Pager notifications from NAM

[mcisar]

Have been bouncing this idea around in my brain for a while but have not been able to come up with a solution. I have a client who is using pager notification in their NAM to notify salespeople that they have a voicemail waiting in their mailbox. Works great, no problems at all.

That said, the salespeople all carry around a cel, and the pager. The client is thinking hey we can send emails and SMS messages to the cellphones so they've moved all of their alpha messaging to the cellphones. That leaves the only role in life of the poor pagers as delivering voicemail notifications.

The problem lies in the fact that you can't to DTMF paging to the cellphones, and the NAM doesn't offer any other paging options other than DTMF. Have tried doing the voice notifications or whatever they are called, but for several reasons it just doesn't seem to work as well.

Now granted DTMF pagers are dirt cheap to rent, but still it is a waste of $$$ when they are being used for just that one sole purpose.

What I'd like to find for these guys is some sort of gateway software that I can have the NAM dial into, deliver the message in DTMF... and then have the software translate and pump the notification out by TAP, or SNPP, or email... or whatever protocol the cellphone provider may have available. The only solution I have been able to come up with so far carries a pricetag of about $4500.00 and that seems just a *wee* bit pricy given the $8/month pagers it would be replacing

Has anybody heard of or seen any software that could accomplish this task (either windows or linux... or I suppose even OS/2 and it could run physically on the NAM). Seems like a solution that would fit into a LOT of organizations now, I know if I come up with a working solution for these guys I will be next in line to dump my pager like a hot rock

Cheers all!
>>>>> Mike <<<<<

 

[Roldan]

Why not just send the meesage notification to the cell phone? When this is done, the NAM will call the cell number and when the user answers the call the NAM will say &quot;Message for _____________, press any key to continue&quot;. This is how our system is setup and it works great.

 

[mcisar]

Have tried doing that, but the problem is that these salespeople are frequently in meetings with clients and such its rather impolite for them to be answering the cel. With the pager notification strategy they know they have a message, and can check it and call in for their voicemail once they are out of the meeting.

Cheers,
>>>>> Mike <<<<<

 

[curlycord]

Desktop messaging and a cell that has text/email messaging might be a nice combo.
If they get the email from the NAM, setup a rule in email, rule #1- when email recieved from NAM forward to other email (other being email of cell phone).
Just a thought!

http://www.spoctel.com

 

[mcisar]

Hrm... that might be a possibility.

I've only tried to play with any desktop messaging stuff with a CTA200, and never got it to work (WinXP). Is the software the same on the desktop side or is it a different product... is anything needed to be installed on the NAM to enable?

*does best Johnny-Five impression*... neeed inpuuuuuut

Thanks,
>>>>> Mike <<<<<

 

[commsguy]

On my Sprint PCS phone I have the ringer turned off and it simply beeps when I get a &quot;call&quot; from the VM. As long as the caller ID for the remote notification is different from what you would receive a voice call from, this works. The &quot;missed&quot; call shows up as a missed call from &quot;Voice Mail&quot; indicating I have a message waiting for me. Works real well for me.

 

[Arr]

When I've set this up for myself, I have complete success receiving N* Msgs if my cell phone is turned off. With some pauses at the end of the out dial string, I get a long mesage from the N* 'message for' etc. So try having the sales types just turn the cells off.

PhM