 2010 3:16 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Bug swatted!

BillC wrote:
The "alias" was causing a "File not found" error. Moving the "-1" outside the parentheses cured the crash. Wish I was more fluent in Applescript....I think I'd have spotted that earlier.


Very odd - I've made the change here as well so we'll see if it works for me too. Being more fluent in AppleScript wouldn't have helped since it's perfectly correct syntactically. I suspect the problem is either a bug in the AS interpreter or a bug in the "Play Sound" application. The latter is more likely.

Not sure why alias doesn't work for you - it works fine for me, and in fact the dictionary for the play command is:

sound file as name, path, or alias (The file parameter is optional.)


AppleScript is supposed to universally treat file objects and alias objects the same way.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Sun Aug 01, 2010 6:10 pm
BillC offline
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Re: Indigo-PhoneValet Integration

To clarify: the Alias issue didn't seem to be connected to the script exiting. And moving the "-1" stopped it from crashing while there was an unplayed message...only time will tell if it's crashing for some other reason. Still have berkinet's trap running, now with an AS command to send me an email when the script restarts; I'll see if it catches anything.

Posted on
Thu Jul 28, 2011 2:34 pm
BillC offline
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Re: Indigo-PhoneValet Integration

PhoneValet is being discontinued. There is a version available for Lion, and support will continue for another year.

http://www.phonevalet.com/index.html

Looking to the future, does anyone have good experience with a similar program such as phlink that will integrate with Indigo the way PhoneValet does?

Posted on
Tue Aug 02, 2011 4:35 pm
Matt offline
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Re: Indigo-PhoneValet Integration

I can't say anything good about my experience with Phlink. I used it for a few years. I found it to be buggy and sometimes unpredictable.

However, it has been a couple years since I have used it, so my experience with it is not recent. It would be a difficult pill for me to swallow if I had to go back to using Phlink.

Of course other users' will have positive things to say about Phlink.

I will scour ebay and other source for used Phone Valet devices, as a replacement if mine breaks, before I will consider an alternative to Phone Valet.

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Posted on
Wed Aug 03, 2011 10:37 am
Otis offline
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Re: Indigo-PhoneValet Integration

Just for the record, Phlink has worked very well in my setup. It takes a lot of work with AppleScript to get full value out of it, but for me the software has been totally reliable and very useful. There are posts on the Ovolab forum providing a few steps to make it work under Lion.

It's never failed to respond correctly to a call for me. Many people do report major problems, however. I wonder if that has to do with specific phone companies, or phone line wiring. Anyone ordering one would probably want to make sure it's returnable. My only problem with it is that I've lost two Phlink hardware modules due to nearby lightning strikes, and I'm ordering my third one today from Amazon.

Posted on
Wed Aug 03, 2011 1:21 pm
asw24b offline
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Re: Indigo-PhoneValet Integration

Otis wrote:
Just for the record, Phlink has worked very well in my setup. It takes a lot of work with AppleScript to get full value out of it, but for me the software has been totally reliable and very useful. There are posts on the Ovolab forum providing a few steps to make it work under Lion.

It's never failed to respond correctly to a call for me. Many people do report major problems, however. I wonder if that has to do with specific phone companies, or phone line wiring. Anyone ordering one would probably want to make sure it's returnable. My only problem with it is that I've lost two Phlink hardware modules due to nearby lightning strikes, and I'm ordering my third one today from Amazon.


Phlink appears to have been silently discontinued several years ago; No formal notice was given, but the developers stopped answering email. Ironically, it looks like one of the developers now works at Apple...

If it works for you, you are lucky; I hit over a dozen nasty bugs, and finally switched over to Phone Valet (and I had to give up some features).

Now that both products are discontinued, there isn't a good option...

