Stylus Innovation was the first company to introduce a Windows telephony toolkit for Visual Basic and other high level Windows development tools. Visual Voice debuted in 1993, and Visual Voice for TAPI a short time later. Stylus Innovation is now a part of Artisoft, Inc. which recently discontinued the Visual Voice and Visual Fax toolkit lines. Visual Voice for TAPI was designed primarily for voice processing applications, although it can be used as a general purpose TAPI control for environments such as Visual Basic, Delphi, etc.
Microsoft distributed a "lite" version of Visual Voice for TAPI with Visual C++ 4.1 called "Visual Voice for TAPI Solo". I you have access to the Visual C++ 4.1 CD you can install it and use this fully functional version of Visual Voice for TAPI, which comes with a few sample Visual C++ applications. What makes this a "lite" version of Visual Voice for TAPI is that it does not contain the audio files and code needed to automatically speak formatted information such as dates, numbers, money, etc. that is a key feature of Visual Voice Pro and Visual Voice for TAPI.
The TAPLine OCX is a custom control that was written by Pioneering Solutions for inclusion in the book "MAPI, SAPI, & TAPI Developers Guide" by Mike Amundensen. This FREE control gives Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 complete access to all the Telephony API services defined by Microsoft. You can download the OCX from the authors web site.
Shortly after Stylus Innovation released the first version of Visual Voice, Pronexus, Inc. introduced their own telephony toolkit, VBVoice. Pronexus has also developed a TAPI version of their product. While Visual Voice is geared more towards developers who want to write their own code or generate code via Wizards, VBVoice uses a flowchart approach to let users design their application graphically and hides virtually all of the code/programming from the developer. Like Visual Voice, VBVoice is a voice telephony toolkit and is not designed for TAPI datamodem or fax communications.
PDQComm was originally a toolkit from the Crescent division of Progress Software that provideed a wonderful collection of controls for developing serial/datamodem applications. PDQComm includeed, among other things, support for over 7 different types of file transfer protocols and five different built-in terminal emulators. Crescent was sold to Sax Software a short while ago, and PDQComm has been replaced with Sax Comm Objects.
Parity Software has been in the telephony industry for an extremely long time, historically focusing on custom voice application tools for Unix, DOS, and most recently, Windows. After seeing the explosive demand in Windows tools like Visual Voice and VBVoice, Parity responded with their CallSuite line of custom controls.
TeleTools from Exceletel, Inc. is yet another set of TAPI custom controls. TeleTools includes both a Microsoft Active X (OCX) control and a Delphi VCL control. See their comprehensive review guide for detailed information on TeleTools.
Async Professional from TurboPower Software is a native VCL component library that supports all versions of Borland Delphi and Borland C++Builder. This toolkit has dominated the communications category of the Delphi Informant Magazine Reader's Choice Awards for two years now, and among other things provides support for DTMF, CallerID, voice recording & playback, faxing, and datamodem communications including X/Y/ZModem, Kermit, and Compuserve B+ file transfer protocols.
X/Page, from LogiSoft, is an information management tool that interacts with Microsoft Outlook. It provides dual functionality: it enables you to easily page the contacts that you have stored in Outlook and it allows you to forward your email to your alphanumeric pager. X/Page now uses TAPI to manage the phone line. Users no longer have to worry about initialization strings. In additon, users can now send pages through the internet.
9. Black Ice Fax/Voice C++ OCX
The Fax/Voice C++/OCX is designed to enable
developers and end users to combine Fax and Voice. It is fully object oriented, and takes
into account the new emerging technology in faxing, voice and Internet. Developers can
build black and white or color faxing applications within a few days. Combined with other
Black Ice products such as Generic Printer
Driver and Imaging libraries, Fax/Voice C++/OCX allows developers to rapidly build Fax
Servers, Fax on Demand,
IVR Voice with faxing capability or to "Fax Enable" existing applications.
Fax/Voice C++/OCX also
quickly and painlessly integrates with VB 5 or Delphi.
10. Sunny Beach Caller ID Active X
If you are looking for an Active X control that provides Caller ID information on wide range of hardware then this control is for you. Sunny Beach also has some pretty nifty TAPI based applications as well.
Sax Software has a very powerful toolkit called Sax Comm Objects that provides terminal emulation, file transfer, and many other features for data communications with TAPI.
The list of TAPI controls is constantly growing. Some places to keep up to date on TAPI toolkits are the Phone Zone and Computer Telephony magazine. The VBXtras catalog also lists some TAPI controls as well as other general telephony & fax controls and much more. If you know of other controls please let me know and I'll consider adding them to the FAQ. TAPI support for Delphi can also be found at the Delphi Super Page.