Artisoft Now Shipping 32-Bit Visual Voice for TAPI 2.0

New ActiveX Controls for Windows Telephony from Stylus Product Group

(LAS VEGAS-April 2, 1996)-Artisoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: ASFT) announced today the
release of Visual Voice for TAPI 2.0 from its Stylus Product Group. Visual
Voice for TAPI 2.0 is a 32-bit ActiveX (formerly known as OLE) control
version of Stylus' award-winning Visual Voice telephony software toolkit.
Visual Voice for TAPI 2.0 is designed to provide an easy-to-use interface
to any TAPI-compliant telephony device, including voice/fax modems, PBXs,
and voice boards. Using Visual Voice for TAPI 2.0, developers can create a
variety of telephony applications including interactive voice response
(e.g. touch-tone banking), fax-on-demand, and voice mail. Visual Voice for
TAPI will work with any ActiveX control-compatible environment such as
Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0, Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0, Borland Delphi 2.0,
Powersoft PowerBuilder 5.0, and many other tools that support ActiveX
controls. Available now directly from Stylus, Visual Voice for TAPI starts
at $495. There are no runtime fees. 

Created by Microsoft Corporation and Intel Corporation, TAPI is a component
of Windows Open Services Architecture (WOSA) that defines a standard for
integrating the telephone with the personal computer under Microsoft
Windows. "Windows is clearly a strategic telephony platform," said Mike
Cassidy, general manager of the Stylus Product Group at Artisoft. "Visual
Voice for TAPI 2.0 allows any Windows developer to easily build computer
telephony solutions that can immediately be deployed on millions of
Windows desktops." Applications developed with Visual Voice for TAPI can
interact with practically every available data source and network because
of the extensive third-party and built-in support available in the
development environments that support ActiveX controls.

An Expanding Windows Telephony Market 

"Microsoft is delighted to see Visual Voice combined with TAPI," said
Charles Fitzgerald, product manager in the Telecom Products Unit at
Microsoft. "This announcement brings the power and flexibility of Visual
Voice to a broad range of telephony hardware." TAPI provides a standard
programming interface across telephony platforms allowing developers to
build hardware-independent telephony applications. 

At Touch-Tone Computers in Honolulu, Hawaii, Visual Voice for TAPI is being
used to provide cross-platform telephony solutions. According to Wayne
Barry at Touch-Tone Computers, "Visual Voice for TAPI allows us to deploy
our applications on different hardware without making changes to our
code." Barry is deploying the same code on a range of TAPI-compliant
hardware. 

The inclusion of TAPI in Windows 95 brings telephony support to millions of
desktops. With the release of Unimodem/V, Microsoft has provided a
universal TAPI driver for standard voice modems. "Just as the inclusion of
Windows printer drivers allowed any Windows-compatible application to
print to any Windows-compatible printer, Microsoft's telephony
infrastructure will allow any TAPI-compatible application to work with any
TAPI-compatible telephony device," said Chris Brookins, vice president of
development at Stylus. Today, Visual Voice for TAPI can be used to create
sophisticated telephony applications for popular voice modems such as the
Diamond Multimedia Telecommander and Creative Labs Phone Blaster.

Easy-to-Use, High-Level Telephony Development Tool 

Visual Voice for TAPI 2.0 is a 32-bit ActiveX control that adds TAPI
support to popular Windows development tools. With Visual Voice for TAPI,
someone with no telephony experience can effortlessly develop
telephony/voice and fax applications. Visual Voice for TAPI provides a
high-level interface to all of the following functions: 

* waiting for inbound calls and detecting ringing, connection,
  line dropping 
* placing outbound calls prompting for touch-tone input once calls
  are established 
* playing and recording voice files 
* sending and receiving faxes 
* PBX call control for transfers, conferences, and other applications 

Included in the Visual Voice for TAPI toolkit is the Voice Workbench, a
point-and-click graphical tool to visually define the telephony components
of an application and generate the corresponding application logic. The
Voice Workbench is used to create and maintain voice prompts, menus,
files, and more. 

Ready-to-run sample applications for voice mail, auto-attendant,
fax-on-demand, and order status systems are included with Visual Voice for
TAPI. Additionally, the product's unique TAPI Examiner feature makes it
easy for developers to test the TAPI support provided by a specific
hardware platform. The TAPI Examiner generates a complete report detailing
the compatibility between a TAPI hardware platform and a Visual Voice for
TAPI application. 

Artisoft leads the industry in providing easy-to-use, affordable
networking, communications and computer telephony solutions for business.
Chosen by nearly five million users worldwide to connect and share
computer resources, Artisoft solutions include the award-winning LANtastic
family of networking products, and the INSYNC family of remote
communication products, including CoSession Remote and ModemShare.
Artisoft's computer telephony solutions include Visual Voice products,
Visual Fax, and Otto. The company maintains nine offices outside the
United States, and distributes its products in more than 100 countries. 

For more information, contact Artisoft's Stylus Products Group at 201
Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139. Sales Consultation 617/621-9545. Fax
617/6217862. E-mail sales@stylus.com. World Wide Web home page
http://www.artisoft.com. Recent Artisoft press releases are available at
no charge through PR Newswire's Company News On-Call fax-on-demand system;
call 800/758-5804 and enter company number 107158. 
 
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