Access and NEC phone system using Outlook

JArndt42
JArndt42 used Ask the Experts™
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Our office has just purchased and is installing a NEC phone system that will allow users to make calls from out of Outlook. I have no idea how it gets this done. I have an Access database that has contacts with phone numbers. I would like to be able to use the phone system from Access or through Outlook. Any suggestions?
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Jeffrey CoachmanMIS Liason
Most Valuable Expert 2012

Commented:
Are you quite sure the NEC Phone is capable of doing this with MS Access?
Do you have the software?
Have you tried contacting NEC?
It would seem that if NEC  sold you the phone(s), they would be the best resource to tell you how to get this all working...

In any event, ...this was possible in older versions of Access, not sure about more current versions though...
See here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/148857

JeffCoachman
IrogSinta

Commented:
We also have an old NEC system at work and supposedly they have an API so that you could control it via code but we couldn't find the API.  However, if you're system is new, as Jeff said, you should be able to contact NEC for support.  In our case, we just did a workaround by having the NEC softphone running, adding a label to a form, and running code similar to this:
    Dim numToCall As String
    numToCall = "5012"  'extension to call
    Me.lblPhoneNum.Hyperlink.Address = "callto:" & numToCall
    Me.lblPhoneNum.Hyperlink.Follow

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Ron G.
Jeffrey CoachmanMIS Liason
Most Valuable Expert 2012

Commented:
Ron,
Any special hardware required?


...I'll leave this question to you, as I only posted what little info I had seen on this topic.

Jeff
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JArndt42

Author

Commented:
Thank both of you. The phones are not plugged into each computer. They are all going to a NEC phone server and from there I have to assume they connect to the mail server. This may be way outside the scope of Access. I was just assuming that because it will call a contact in MS Outlook that it would be somewhat simple to get it to call a contact using MS Access.
Commented:
The phones are not plugged into each computer.
With the solution I posted, you don't need a phone plugged into the computer.  You just need to install the NEC softphone.  Having said that, contacting NEC for the API would give you the most flexibility.
JArndt42

Author

Commented:
Well I hope I can use this technology. I will let everybody know if this ends up working.

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