Calling Card Application - CCDialer v2.0 BETA

[Kris Kumar]

Folks, I finally got over my laziness and completed the calling card application that integrates with your address book on the Smartphone. CCDialer v2.0 lets you dial the number of your international contacts quickly using a calling card, without the hassle of entering the calling card access number and PIN number each time.

http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/images/Kris-Jul06-CCDialerMainAni.gif

Now you can select a contact from your Pocket Contact list, select a calling card and quickly dial the international number. This new version, which is in BETA, works on Windows Mobile 2003 and Windows Mobile 5.0 devices. It is resolution aware, so it will work fine on QVGA and Landscape screens.

More information can be found over here:
http://krishnakumar.com/Main/Extra/CCDialerV20/CCDialerV20.htm

Since this application is in BETA, please post your comments/feedback/bug reports over in this thread.

[Mike Temporale]

Nice work Kris! I'll have to download this version and give it a try. :D

[Kris Kumar]

Thanks Mike.

I would appreciate the comments. Actually would be happy to hear the words - "it installed without problems." :lol:

I want to wrap this up and take it out of the BETA mode soon. And put out the final version. The stupid Moto Q keyboard not working with the contact list is driving me nuts.

[simon tahiti]

Hi Kris, I love this application...AND it installed without a problem :)

I have a new iPAQ 6828. I own the phone and associated service privately, but need to make occasional voice calls for my employer too. (Usually just a few each day since I have a fixed line at my desk, but sometimes many more - especially when I travel overseas for work.)

I have an AT&T Corporate Calling Card provided by my employer for this purpose, but using it involves entering a HUGE string of numbers:
Dial up access number of AT&T in whatever country I'm in (I travel quite a lot for work)
"01" (but only if calling anywhere other than the USA)
The full international number that I'm trying to call, including country code and area code (except if it's a US number, which requires me to omit the country code)
My calling card number and PIN
CCDialler lets me set up a different calling card details for each country, with names like:
call non-US number from Australia
call non-US number from Singapore
call non-US number from USThis already works perfectly for Australia, and I'll have a chance to test it in Singapore next month and the US in October.

My feedback/suggestion is this: Can you build in a setting for each calling card (like the existing 'Dial Intl. Access Code' check box) which enables the user to define whether the country code should be included in the dial string?

That would enable me to also set up calling card details such as:
call US number from Australia
call US number from Singapore
call US number from US
The AT&T Corporate Calling Card has a huge installed base of corporate types. For example, my own employer has a fleet of several thousand AT&T Corporate Calling Cards and has recently settled on the new iPAQ 6900 series as a standard issue company-provided WM5 PPC phone. Enabling full support for that particular card (including US numbers) might get you many additional users - and ones who could afford to pay for your software too. Heck, maybe you could even license it to AT&T?

Please keep up the good work, and many thanks!

[Mike Temporale]

wait... isn't the 6828 a Pocket PC device??? Kris, I think you've just tested your application on the Pocket PC platform too! Nice.

:D

[simon tahiti]

wait... isn't the 6828 a Pocket PC device??? Kris, I think you've just tested your application on the Pocket PC platform too! Nice.

:D

Yes indeed - there was nothing around for PPC, so I gave CCDialer a shot - and it appears to work perfectly well in my WM5 PPC Phone device.

[Kris Kumar]

Yes indeed - there was nothing around for PPC, so I gave CCDialer a shot - and it appears to work perfectly well in my WM5 PPC Phone device.

Awesome! 8) Simon, thanks for being brave and trying it out on a Pocket PC Phone Edition. :-) Wow, didn't know that I will have such a wide mobile coverage.

[Kris Kumar]

My feedback/suggestion is this: Can you build in a setting for each calling card (like the existing 'Dial Intl. Access Code' check box) which enables the user to define whether the country code should be included in the dial string?


This is tricky for me to implement in the application because the Country Code varies in length, I mean number of digits. Like United States is "1," and India is "91," Costa Rica is "506." I don't think I will be able to parse them out, unless the you put a delimiter like "-" in the number in the address book.

But here is a thought, how do you currently store the US numbers in your address book. I store them as +1 (000) 123 4567. e.g. +1 (000) 123 4567 in case of US and +91 (100) 123 4567 for Indian numbers; you get the idea.

The GSM network is very smart. When a number like +1 000 123 4567 is dialed in US from your cell phone directly, the GSM network recognizes you are in US and ignores the +1.

