.KEYWORD calltrack
.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT SHOOTOUT
.TITLE Call management with the Palm organizer
.OTHER
.SUMMARY If you make lots of phone calls for business, eventually you’ll need to keep track of who you called, who you need to call back, and on whose machine you left 9,247 voicemail messages. In this detailed product shootout, Ted Casey examines a number of Palm built-in and add-on products in search for the ideal call management solution.
.AUTHOR Ted Casey
The telephone is such an important part of our professional and personal lives that we may not be fully conscious of how much we use and depend on it. We handle many outgoing and incoming calls each day and often play telephone tag with the people we are trying to talk to. Keeping track of all of the phone calls and messages you receive can be a daunting challenge, especially if that’s an important part of your job.
It occurred to me recently that there were convenient features built-into my desktop email program that might also make the process of managing phone calls easier. For example, when I want to address a message to someone, I don’t have to remember the email address, I simply type a few letters of the addressees name, or select the name from a list. To reply to an email message, I simply select the reply command after reading the particular message. To see when an old message was sent, I just look in the Sent Messages (or outbox) folder. These features of email programs make email easier to manage. Wouldn’t it be great if some of these features were included in an application for managing phone calls? To have this info accessible wherever we might make or receive a phone call, it should utilize the Palm organizer.
There are a few ways to use the Palm organizer to make telephone call management easier. Before looking at the products, let’s consider how telephone calls happen and how the Palm could ideally assist us.
.H1 Scheduled and outgoing calls
There are occasions when you plan to make a call a day or two in the future. You want to be able to make a record that includes all the necessary information to complete a telephone call, such as the contact name, telephone number, date, time, subject, a note, and category. An alarm to remind you to make the call would be useful too. Records of outgoing calls, once the call has been placed, should also include the result — whether the call was completed, or if you had to leave voice mail. There are occasions when you’ll call someone, leave a message, not get a return call, and then decide to call again. The outgoing call record should be able to generate a follow up call, with the same call data.
.H1 Voice mail and receiving calls
When making a note of voice mail messages, you’ll ideally want a quick way to enter the date, time, caller’s name, company, phone number, subject, message, category and whether the call requires a follow-up. This is essentially an electronic version of the pink "While Your Were Out" note, and the Palm organizer can enter much of this info with only few taps of the stylus. Using the Palm to track phone calls leverages its built-in phone number listings and its portability. For the times when voice mail requires a follow up, the Palm organizer should create a follow-up outgoing call with all of the relevant info copied over.
The four solutions reviewed here are: the Palm’s built-in applications; Action Names by iambic Software; PhoneLog by Hands High Software; and Call Tracker by Standalone Software. To varying degrees, each helps you maintain order in your telephone communication.
.H1 The built-in solution
Palm owners can use many of the device’s built-in features to track phone calls. I have used the To Do List to track outgoing calls (since they require action on my part), and the Memo Pad to record incoming calls. The Palm’s built-in Phone Lookup feature makes copying the name and phone number from the Address Book easier. An attached note provides space to jot down a lengthy message. Palm’s shortcuts feature allows users to write short commands that insert date, time, or common phrases such as "call back" or "left voice mail". For more information on using the shortcut feature, see "Maximize your Graffiti with shortcuts" in the January, 1998 issue of PalmPower.
Categories can be used to sort phone calls, or a single category named Calls can group all calls together. Once calls are completed, they can be checked off. The To Do List has options to display or hide completed and future To Do items, which keeps things looking orderly. A due date and a priority can be assigned to the call to prioritize the importance of individual calls. The built-in Find can help to find specific calls, for example by contact name or project. You can HotSync. This makes all the call information available in the Palm Desktop or other conduit-enabled application.
There are some serious shortcomings to the built-in solution. This solution spreads call information among three applications. Copying and pasting between the Memo Pad and the To Do List for incoming and outgoing calls is very tedious. If you want to set a reminder to make an important call at a specific time, you would need to manually copy and paste the information in to the Date Book. Some outgoing calls result in left messages, requiring another person to respond before the communication is completed. Some task management applications, such as Outlook 98 have "Waiting on someone else" as a setting for the status of a To Do item, but the Palm’s To Do List items can only be unchecked or checked (i.e., incomplete or completed). I found trying to use the To Do List for call management like trying to put square peg through a round hole. It is difficult to track telephone tag, in which callers trade voicemail back and forth, before getting in touch.
