Documenting my experience with setting up a phone notification system for an Evergreen ILS System.
We currently use Teleforms D, a telephone notification product from Innovative Interface Incorportate. It mostly works fine. In my opinion it is way over priced, simply because it is the only option that III gives you for telefone notification that is intigrated with the system. For your large amount of money you get a cheap consumer grade computer with a dual FXO expansion card, with no warranty according to their tech support. If the machine dies you need to re-purchase the system, including the licensing for the priviledge of using the product.
Our teleforms system is licensed for 1 phone line, and 2 seperate messages. Our call volume is around 4500 calls a month.
Things I hate about Teleforms D . Expensive. . Performs poorly, it reads messages to standard operator error messages all the time, then markes those calls as completed. When I asked support about this their standard answer is that "Phones are analog and variable so yes stuff like that will happen, we cannot help you, live with it." . 1 call at a time, so it can take a while for all calls to be placed. . No way to prioritize hold pickup notifications over overdue notices. . No validation of call data before call is placed. Because there can be such a large time span between when a call is generated and when the call is actually placed, call can become invalid before they are placed. There is a way to get around this with though. . Inflexible, cannot be used for anything other than hold pickup and overdue notices. No ability to send out account expiration reminders, event reminders, etc.