Now if you were in Australia and you dialed the same number from your cell, then the GSM network in Australia will replace the + with whatever is the international access code in Australia (like US has 011). GSM network is smart. Not sure if the CDMA world can do the same (aka Verizon and Sprint/Nextel). BTW my calling card application is smart enough to recognize the + and replace that with the international access code, but it replaces the + with the intl. access code every time.

Long story short, I think setting up your US phone numbers as +1 000 123 4567 I believe will solve your problem. You will have a common address book and calling card for each country, no need to worry about removing the country code. ;-)

If the above is not true or if I got off on the wrong track. I need some examples, like a dummy phone number the way it is stored in your address book and how the calling card should dial it when you are in Australia/other places. Will be happy to help out.

[Kris Kumar]

Enabling full support for that particular card (including US numbers) might get you many additional users - and ones who could afford to pay for your software too. Heck, maybe you could even license it to AT&T?

Now that you mentioned all these additional users, I might take this application a little more seriously. And licensing to AT&T, wow! 8)

I am toying with the idea of putting up a donation link on the web page, but at this time not interested in selling the application because all the online sites charge way to much to host apps. Also I dont want to spend time on building the trial and full version check or unlock, registration key functionality etc.

[Kris Kumar]

The AT&T Corporate Calling Card has a huge installed base of corporate types.

Did I mention that you can share your calling cards with others - colleagues, spouse, kids? If you look at the \Application Data\CCDialer\ folder on your phone, look at the files named "CCDialerCCxx.txt," where xx is a number. These files have the individual card info.

If you plan to share the card info with colleagues don't forget to wipe out the PIN in case everyone has their own PIN. ;-)

[simon tahiti]

Hi Kris,

I store all my numbers in the standard international format, i.e.

+[COUNTRY CODE][AREA CODE][NUMBER]

As you know, this works fine to and from everywhere in the world as long as you dial directly via the GSM network.

The issue here is that I'm only using the GSM network to gain access to AT&T's back end system calling card system...and their back-end system is nowhere near as smart. It treats US numbers differently than all other numbers. If you include the country code in the dial string for a US number then the call won't go through via the calling card.

I guess they do it to save people from entering 3 digits ("01" and "1") when dialling the USA - makes sense given that they are a US company and the vast majority of their card users' calls would be to the USA.

However, it means that it doesn't work with CCDialer. :?

I guess it's no big deal to take out the "+1" from my US-based contact records...but it just feels wrong to store their numbers in an incomplete format like that....and of course they will no longer work if dialled directly via the GSM network.

[simon tahiti]

I'd hoped that the WM5 devices might store the country code, area code and local number in separate fields - that way you wouldn't have to parse out the country code and get stuck with the whole issue of the codes being different lengths. But if the whole number is stored in just one field then that is impossible. Oh, well...no big deal really.

By the way, I had one other suggestion: it would be good to have the option of using CCDialer to call a number that isn't in your contacts list, but which you just key in. For example, say if someone leaves a note on my desk with a number to call back...or someone leaves me their return number in a voicemail. It would be great to be able to just key that number into a field in CCDialer.

[Kris Kumar]

I guess they do it to save people from entering 3 digits ("01" and "1") when dialling the USA - makes sense given that they are a US company and the vast majority of their card users' calls would be to the USA.


Thanks for explaining. Let me see what can be done. I might have to build a table of Country Codes and detect the +1 (US) and +91 (India) etc, and take it out. This way the application will be generic.

Of course the other option is to make an AT&T specific one. Or introduce a setting that enables the application to take out the country code for only one country of your choice. Instead of a generic removal for all country codes. The application is capable of sensing only one country code and removing it. In this case, I can have prompt the user to enter the country code that needs to be removed in the settings. This way the app is generic for at least country. And seems like this "country code not required" exclusion is only for one country.

Thanks for taking time to explain things.

[Kris Kumar]

I'd hoped that the WM5 devices might store the country code, area code and local number in separate fields - that way you wouldn't have to parse out the country code and get stuck with the whole issue of the codes being different lengths. But if the whole number is stored in just one field then that is impossible. Oh, well...no big deal really.

I was thinking the same too after I posted my thoughts last night. (Similar to the way the address is stored in Outlook.)