The Palm’s built-in Phone Lookup feature only looks up names by last name or company name, depending on how addresses are displayed in the Address Book. I have them displayed by last name, which prevents lookups by company name, and first name is also not an option. If the person to call was not available at the primary telephone number (selected in the "Show in List" property of a contact detail, and the only phone number copied by Palm’s Phone Lookup feature), then you would need to open the Address Book , find the contact, look up the other telephone numbers (e.g. mobile, home, other), and manually copy and paste these other numbers to the call entry one number at a time.
Sounds like a pain, doesn’t it? For calls received from a new contact, there isn’t any easy way to automatically add the contact to your Address Book. So, this information would need to be entered twice, as an incoming call and a new contact. I found using the built-in features of the Palm organizer an awkward juggling act between the four built-in applications. Luckily, the Palm OS platform has inspired developers to write custom applications that better meet the challenge.
.H1 Action Names
Action Names by iambic Software brings together the Date Book and To Do List in a single interface, and actually uses the built-in application databases. [Action Names was a classic, excellent Newton program and we’re thrilled to see it now available for Palm users. — DG]
Action Names features a dedicated field for a contact in Date Book and To Do entries. Contact names are displayed in bold type and a magnifying glass icon provides a more prominent look up feature that accomplishes essentially the same thing as the built-in Phone Lookup, as shown in Figure A.
.FIG A There’s a clear lookup button on the Calls screen of Action Names.
Because Action Names uses the built-in Date Book and To Do List for its databases, it works seamlessly with the Palm Desktop or other conduits. Action Names places telephone calls in the To Do List in a new category entitled Calls.
Like in the To Do List, items in Action Names can have priorities, but no alarms. Action Name’s contact linking has the same limitations as the built-in Lookup feature, including look ups by either last name or company only and access to only one phone number. Action Names is unable to look up mobile and pager numbers. In some views Action Names only displays four or five letters of the contacts name, which can look a little cryptic.
Action Names adds some odd characters that you will see if you view records in the To Do List or on the desktop.I had some problems with the Find command. Like with the To Do List, calls in Action Names can be active or checked off, and there is no way to have items waiting for someone else.
To keep track of incoming calls, the Memo Pad would still need to be used, which brings up the same big problem as the built-in solution — distributing call information throughout multiple applications. While Action Names may provide a compelling integration of the Date Book and To Do List in a single screen, as shown in Figure B, this application doesn’t provide much more in the way of call management features than the built-in applications.
.FIG B You can see a lot of information in the Action Names agenda screen (although the Palm’s screen makes things a bit tight).
Action Names is a fine product, but it’s not as well suited for the specific call tracking function as I’d like. There’s a new product from iambic called Sales Warrior that’s just out. I haven’t had a chance to review it, but it looks to be an interesting solution.
.H1 PhoneLog
PhoneLog 2.0 from Hands High, as the name suggests, is designed specifically to track phone calls. PhoneLog provides strong features for looking up contact info, managing voice mail, and tracking outgoing calls.
.H2 Creating and editing calls
PhoneLog allows you to enter name, number, company, subject, the category, call type, date, time, duration and a note for a call. The program allows you to easily enter a new phone call, as shown in Figure C, and will look up the contact after a couple of letters are entered in the name or company fields.
.FIG C You can easily enter a phone call, and connect the call with existing contact information.
PhoneLog provides two methods to look up names and numbers. One is similar to the built-in feature, providing a list of addresses to select from. This can be configured to pop up automatically when a new record is created. Another lookup method, called Quickfill, looks for contacts that match the letters entered by the user in the Name and Company fields. You can jump through the matching contacts one at a time with the scroll button. Like the built-in lookup and paste method, PhoneLog displays a "W" or "H" next to the number to indicate whether the number is for work of home.
PhoneLog does the built-in Phone Lookup feature one better by copying all phone numbers for the contact (not just the one shown in the address list) and initially displays the primary number for the contact.
PhoneLog also stores a link directly to the contact. If the entered contact info cannot be found in the Address Book, PhoneLog will display a "+" marker that indicates that the contact info is new. With a single tap of this marker, PhoneLog will automatically add a new entry to the Address Book. If you want to edit the Address Book’s info for a contact, clicking on an arrow will bring you directly to the contact in the Address Book. This tight integration with the Address Book is a time saver. Each call is given a type. PhoneLog’s call types are "Conversation," "Left Message," and "Received Voicemail," by default, but you can add or edit them as you wish (up to 20)!
.H2 Main view
PhoneLog provides versatile outline and list views for calls, including outlines grouped by type, contact, company, or subject or as a chronological list. The chronological List view shows the contact name and either the subject or phone number, depending upon the preference setting. You can see this in Figure D.
.FIG D You can view a list of calls by date.
