Sunday, April 13, 2008

Microsoft TAPI DIALER with Vista


With the advent of many new things in the Vista OS, there is an important undocumented method for using an application which utilizes the TAPI (Telephone) interface to Vista.


In a microsoft support conversation I had with the MS support team, I suggested the following:



  • Bug: The MS-Dialer in Vista is not backwards compatible with XP.

  • Bug: There is no documentation in Vista on how to use TAPI or the MS Dialer.Exe

  • Bug: The documentation that MS provided does not dial USA phone numbers correctly.

Here's the problem:


If you were to dial in XP, you would dial this: 1 781 555 5555 as an example. This no longer works in Vista, and the output dialed is exactly this: 1 7 555 5555 where 2 digits of the area code is truncated.


If you were to follow the (paid to provide) documentation, you would now dial: +1 781 555 5555 but this results in the following number dialed: 781 555 5555 without the long distance "1".


The Answer:


Short and sweet: You must take the digits previously dialed by XP and add the country code for the USA like this: "+1 17815555555" with an important space after the "+1 ", resulting in the number dialed of 1 781 555 5555


This will be an important new addition to programs (such as RoloFlex from http://www.roloflex.biz/) which perform under both operating systems, XP and Vista, so the programmer must identify the OS and adjust the TAPI interface accordingly.


In the hopes of helping someone else with their TAPI interface, so that you don't have to pay Microsoft $59 US to help you discover this....


Regards,


Peter A Donovan : Applause Software, Boston USA http://www.applausesoftware.com/



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