By the way, I had one other suggestion: it would be good to have the option of using CCDialer to call a number that isn't in your contacts list, but which you just key in. For example, say if someone leaves a note on my desk with a number to call back...or someone leaves me their return number in a voicemail. It would be great to be able to just key that number into a field in CCDialer.

Cool idea. This one I will definitely put on my list of things to do.

[zmanuel]

I installed the application with no problems (Cingular 2125, WM5 aka Qtek 8310).
First, I would like to thank Kris a lot for the excellent application.
The only suggestions for improvement that I have are:
- in the T9 search, it only checks for the last name (e.g. a contact named John Stuart will be displayed if you press 9 (for s), 8(for t), and not for 5(for J) and 6 (for o).
- also, in the T9 search, the special characters present in some languages (e.g. French and Romanian accents) are not recognized. For example, the name "Şerban" will not be located at all.

Thanks again and I hope you don't mind the feedback.
Manuel

[Kris Kumar]

The SmartList control that I am using to enable contact lookup is provided by the fine folks at OpenNETCF.org and it seems to be searching only the begining of each line. Let me see if I can improve it.

Will also look into the non-english characters.

BTW: I have the kept aside few hours this weekend to fix some of the issues with the application and put out hopefully the final version.

Keep suggesting the improvements/bugs. :-)

[nuguy]

Perhaps you could help me with a problem...

This is one of my biggest disappointments on the 6700's (apache) and win mobile devices in general WinMobile5 in particular.

In northern Illinois even if you are calling within your area code, you need to dial the area code.

Being as I dial most of my clients only once from my cell, I don't want them all to be added to my contacts. And since I am calling while driving a truck and looking at a piece of paper dialing on the screen. I WANT TO HAVE A PREPEND OPTION for my area code (unless I specificly dial a different one).

Most $39 phones have this option, and most palm phones have this option.

It can't be that hard to program it (can it?).

After doing much searching, and not getting much closer, it seems (per MS website http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/help/pocketpc/useyourphone.mspx#settings ) there may be a phone setting that is not enabled that would enable "dialing rules".

These would be in the same area of settings as network time synch, and voicemail notification, etc..

But these phone settings are not available (not even any reg hacks I can find).

What I'm looking for is specificly "dialing rules".

Yes, I know they are listed in network settings, but these do not affect voice dialing.

It seems that you may be onto a possible solution to this.

I think your ap would satisfy an even larger audience with this as a feature (two different end user types - 1 aplication)!

Any thoughts???

[rcgroup]

Kris, I am also a PPC Phone user and wanted something like this... Nice but a little difficult to use as i have quite a few contacts and scrolling thru was a problem...

i can suggest 3 things
1. a small text box at the bottom that will search/filter contacts as you type there
2. somehow link it into the contacts that have some rules defined.. I was earlier a treo 650 user and had a program called TAKEPHONE, that had a nice feature to setup calling cards. What i woudl do is create a rule for all numbers starting with +91 rule applies, and i would make it look like this
+91 ----> translaets to 18880000000pin+91 and the rest of the # continues...
3. another thought is create rules on page 1 of interface ; lets say i am interested in calling someone in india i will have a rule for India that will show me all contacts that have a # starting with +91 and will use calling card 1
another rule that is US will show me all #;s starting with +1 and use a card
and so forth.

[Amidsin]

Thanks, it is a great application. I have been lookiing for something like this. At some point was thinking about coding something myself. Again, thank you very much for it.

I'm using it on the i-mate JAMin. It works just fine. So, it is one more confirmed compatible device.

I hope to see the version with integration with UI of of the Pocket Outllok (selecting contact not from special list, but from Contacts application). I think that this feature would make this application truely invaluable.

[Duke7211]

I may have invited this error by installing incorrectly but I thought that I would let you know anyway.

Because my computer is still running 98se, I went ahead and tried to download and install using T-Mobile SDA II.

It installed without a hitch and I was able to input calling card info. When I tried to select contact however, there were no contacts to select from (may be because I have not figured out how to get them off of sim card). I went back to screen which has the contact and calling card info and repeated the -menu, select contact- steps and received an error message......
=====================

CCDialer.exe
ArgumentOutOfRangeException

Application::Run+Oxf
DialerMain::Main+Oxa
====================

Sounds like quite the handy program although I might end up forgetting my pin :D

[louisw]

Unexpected error has occured-

CCDialer.exe
Exception

Combobox: set_SelectedIndex+0x0

etc.