Preferences also control whether names are displayed with "LastName, FirstName" or "FirstName LastName." Once a call is completed, you should check it off. Like in the To Do List, you can choose to display or hide the checked calls (new in version 2.04). You can delete old calls by specifying a date. The Find feature helps you find specific calls.
To top things off, if you sets the Address Book hard button (second from left at the bottom of the Palm) to launch PhoneLog instead of the Address Book, (set in the Buttons Preferences), a second push of this button will launch the Address Book. The way that PhoneLog allows itself and the Address Book to effectively share this button makes it very easy to access PhoneLog without making it difficult to get at the Address Book.
PhoneLog provides a single application to store both incoming and outgoing calls. While PhoneLog is much better suited to tracking phone calls than either the built-in solution or Action Names, there are still a few additional features that I would like to see in PhoneLog.
PhoneLog is designed to keep a single record for calls between you and someone else about a subject, rather than a series of records for the various incoming and outgoing calls. Using PhoneLog you can enter info for a call and give it a type "Received Voicemail." Then when you return the call, change it to type "Conversation" or "Left Message" depending on the call. This works, except that each record can only maintain the most recent status — a single date, time and type.
In other words, you can’t keep a record of past incoming and outgoing calls about a specific subject without manually copying all the info to new records. PhoneLog is designed to keep a short list of current call discussions rather than journal all incoming and outgoing calls. For the same reasons that keeping important outgoing and incoming email messages is a useful procedure, I found keeping records of all outgoing and incoming calls to be useful.
One additional criticism. Calls have a check box in the list view (which you check when a call is completed), but there is no way to check them off as complete in the edit screen. PhoneLog does not include alarms for calls, and lacks several convenient features of the To Do List, such as prioritizing call entries, and hiding future calls.
PhoneLog supports exporting to the Memo Pad and Address Book, but does not export to the Date Book or To Do List.
.H1 Call Tracker
Call Tracker by Standalone, Inc. provides a robust feature set, but works only with the PalmPilot Professional and Palm III devices. The program distinguishes itself from the rest of the solutions reviewed here by providing a very logical format with individual record types for incoming calls, outgoing calls, and scheduled calls.
.H2 Creating and editing records
When creating a new record in Call Tracker, one of the first features you’ll notice is its contact look up, which can search for first names, last names or companies.
A preference setting enables the Name Picker to automatically appear with matching names after a specified number of letters have been entered in the name or company field. Call Tracker’s look up feature displays all search results at once in a pop-up menu, rather than requiring you to scroll through results one at a time (which is PhoneLog’s matching search results display method).
There are times that I would prefer to look at the entire list of addresses before choosing a contact, but Call Tracker doesn’t support the built-in Phone Lookup feature as an alternative lookup method like PhoneLog.
Call Tracker provides access to all phone numbers for a contact, but doesn’t display a letter, such as "W" or "H" next to the displayed number to indicate which number is selected. As a result, I found myself often clicking on the number selector pop up menu which does display a letter next to each number. Call Tracker always displays the work number first rather than the primary number set in the Address Book.
For new contacts, Call Tracker allows you to add a name and phone number to the Address Book by selecting a menu command. Unfortunately, you can’t enter any company information because of a limitation in the way Call Tracker parses the text entered in the single name/company field. Call Tracker also doesn’t provide a direct link to a contact in the Address Book. If you realize you have an old number in your Address Book, or for some other reason want to jump right to the contact, you must open up the Address Book and look up the record manually, requiring several more steps than were required in PhoneLog.
.H2 Incoming call record in Call Tracker
Like PhoneLog, Call Tracker provides lots of room for notes for each message. Call Tracker, however, doesn’t show the contents of the notes field unless you tap on the note icon. PhoneLog shows two lines of the note with a scroll bar at the bottom of the call edit screen, providing a convenient view of the note. This came in handy, and as a result, I tended to use notes more in PhoneLog and less in Call Tracker. Call Tracker also provides several more lines than PhoneLog for the subject of the call, which may seem like an unnecessary use of space to the concise-minded but a welcome luxury for those who need to record lots of details.
Incoming calls have a Follow Up button, as shown in Figure E, that generates a linked Scheduled Call record with all the appropriate information (name, number, etc.) copied over. Scheduled calls have optional alarms that are very useful reminders for placing a phone call at a specific time. A pop up menu provides quick settings for 5, 10, 15, 30 minutes, 1-3 hours, 1 day, or a custom time for the alarm.
.FIG E There’s lots of space to record call details.
