Outlook add-in

[mistermark]

Anyone using this with success?

[SpamBox]

Like i said you in your other post of the same topic & title.
I tried but also with no luck.

[FFearr]

i don't even know what it's supposed to do. any insight?

[SpamBox]

i don't even know what it's supposed to do. any insight?

Supposed to be able to go to your Outlook contacts, click on them, look in the toolbar and press the dial button on the toolbar.
I haven't been able to get it to work yet.
It says it's dialing on the toolbar but not on the softphone.
Probably would of just been easier to just import the contacts into the MJ contact list.

[FFearr]

I agree. it would be a lot better if you could just import your contacts.

[Al]

Outlook plugin NOT working and has not since I got the MJ last summer....

I am using XPpro, and Outlook 2003

I reported it back in OCT 2007 and all I get during subsequent follow ups is "we are working on it" (sound familiar?)

[Al]

For those interested, the Outlook Add-in has been FIXED and is now working as advertised!

Here are the instructions :

Go to: C:, documents and settings, (your name), application data and delete the MagicJackoutlook add-in folder.

Shut down MS Outlook and download the Outlook add-in from the magicJack menu.


Al

[HolmanGT]

Thank you very much AL. I have been patiently waiting for this fix.




PS - It is also a good sign they are not just ignoring us (too much). LoL

[Al]

Thank you very much AL. I have been patiently waiting for this fix.




PS - It is also a good sign they are not just ignoring us (too much). LoL

All we have to do is keep putting the problem in front of them... remember the more that we are politely persistent the higher up the priority ladder the issue moves... and of course the more people that report a problem that too adds to the priority...

[SpamBox]

For those interested, the Outlook Add-in has been FIXED and is now working as advertised!

Great! Look forward to checking it out.
How did you find out it was fixed?
Did they notify you?
Thanks for letting all of us know.

[Al]

For those interested, the Outlook Add-in has been FIXED and is now working as advertised!

Great! Look forward to checking it out.
How did you find out it was fixed?
Did they notify you?
Thanks for letting all of us know.

I received a response to the ticket I opened about 4 months ago...

Glad to be of help!

[SpamBox]

Does the fixed add-in now import Contact into the softphone?
I still think that's more useful.

[HolmanGT]

Spambox,

No - it just allows you to dial from Outlook's contacts list.

[Al]

Does the fixed add-in now import Contact into the softphone?
I still think that's more useful.

It fixes the inability to call entries in your contact list...

[SpamBox]

yeah i figured they at least fixed that as that didn't work before. just seems like it would be so much easier to import!

[FFearr]

does this work for outlook express? because i don't use outlook, just outlook express. It seems like it doesn't work for outlook express or the address book provided with it.

[Al]

Only works with OUTLOOK....

[jlieberman]

A question and a comment from a new customer who eagerly awaits the arrival of my magicJack:

Does the magicJack's Outlook integration work with Outlook 2007? I have the enterprise edition and could report on compatibility with it, if that would be useful.

Regarding previously posted comments about the utility of importing Outlook contacts into magicJack vs. dialing directly out of Outlook, I can report reliably that the Skype Email Toolbar for Outlook performs both functions beautifully. I hope that magicJack's integration works nearly so well.

For power users of Outlook, dialing from Outlook is probably the more important function. I live and work "inside" of Outlook. It is the first major application I open in the morning, and it remains open on my desktop all day (unlike Word, Powerpoint and Excel, which I open and close as needed). I record lots of contact notes, make calendar appointments, and send dozens e-mails from Outlook every day. So dialing from Outlook is an efficient and desirable function for me.

I look forward to seeing magicJack's integration with Outlook 2007, and I will report any serious problems, bugs or suggestions to this forum. Thanks.

[HolmanGT]

jlieberman,

Yes it works, but only for dialing there is no feature to export/import to Magic Jack. But if you live inside Outlook like a lot of Professionals do you will probably not care about putting 5,000 contacts in MJ anyway.

One caveat if you put anything in the MJ phone book be carefull there are a couple of upgrades that will delete your MJ phone book. Look in the MagicJack folder on the USB device for a file called "Address Book.xml" and make a backup every now and then.

[jlieberman]

Well, my magicJack arrived today, three days after regular shipping (from Florida to Virginia -- not bad). Everything installed smoothly. MJ's web-based optimization improved sound quality.

My first impression is that the sound quality is acceptable, but not as good as Skype's. For example, I called a friend in Cleveland on his mobile phone. There was no latency in the call, but his voice was quite raspy. I thought it the problem was overmodulation of the mobile phone. But when I called him back via Skype the sound was much smoother, "rounder" and more pleasant. We'll see what more testing and more calls show.

As for Outlook integration, all went well integrating with Outlook 2007. MJ's integration has fewer features that Skype's, but the essential one is there -- one-click dialing from Contact folders. I say folders because it works with multiple Outlook Contacts folders, in addition to the default one. This is good.

Now, GT, thanks for pointing me to the AddressBook.xml on the magicJack device. When I am not fooling around with VoIP, I sell text mining software. So I know a tiny bit about XML, but not enough to work with it. I bet some enterprising XML specialist or data guru could write a utility to translate Outlook contacts into magicJack's XML format and schema: Outlook will export contacts in CSV and Access formats. Transform that data and export it as XML compatible with MJ. Load it into MJ.

Yea I know, the software engineers tell me all the time that it is easier say it (or sell it) than to do it. But I bet a good XML engineer could do this in a couple of days. As for me, I am happy to be dialing out of Outlook.