I was able to enter calling card info once. but then it crashed when I tried to select a contact. Now it crashes on loading. Tried removing and then reinstalling (with soft resets between). No dice. Same error.

[Hockeyump]

When I installed it on setting up a Calling Card I deleted the Access Code in the Dial Int Access Code option and after that got repeated Unexpected Error crashes. I deleted CCdialer and reinstalled but it still crashed.

Then I saw Krisna's message about the text files in \Application Data\CCDialer\ folder on your phone. I deleted all these and it worked perfectly after that.

In writing this I went into the set up Calling Card option again and used Ok to close it without any data in it. Crashes again. Deleted the .txt files and it all worked again. Went into Calling Cards again and this time used Cancel from the Menu options to get out and there was no problem. :D I guess sometimes you have to be stupid to learn that the programmer knows best. :oops:

Many thanks Krishna for all your hard work.

[Mike Temporale]

What device are you running it on?

[haryrada]

Hi,

I'm new to this forum. Lots of great info in here!

I downloaded the CC-dialer on my T-mobile SDA, but it does not work at all for me. I have a sprint calling card so the sequence is:

- (800)xxx xxxx (sprint card loaded)
- then the International # starting by 01+country code and number
- then the pin number.

All it does is dialing the cc number, nothing more. I tried to increase the pause as well, bu tstill the same result.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

[Kris Kumar]

Sorry for the slow response, was on vacation.

Unfortunately, I don't know what is the cause for this problem. I have seen it happen only a few times (almost 2+ years of use). Launching the CCDialer again and re-dialing the number for me always does the trick.

When you press the dial soft key in CCDialer, does the confirmation screen show the number with calling card and the contact's number separated by the P (for pause) or does it just show the caling card number?

[haryrada]

Hi Kris,

Thank you for your answer.

I've tried relauching again, reinstalling, it still does the same thing.

It does show the confirmation screen with the pp in between the numbers.

Hary

[=ODIN=]

Hi Kris,

I registered for these forums just so I could post a thank you.

I just installed your CCDialer on my phone and it works great.

My phone is an:

Eten Glofiish M700
WM 6 Touch Screen
QVGA


Runs perfectly on this device.


Thnx again.
=ODIN=

[cartesian]

I've installed on my T-mobile Dash (HTC Excaliubur) with WM6 without significant problems. Works GREAT, thanks!

A small issue/feature: I had the access number for my calling card programmed as a separate "contact" in my address book. When I used CCDialer and looked at call history, the calls appeared with that calling card contact name as the person called rather than as: Person Name -CCDialer. I had to delete the number from the calling card "contact" to fix the problem. Similar issue occurred when I tried saving one of the CCdialer generated dial strings as a Home2 number for one of my contacts; all of my CCdialer calls then appeared in call history as though they were calls to that person, even though they weren't.

Apart from the above, the only thing I miss is being able to launch CCDialer from within the contacts application. Looking forward to that new feature!

[rsg]

The File \CCdialerV2Beta1.arm.CAB" is not a valid Windows CE Setup file.


I have an HP iPaq HW6515 with Windows Mobile 2003 SE, which is listed as a supported OS. I tried copying the CAB file to the storage card and main memory, but whenever I run it I keep getting this error. Please help.

[szohar]

Love it !!!<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Can you add to the contact menu a command to dial the number through the CCDialer ?<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Great job!!!<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Thanks<o:p></o:p>
<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sharon</st1:place></st1:City><o:p></o:p>

[Jason Dunn]

Love it !!!ffice:office" /><o>:p></o>:p>

And now you see why pasting from Word isn't a good idea (or whatever you used). :)

[rams]

Hi Krishna Kumar,

I just installed your application and tried. Its really working great.
Its just gives lot of comfort to the the calling card users.
You can make it as a really wonderfull product and market yourself.

Cheers,
Ramesh

[joe422]

I am using the ATT card, too. It allows to make subsequent calls by typing ## and then entering another number. This allows avoiding a .50$ connect charge.

Would it be possible to somehow support subsequent calls, i.e.,
- I make a call from the address book
- I select the next contact to call from the address book
- The card dials ## and then the next contact

[Rama]

Hi

I'm trying to use the Application with a Ericsson X1 (Xperia)
The program install alright but I can't find my contacts :( it might have to do with the OS Language - My OS is in Swedish. If so, will there be a version that I can use ? :)