Scheduled Calls have a Place Call button that generates a linked Outgoing Call record with all the necessary information copied over. Outgoing calls have a field for Results, with a pop up menu for "Call Complete", "Left Voice Mail", and so forth. Call Tracker’s settings allow you to set calls to be deleted after the Follow Up or Place Call buttons are tapped. I found the setting that deletes Scheduled Call records after the call has been placed to be quite useful.
While Call Tracker does link Incoming Calls to Scheduled Calls, and Scheduled Calls to Outgoing Calls, it would be great if Call Tracker went one step further and, like modern email programs, showed in the Incoming Call record and the main view that a follow-up was made to a call.
.H2 Main View
Call Tracker provides a chronological list of calls that is easily configurable to show Incoming Calls, Outgoing Calls, and Scheduled Calls, or any combination of the three. You can see this nicely in Figure F.
.FIG F You can see all of your calls quite clearly in Call Tracker’s main view.
Call Tracker allows 1-6 columns of information to be displayed, including date, time, name, subject, result, notes, and call duration. You can manually adjust the column widths, so you can see the full contact name. This is a nice feature not available in Action Names or PhoneLog. I found 2-3 columns of info to be the limit for the Palm’s small screen.
Small optional icons on the right clearly indicate whether a call is Incoming, Outgoing, or Scheduled. You can view calls by individual category or all at once.
Call Tracker’s list view is more flexible than PhoneLog’s, but Call Tracker lacks the outline views of PhoneLog. While Call Tracker allows various fields to be displayed in columns, the lists, unfortunately, can only be sorted chronologically. Down the road, I can imagine Call Tracker, PhoneLog, or some other application presenting calls in a threaded view similar to a newsgroup or message board. Call Tracker also lacks some nice features of the To Do List application such as prioritizing, hiding completed calls, and hiding future calls. Names can only be displayed in the "FirstName LastName (Company)" format.
Call Tracker provides the most extensive export features of the reviewed products allowing users to export to the Date Book, To Do List, or Memo Pad.
Call Tracker preferences include the option of deleting calls after being posted to the Date Book or To Do List. I found exporting to the Date Book to be a very useful way of archiving my past calls. Call Tracker provides a preference for either full length or abbreviated posting to the Date Book or To Do List. Checkboxes are used in Call Tracker not to mark a call complete, but to select one or more items from the main screen to be posted, duplicated, or deleted. This can be quite confusing.
If you have a lot of calls, it can take some time to select them up to a specific date, checking off each one, and then selecting "Post to Date Book." I’d like to see a feature that would allow me to just specify a date and have all calls before that date posted to the Date Book or To Do List and then deleted from Call Tracker. I would also like to see Call Tracker add a feature to allow it and the Address Book to share the Address Book button, like in PhoneLog. [Although you can do this yourself using HackMaster and a variety of Hacks. — DG]
I evaluated a beta version of Call Tracker 1.4 that had a few bugs related to scrolling the list, but expect these to be addressed before the final version is released.
.H2 CallTrack Desktop
Of all the call tracking programs I looked at (not counting the built-in applications), Call Tracker is the only one with a Desktop version, as shown in Figure G.
.FIGPAIR G You can track your calls on your PC then HotSync them back to your Palm device.
The desktop program costs an additional $19.95, but it’s worth it, preventing you from needing to use Graffiti except when away from your desk.
.PAGE
.H1 Wrapping it all up
The Palm organizer can help you stay on top of the many phone calls you receive and place each day. In my evaluation I found that neither the built-in applications nor Action Names provide the kinds of phone call management features that are available in PhoneLog and Call Tracker. Action Names is a fine organizer for general contact information, but wasn’t ideal for call tracking. PhoneLog has several compelling features, but the underlying format of Call Tracker seems better designed to keep complete records of incoming and outgoing calls. Give each a product a try and see whether they can help you stay on top of your calls. Table A compares the pros and cons of each product.
.BEGIN_TAB_TABLE A Product Comparison
.TAB_TABLE_HEADER Product Pros Cons
.TAB_TABLE_ROW Built-in Apps Free; Access to calls on the desktop Have to use multiple apps to keep track of calls; look up only copies one phone number; can’t add address records; look up by last name or company only
.TAB_TABLE_ROW ActionNames Shows Calls, To Do items, and Calendar in a single screen No incoming call tracking; only one phone number lookup; can’t look up mobile or paging numbers; layout doesn’t show full names; Find doesn’t work; no alarms; expensive
.TAB_TABLE_ROW PhoneLog Share PhoneLog and Address Book on Address Book button; Outline Views; Linking to Contacts in Address Book; 2 lookup methods, and look up by first name, last name or company; Best posting to Address Book Not designed to track all calls
