Adomo Brings Your E-Mail to Life

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When a user calls the Adomo gateway, he or she is prompted for his or her name and passcode, which can be entered on the telephone keypad or spoken into the phone. After the user is validated to the system, the gateway tells him or her how many new messages are waiting. The user can have the gateway "read" the messages or forward them or the user can respond to them immediately. He or she also can use the IVR interface to create new messages and appointments and to list contact information.

AdomoMCS uses many single-word and short-phrase commands. It dealt well with different accents on the single-word commands but sometimes stumbled on phrases. In particular, my 14-year-old daughter's light Russian accent caused problems. I found that the system consistently misunderstood more than 20 percent of her attempted phrase commands.

To create or forward e-mail, you name the Exchange users you wish to contact, say "no more users," then speak the body of the message. Subject choice is limited, and the body of the message is sent as a Windows .wav file. To create an appointment you list the attendees by the display name in Exchange and again state "no more users." Spoken comments are attached as a .wav file to your invitation. Users can set alerts that will forward a text message to their phones or beepers if the messages are from a certain person or are given a certain priority.

Configuration of AdomoMCS for Exchange can be complex because of its links to Exchange and ADS, but Adomo's online help is good. Users control creating the account on which the gateway relies to access both Exchange and ADS. The good news is that you know what the user name is and the account's rights. The bad news is that you have to configure the user name and rights yourself. The next stumbling block--a requirement that you create the COM+ object needed for phone notifications--will be eliminated in future releases, according to Adomo. Although the company provides excellent instructions on how to accomplish this task, the necessity is unexpected and unwelcome when installing enterprise-class software.

To let you send a message to someone not in Exchange, Adomo provides a cumbersome spelling interface for the address. Although the product is sensitive to background noise, Adomo filters it more effectively than many products I've used. After five failures to understand a command, however, the gateway hangs up.