[curiousgeorge]

Glad to hear you recieved your MJ, now its time to play with your new toy! , to get the best out of it sound or other issues make sure you read all the very interesting post that all the MJ people have so generously added to this great forum.peace out!

[Stewart]

The MJ device has a sharp rolloff of low frequencies. Here is an audio file with three calls to 800-437-7950: http://www.freefilehosting.net/files/3d0dl . The first clip was recorded directly from the MJ server, the second from a phone plugged into MJ, the third from an SPA-2102 ATA (similar to PAP2).

You will likely also get better bass if you use a computer headset instead of an analog phone.

[HolmanGT]

Stewart,

Let me see if I got this right.

The second and third clip are recorded from the same master phone and handset?

How did you get clip one directly from MagicJacks Servers?

A quick comment for, for phone equipment the all sounded excellent to me. Yes some reduced base on clip number two but nothing I would get very excited about.

I believe the Telcos shoot for 300 to 3000 Hz, not what you would call hi-fi.

[jlieberman]

One thing I have noticed about MJ that I like more than Skype or Vonage is that the calls seem to connect and ring almost immediately after dialing. The connection time is surprisingly short. When you dial with MJ, you better be ready to talk!

Also, I have noticed that MJ is using about 80Kb/s up and down.

[Stewart]

The second and third clip are recorded from the same master phone and handset?

Yes, the phone was an ITT 2500, clone of a Western Electric 2500 set, complete with mechanical bell. I recorded the signal across the handset earpiece terminals. As I did not have a proper balanced-to-unbalanced adapter, I did the recording with an old DAT Walkman; running on batteries, it caused negligible unbalance to the line. I then played the tape into the PC, using a SPDIF connection. Cool Edit was used to downsample from 48 kHz to 8 kHz, and to adjust the levels of the three clips to be matched within 1 dB.

How did you get clip one directly from MagicJacks Servers?

The call was captured with Wireshark. Its RTP Stream Analysis feature was used to save the incoming audio as a .au file, which was imported into Cool Edit and eventually output as a 16-bit linear .wav file. My (wireless) Internet connection is sometimes flaky, but I confirmed on that particular call that there were no lost or discarded packets.

I believe the Telcos shoot for 300 to 3000 Hz, not what you would call hi-fi.

True, although Skype and a few other providers make a big deal about offering better quality for calls that remain on their network. A Skype-to-Skype call, if you have sufficient bandwidth, is roughly AM radio quality. When you call from Skype to the PSTN, the upper frequency limit is 3200-3400 Hz; bass can extend down to ~100 Hz, provided that the phone on the other end can generate and reproduce those tones.

[HolmanGT]

Stewart,

What can I say? I am impressed with your knowledge of how to accomplish what you did, not many are aware that a phone line is for all practical purposes immune to noise because it is a differential balanced line and if you you hook any recording instrument that is not at least floating up off of ground about the most you will record is 60 Hz hum at best (not to mention the noise you will inject back into the Telco line, which I did as a kid when Ma-Bell was the boss. Got my tail feathers singed for that little adventure into the unknown).

A very lot of work to prove the speech quality of MJ could be a lot better. The irony is there is another post on this site or maybe it was on DSLreports in which someone said they were talking to the owner of MJ and he told them they were going to switch to an ever lower bandwidth codec. Ouch!

[jlieberman]

Okay, you guys seem to have some real knowledge of audio. So perhaps you can answer this: More than once now I have experienced very harsh sounding audio when calling someone on a mobile phone with MJ. It sounded to me like digital overmodulation, which as you know can be very harsh and grating.

So far I have experienced this problem when calling two different phones using different providers in different states. Calls to landlines seem to deliver better, certainly more pleasant, voice quality.

Are others experiencing this problem? Can anyone explain this or suggest ways to improve this situation?

[astro46]

i haven't been able to get the mj outlook bar to work at all. in outlook 2003 or outlook 2007. if i type a name into the bar it will try to dial the name. if i type a phone number it will try to dial the phone number. if i cut and paste another number, it reverts to calling the previously typed number. it has no relation to any contacts, or contact window displayed.

like many other aspects of the mj software it doesn't work very well.

jlieberman: what did you do to get it to work? is it still working?

[Al]

i haven't been able to get the mj outlook bar to work at all. in outlook 2003 or outlook 2007. if i type a name into the bar it will try to dial the name. if i type a phone number it will try to dial the phone number. if i cut and paste another number, it reverts to calling the previously typed number. it has no relation to any contacts, or contact window displayed.

like many other aspects of the mj software it doesn't work very well.

jlieberman: what did you do to get it to work? is it still working?

MJ-Outlook is working just fine, at least on my system.

Using Outlook 2003, XPpro SP2
Here are the steps I take to call...
Click CONTACTS
CLICK a contact name
CLICK on BUSINESS or HOME or MOBILE in the MJ-OUTLOOK Bar
The phone call is initiated auto-magically

Hope that helps...

Al

[astro46]

thank you al. darkman also responded with similar info. now i see why mj toolbar doesn't work for me. i never use the contact list, or, when i do, it is arranged by category, which makes finding a particular name very tedious. i type a name into the search box and outlook finds the contact for me. mj doesn't respond to that. in order to use the mj toolbar i would have to change how i view contacts, and how i have them sorted. plus, the drop down box doesn't show which number is which, so for people with more that the 3 mj alloted choices there is no way to know which number is which.

if mj worked on each contact window, it would be what i need. skype worked well for this.