Your telephone can be used to place and receive telephone calls as usual. There are some minor differences between an Etherphone and a standard PARC telephone:

If the party you are calling also has a Lark, the telephones will be connected using the Ethernet. Otherwise, the Lark will make a back door call by taking the back door telephone line "off hook" and issuing the proper touch tone signals to the telephone company.

As of 1/31/89, the Etherphone system knows that "1+" dialing is required by Pacific Bell (but not by Intelnet). So to dial a Los Angeles number using PacBell and AT&T, one might dial "9-1-213-555-6789", whereas the same number using Intelnet would be dialed "8-213-555-6789". One more reason to prefer the Intelnet?

The speaker is used in place of the telephone bell to tell you the phone is ringing (the speaker volume control knob has no effect on ring volume, however). So you should leave it plugged in. The speaker may also be used to play pre-recorded or synthesized voice messages, or it may be combined with the microphone to form a speakerphone arrangement (the microphone quality is seldom satisfactory; use this feature with discretion, and be sure to turn the microphone switch on if you plan to use it.)

Lifting the speakerbox toggle switch from the center to the up (ON) position turns on the speaker, whether or not the telephone handset is off hook. Thus, you can allow those in the room with you to listen; this is called monitor mode. Alternatively, clicking the switch (depressing it momentarily, allowing it to return to the center position) toggles the state of the speaker. If the handset is offhook at the time, the speaker enters monitor mode; otherwise it enters a speakerphone mode. After entering monitor mode in this way, you can proceed to the speakerphone mode (once) by hanging up. In the speakerphone mode, you can terminate a call by returning the switch to the off position or by clicking, depending on the current state of the switch. (This description makes it seem more complicated than it is. If you call Time (9-767-2676) and play with it a bit, you'll get the hang of it.)

The Etherphone system maintains an up-to-date telephone directory for PARC people, and a less up-to-date version for DSBU (osbuNorth). If you know someone's number, it's still quicker to use it. Otherwise, consider spelling out their name on the telephone keypad instead of looking up the number.

To do it, dial *, followed by the digits corresponding to the recipient's Grapevine RName, terminated with #. Three or four digits are often enough. You'll get a fast busy signal if you haven't uniquely identified your party; try again using more digits. For PARC people who have no RName, we manufacture one using the first letter of their first name, their last name, and registry ".xpa". For such Sunnyvale people, we use registry ".sunnyvale".

Although the telephone keypad does not say so, you can use the digit 7 for the letters PQRS, the digit 9 for WXYZ, and the digit 1 for punctuation (notably - and . ).

In normal use, the Etherphone system takes care of the back door telephone line, connecting it to your telephone when necessary. Sometimes it is necessary to override the system manually; whenever you hear a dial tone, you can dial **0 to make this connection.

N.B! Important! Once an incoming non-Etherphone call has transferred to the CSL receptionist, and the receptionist has answered the call, it stops ringing in your office. The Etherphone system has no way of knowing that the call is still available on your back door telephone line, so you'll get a dial tone when you try to answer it. Dial **0 to pick up the call.

Forwarding outside calls to a location without an Etherphone is not possible through Etherphone or Finch commands (but see poaching and visiting discussions in section 3). When there's no call in progress, dial **0 to get the telephone company's dial tone, then dial 106 or 107 and so on, as usual. [A reminder: to forward your phone, dial 106 + the 4-digit extension to forward to (which will then ring that extension, so you can inform them about the forwarding); to cancel forwarding, dial 107. Both of these functions must be performed at your home telephone.]

Other features, such as call-transfer or 3-way conferencing, are also not directly available through the Etherphone system, or are available in only limited situations. From a standard PARC telephone, these features require that you depress the telephone hookswitch briefly (for a second or two), then release it, an action known as flashing. The Etherphone designers do not believe in flashing: depressing the Etherphone hookswitch, however briefly, hangs up the call. You can get the desired effect on one of two ways:

Please log the difficulties you encounter with as much detail as you can remember, and send your reports to LarkSupport.pa. Since your phone still works when you turn your Lark off, we might otherwise not learn of the problems.

Whenever the Lark loses power, communication with the telephone server fails, or serious trouble develops in the Lark's programs, the Lark will give up and connect your telephone directly to the back door telephone line. This will allow you to place and receive telephone calls while repairs are made. If you lift the handset and do not hear a dial tone, wait a bit for the Lark to discover that it's in trouble. You should hear the telephone company's dial tone within ten seconds. If the Lark recovers from its difficulty, the Etherphone features will return the next time you hang up.