Mike

Posted on
Wed Aug 03, 2011 3:43 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Indigo-PhoneValet Integration

I have on my todo list to check out the various web-based systems like twilio and/or google voice - it may do some of what I need. PhoneValet really did a couple of things for me:

1) Voice mail - so Indigo knew how many VM's you had and could act as an answering machine (play vm's, delete vm's, etc)
2) Hook status - to know when the phone went off hook and on hook - you could then pauseiTunes when the phone was off hook, etc.
3) Caller ID - I have PV announce caller ID information when an incoming call is received.

Recently, however, I've found that #1 just really isn't that useful for me. I don't get many voice mails (and even less do I care about) so I've reverted back to using the Vonage voice mail. I get emails with the vm attached and transcribed to text (which mostly works). It's really good enough for what I want so I'm not really looking to change that functionality. It would be nice if Vonage provided an API so you could get at VM data but at this point I just don't really care.

That leaves the last two. I've become quite dependent on those. It's possible that one of the above mentioned web services would be able to handle the caller ID part, but the hook status one (which, for me, is more important) probably wouldn't work. I'm not sure how the USB modems work but that might give you hook status.

Another option might be Asterix - but that always had the feel of a huge hack to me. Anyway, the choices do seem pretty limited.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:13 pm
JeffS offline
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Re: Indigo-PhoneValet Integration

Jay-

I've been using the PhoneValet AppleScript for a very simple voicemail indicator. Since I have upgraded to Indigo 5.0 *or* OS X 10.7 *or* PhoneValet 6.0.5 (not sure which - they all happened about the same time), my voicemail indicator no longer works. I noticed that the listing for the AppleScript states that it is for Indigo 3.x-4.x - could this be why?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Take care!

Jeff

Posted on
Fri Aug 19, 2011 4:05 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Indigo-PhoneValet Integration

It *should* still work (though I'm not on Lion in my production system yet), but I'll admit I've stopped using PV for voicemail (a decision reinforced given they've discontinued the product) so I'm not really going to spend any more time on it. Sorry...

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Sun May 06, 2012 8:56 am
lenashore offline
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Re: Indigo-PhoneValet Integration

I started off as a Phlink user (similar to PhoneValet) and was really disappointed when Phlink stopped being supported years ago. I ended up going with PhoneValet and have happily used it for a couple of years now.

A few months ago PhoneValet announced they were discontinuing the product. Fortunately, they would continue supporting it for a few more months (support ends in June 2012).

So, I started thinking about alternatives. I used Phlink/PhoneValet for its phone tree and time of day announcements. I looked at GoogleVoice (not enough features) and some others that wouldn't fit the bill. Then I started looking into auto-attendant subscription solutions. They sound like they would work great, but they charge you for every minute you use your phone, not just the time you are using the auto-attendant.

I wanted a system I could just purchase and have it be my own. After racking my brain I figured out a great solution... buy an old MacMini and run and old OS on it! No monitor needed.

I could get one from ebay for $100 - $120, but decided to make a call out on Facebook to my friends. I had a friend who was willing to just give it to me as it was just sitting in a closet.

I installed and mounted it in my closet and hooked it up to the network. I used my iMac as a monitor so I could set up file sharing on it and just use screen sharing for the future. Super easy to just screen share with it if you need to access it.

It works great with PhoneValet (just got done this morning with it). Just keep an older OS on it.

To me this was the best solution for me. Maybe one day a better answer system will come along. But, I am up and running and thrilled.

Hope this helps someone. I know I racked my brain over this for months.

NOTE: After I got my MacMini, I found this great website for them that mentioned how to make them run as a PBX using something called Asterisk (opensource). I don't know anything about it, but it might help someone: http://www.macminiserver.com/can-a-mac- ... -as-a-pbx/

Posted on
Sun May 06, 2012 11:06 am
matt (support) offline
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Re: Indigo-PhoneValet Integration

Thanks for sharing your solution.

I don't know if it will work for your particular needs, but you might want to check out twilio.com. Maybe someone will create an Indigo twilio plugin at some point.

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