As mentioned in the last post, the recent change to our UI had increased the clutter on the call record history page. So today we cleared it up. The result is this.

Only the flash player, name of the file and manage options are displayed initially and the details are hidden from the view. Clicking on the ‘Show Details’ reveals the details of the call record. The view can be toggled to show or hide.

Also the current record your cursor is on is highlighted as you move along the page.

Notice the two new items at the top of the page to expand/collapse the details of all the records in one shot. The select all/none has also been moved from the actions widget to here.

This small change has enabled us to do a lot more with the UI. So now you can also set the number of records that are displayed per page. The setting is on the settings page. The default value is 10 but it can be changed to any value you wish.

Another small change was control on the mail notifications that CRIMS sends. It can be turned on or off from the settings page. Here’s a screenshot.

So how does this look? We hope its better than before, but please let us know if it isnt.

The next thing in line is to remove the popup when managing your call records. So stay tuned.

We released a couple of changes to the UI that we had been working on recently and added a sidebar to the Call Record history page. This sidebar adds a table sorting, batch operations and advanced search functionality. Here’s an overview of these.

Sidebar:

The sidebar looks like the following on the ‘Call Record History’ page.

It has four widgets as of now: space usage monitor, batch operations sort table and advanced search. The space usage shows a graphical representation of the storage space used for your account, as the name suggests.

Batch Operations:

This widget allows you to select multiple call records and do things with them. Right now you can either share them with others or delete all the selected ones. We will add more options to this widget as we go along.

Sorting:

The call records view can be changed using this widget. Four options are available as of now: newest first, oldest first, ascending/descending order of duration and ascending/descending order of file sizes. Once you have sorted them you can use apply some batch file operations on them.

Advanced Search:

Advanced search can be used to filter the call records which match a specific criteria. The four filters available now are duration, filesize, recorded by and uploaded from. So if you want to list all the call records uploaded from a specific machine, then select the uploaded from filter and apply the name of the computer in the pattern part. That will list all the records uploaded from a specific machine. Similarly for recorded by. The patterns in the duration and filesize case can be something like ‘>10 MB’ or ’10 < seconds’ etc.

Once the results are displayed, you can apply either use batch operations or sort them using the sorting widget.

To illustrate the use of these widgets, suppose you want to list all the call records made to a certain person which are greater than 5 mins, oldest first. To do this, you first use simple search to list all the records with that persons name, then apply the the duration filter using the advanced search widget and finally apply the sort with oldest. The resulting page will have all files listed. Now if you want to share all of these at one shot, use the batch operations to select all of them and then select “Share All Selected” from the dropdown. Fill in the email address and call record will be shared!

New Storage Plans:

We also added four new plans: the 8 GB @ $5 p/m, 18 GB @ $10 pm and their yearly counterparts. The payment UI has also been changed and now you can check your status once you have subscribed to it, or cancel the subscription if you want to.

Transcription Rates:

The rates of our transcription service has also been changed to 50 cents per minutes instead of the per line. So for a call record of half an hour, the transcript price will be $15.

What’s Next:

As you would notice, the records table has become a bit cramped up because of the sidebar addition. So in the next iteration we are planning to change that. We are also planning to add a mail notification setting so that you can control how you receive mails from CG CRIMS. Watch this space for more.

Hope these changes are useful. Please do send us your feedback on it.

Several new features in this release. Here’s a brief description of each one of them.

A new menu item for pausing/resuming uploads has been added. It will show up whenever an upload is ongoing. The upload is also automatically paused if another Skype call is detected so as not to hamper the quality of that call. It is automatically resumed when the call finishes. Thanks to David for suggesting this feature.

Some changes were made to the Echo Canceler to increase its sensitivity. If you are experiencing echo in your calls while using Call Graph, then please turn this option on from the ‘Advanced’ tab and check. This option is turned off by default. Beware that this is still an experimental feature and right now it degrades the quality of recording.

We added support for mono encoding of mp3 files in this release. Several of our users had asked for this. This option can be found in the configuration -> recording tab. Its available only for mp3 files though. The reasoning being, if you are recording as wav then you are more interested in preserving the quality and having the caller and the callee’s voices in a separate track does that. If you are doing a podcast then use the wav file encoding and then post edit with Audacity.

In addition we added support for 8 KHz and 24 KHz sampling rates. The default still stays at 16 KHz sampling rate, 96 kbps bit rate. The 8 KHz is mainly to ensure that you have lower file sizes. But note that the quality really goes down at this rate: its analog telephony quality.

Another minor change was to rename the ‘Search’ menu item to ‘History’ to clear up some confusion as to where your call records go after the recording is done! The search functionality is integrated into this call record history dialog. Also, you will see two new options ‘search’ and ‘transcribe’ for each call record. Right now they just redirect you to the CRIMS home page. But watch out, it will lead you directly to you account in the future releases!

This release also contains several bug fixes. So please update now. And please keep sending in your feedback.