You may occasionally find that waiting doesn't help. Find the power switch on the power-cord end of the Lark box. Turn it off, then back on. You should now hear the telephone company's dial tone, and be ready for business. Again, if the Etherphone system recovers, it will regain control after you hang up.

If things continue to cause difficulty, turn Lark power off and leave it off.

Finally, if you are still not able to use your telephone satisfactorily, remove the telephone cord from the Lark socket labelled "Telewall", and plug it into your old trusty black telephone, which has not yet been removed from most offices. Additional difficulties are now almost certainly not the fault of the Etherphone system.

Obtain Finch from CedarChest (Environment.df includes Finch, so you may already have it.)

Add a tailored version of the entries from Finch.profile to your user profile. Finch.profile includes definitions for several Commander buttons, some of which you may not need. Section 7 lists all of the available profile options.

Create your telephone directories based on the template and instructions provided by Sample.TelephoneDirectory. You might want to copy TelephoneDirectory.Style to your root directory and use it to format your directories. See that file for a discussion of how to use it.

It is also necessary for your workstation's Ethernet number to be registered with the telephone system. This should have been done before you received your Lark, but if you have trouble getting started, let us know and we'll check it.

Start Finch by issuing the Finch command to a Command Tool. This command will create the various Finch viewers, if they do not already exist, and start the program. Other Finch-supplied commands, such as Phone or PhoneQ, will also start Finch.

You may include a running Finch in a checkpoint.

Finch creates a Finch viewer (its icon is a telephone) and one or more telephone Directory viewers. The Finch tool viewer has a menu line, a one-line Called/Calling party area, a typescript subviewer that serves as a catchall for system messages, and a Conversations subviewer. The Conversations subviewer logs each voice conversation that you have had during this session, and highlights the entry corresponding to the current active conversation, if any. The directory viewers are just your directory files, converted to TiogaButtons. More about each of these later.

Several user profile options affect Finch initialization. Finch.TelephoneDirectory should list the full path names of one or more personal telephone directories. Finch.InitialIconic specifies whether the Finch tool is created as an icon or an open viewer. Finch.InitialDirectoriesLeft determines whether the directory viewers will be created automatically whenever you start Finch.

You may destroy a Directory viewer whenever you choose. Destroying the Finch viewer destroys all the directories, too.

Finch tries very hard to keep its RPC connection to the voice server (used for managing connections and for storing voice files) active at all times, in order to provide accurate information about the state of calls in progress. Whenever Finch is not connected, its icon becomes grey and insubstantial. If you have disconnected it manually (by buttoning Disconnect in the Finch viewer or by running Finch on another workstation), it can be reconnected by issuing a telephone-oriented command at the workstation (e.g., place a call from a directory, or say Finch to a Command Tool). Otherwise it should reappear automatically when the voice system returns to normal.

The Finch icon also reports the current state of your Etherphone (Lark). If the handset of the telephone is grey, your Etherphone is not running. This state can occur normally during system start-up. If it persists for more than a minute, make sure that the Etherphone switch is in the ON position. If it is, try turning it on and off and waiting another minute or so. If the situation does not improve, call a voice project member or message LarkSupport.pa.

The Finch program is unusual in that it displays a large amount of state in its icon. Here is a representative sample of Finch icons.

The Finch viewer includes a specialized set of menu buttons. Here is a brief description of the menu buttons:

The conversation log displays information about each use of voice-related functions (telephone calls, speaking text, and recording or playing back voice). Each entry shows the date and time of the start of the call, the call's status, its current elapsed time, and the caller and/or callee. While a call is active, it is shown in bold face; when it completes normally, it is shown in a plain face; and if it fails, such as busy or unanswered ("abandoned"), it is shown in italic face. The italic face is intended to alert users to calls that should possibly be retried; the particular choices of type face were chosen to be similar to Walnut message sets.

Each entry in the conversation log is also a Tioga button that provides the following operations.

The user profile option Finch.LogServiceCalls can be used to reduce or eliminate reports of connections to services (e.g., recorded or synthesized voice). The default is to log all of them.

Each node in a Directory viewer is a button that can be selected using the left button or invoked using the middle or right one. Invoking a Directory entry places a telephone call to the indicated party; invoking with middle button will call the office number and invoking with right button will call the residence number. As for conversation log entries, directory entry buttons are ignored when there is a call in progress, to prevent inadvertent disconnects.

Whenever a call is placed in this way, the Called Party field in the Finch viewer will be filled in, so that it is easy to redial a busy number, or to call the same individual again.

Whenever you have made your directory (or directories) available to Finch (by pushing the Directory button or through a user profile option), all of the other Phone buttons or commands search it before consulting the RName directory maintained by the system. This is the only way, at present, to obtain residence numbers. This directory is not available to interpret names specified by number on the telephone keypad.

It is now possible to edit directory entries directly in a Directory viewer. Click on the Edit button on the right end of the menu bar (it will turn into a Buttons button), edit as desired, save the new version, and then click on the Buttons button to restore button functionality. The Directory viewer will also be updated automatically whenever you edit the corresponding file.

Long-distance telephone numbers that appear in your directory without a "9-1-" prefix will be dialed using Intelnet. Explicit prefixes will be honored.

Finch was designed to be used in conjunction with an adjacent Etherphone. Without an Etherphone, you will not be able to place outgoing calls from Finch. Also, incoming outside (back door) calls to your office telephone will not be logged or forwarded, nor will incoming calls to the ordinary phone near your workstation be detected. As a convenience, incoming calls from other Etherphone users will be forwarded to you if the owner of the workstation you are using is registered in the system's on-line telephone directory. For pool machines, a special entry will be necessary. Contact LarkSupport if you would like this feature extended to a particular workstation,

This default behavior will also be observed when the adjacent Etherphone is turned off or is not running properly. Finch will return to ordinary operation when the Etherphone is next turned on or recovers.

The "poaching" and "visiting" arrangements described in the next two sections were also designed to work best when there are operating Etherphones at all involved locations. When this is not true, the backup procedures described in this section are employed on a best-efforts basis.

If you log in at a workstation other than your customary one and run Finch, calls to you (including outside calls) will automatically be forwarded to that location. If there is an Etherphone there, your ring tune will anounce the call as usual. Calls to the permanent occupant of the office will continue to ring there as well, unless the owner is poaching elsewhere.

Multiple logins (i.e., you're logged in to one machine running Finch, and then you log in at another machine and run Finch there also) are a bit more complicated. Your calls will automatically be forwarded (when possible) to the location where you most recently started Finch. The older Finch will be deactivated (its icon will fade to indicate this state); this means that no further calls will be logged in its conversation log. You must reactivate it manually when you return to the old location, by issuing a telephone-oriented command at the workstation (e.g., place a call from a directory, or say Finch to a Command Tool).

Limitations: If your current location does not have an operating Etherphone, only calls from other Etherphone users can be forwarded; back door calls will continue to ring in your home location.

Visiting is used to forward your calls when you are visiting the destination office (say for a meeting) rather than logging in there. Finch must be running in the destination office.

Visiting is a bit different from normal call-forwarding, in that you activate it after you arrive at the destination office rather than before you leave your home office. Thus visiting is well suited to touring the laboratory. As you arrive at each new location, you or the office owner can register you as a visitor there. This automatically cancels any previous visiting arrangements for you.

To activate visiting, register yourself as a visitor with the destination Finch by issuing the "Visit <your RName>" command in a Command Tool. As a result, calls to you (including outside calls) will be forwarded over the Ethernet. Your ring tune will announce the call, and the destination conversation log will display the call as "to visitor: <your name> from <whomever>". Calls to you will ring in both your home office and the destination office, so that you won't miss calls if you forget to cancel visiting when you leave.

You can grab calls in progress by visiting. If you hear your phone ringing down the hall, issuing the Visit command will cause the call to ring at your current location (outside calls will transfer on the next ring).

We do not think security is a serious problem because calls ring in the home office also. However, if you are concerned that others will use visiting to monitor your calls without your permission, you may register a visiting password with the Etherphone system (see a VoiceProject member). This password will then be required for all visiting requests.

To cancel visiting for a departed visitor, use the "Unvisit <RName>" Command Tool command. To cancel visiting for yourself when you return to your logged-in location, you may also use the "Unvisit" command without an RName, or you may use the "Visit <your name>" command.

You can choose to configure your telephone so that it goes on ringing for a time (whether you are visitor or host) after the other telephone in the visiting arrangement has been answered. If you subsequently answer the ringing phone, you will join the other parties in a three-way conference. The user interface facilities required to set up this configuration have not yet been released, so consult a maintainer if you would like to try this option.

Limitations: calls from outside locations may ring only in the visited office, if the person being visited has no operating Etherphone. In addition, the conferencing capability will not function for back door calls: the first recipient to answer locks out all the others.