A big thanks to Jai Vikram at Desistartups for a comprehensive review of the Call Graph and our service CRIMS. Thank you so much guys. Do hop over and read the review.

Today, we introduced a new transcript ordering process and UI. Transcripts are one of the premium features we offer and it is the cornerstone for our business model. Till now we had been offering the service for free. But starting today, we have changed our policy to offer only the first transcript for free. For subsequent orders, an advance payment is required. The payments can be made from PayPal as of now.

Ordering Process:

Here’s how the new process works (click on the images to see a larger version).

Once the uploaded file is screened by our system you will get a notification and a link. The link will lead you to the transcripts page. Its a new page and a new menu item.

Click on the ‘Order’ button to place an order. The system will detect if its your first transcript order and offer it for free.

In case this is not the first transcript order then the price will be mentioned and clicking the ‘Order’ button will lead you to the PayPal gateway. Once the order is done, it will provide a confirmation.

If you want to check your transcripts any time then click on the ‘Transcripts’ page on the menu. It will show all the ordered transcripts and the files for which it can be ordered.

Policy Changes:

Only the first transcript will be offered for free and the subsequent ones will be charged on a per line basis. The cost per line is 7 cents. The payment has to be made in advance and the transcript will be delivered within 18 hours after we receive the payment.

We have also relaxed the minimum duration criteria for screening of call records. Now all call records more than 1 MB are screened by our system.

Whats Next:

Ability to view the transcripts, download it, search through it, share it with others etc. If you have any suggestions please send them across.

Important Note:

If you have ordered transcripts in the recent few days then it probably has gone into a black hole due to the changes that were being done. We’d request you to place the transcript order once again. We’ll be mailing you individually as well regarding this.

Please let us know what do you think of these changes. Is this interface simple enough? Is the policy okay? Price high, low? We’d be glad to hear your thoughts on it. Thanks.

Call Graph needs to connect to the Skype API so as the get the voice data. Skype should automatically ask you now to authorize Call Graph and once you’ve permitted it, you are all set. But sometimes that never happens. Here’s a step by step tutorial on how to authorize CG to connect to Skype.

Click on the image to enlarge.

Step 1: Go to Skype – > Tools -> Options

Step 2: Click on ‘Advanced’ tab on your left navigation bar.

Step 3: Click on that ‘Manage other programs access to Skype’ link at the bottom of this window.

Step 4: Click on the ‘Change’ button. If you do not see Call Graph listed there, then try restarting both Call Graph and Skype. If that doesn’t work too, restart your PC.

Step 5: Authorize Call Graph to connect to Skype and click on the OK button. The Call Graph task bar icon should show a green tick mark. The toolbar status should have message ‘Ready to record’.

If you get a message from Skype “Another application (CallGraph.exe) is attempting to access Skype, but we are unable to respond. Please try to restart application.” then please try restarting both Skype and CallGraph. To restart CallGraph, right click on the CallGraph system tray icon and choose exit from the popup menu.

If you do not get any message from Skype then try making a call to echo123 from Skype.

If you have authorized CallGraph and still can hear only one side of the conversation in the recorded file, then it might be a problem with your stereo file playback settings. Please try recording in the mono mode. The setting is in configuration -> recording tab.

Leave a comment or get in touch with us if you need any help.

We also provide online storage, sharing, transcription and collaboration services along with the free Skype call recording client. To use these services, the Call Graph client has to be linked to an account on Call Graph. Once the association is done the files can be uploaded. The automatic upload option causes file upload start immideately after the recording finishes (it is paused if another Skype call is detected to prevent any degradation of call quality). The ‘Associated Clients’ page lists all the associated clients from where they can be managed.

More than one client can also be linked to an account on Call Graph. This option is especially useful for teams. All the files can be automatically uploaded to the centralized online account from where it can be monitored. Moreover a separate association password can be specified, different from the account password. The association password restricts access only to associating a client and uploading files from it. The account password can be used to access the files and manage them. So association password can be circulated within the group safely.

If you have more questions or need support please contact us.

Our weekly update of the Call Graph Skype call recording plugin is out. The version number is 1.0.6.2. You can get the update by right clicking on the Call Graph and choosing ‘Check for updates’ from the popup menu. Here are all the changes which went into this release.

The index file location was moved from the recording directory to the Application Data directory. This change completes the bug fix which was started in the last release. Now the fatal error dude to index file load failure should not happen. If suppose the recording directory is not available when recording is being started (eg. the case when its on a network share) then a recording start failed notification will be shown. One of our users was facing this particular issue and altered us on it. Thanks for doing so.

We added two additional configurations in this release as well, both in the ‘Advanced’ panel of the Configuration dialog.  The first one is for discarding call records which are less than a certain length. Several of our users had asked for this option. The default value is 5 seconds. So all records below 5 seconds will be now discarded and you’ll get a notification saying that the recording was canceled. It can be increased upto 5 minutes (300 seconds).

The second option was for setting the encoding buffer size. The encoding buffer is a temporary store for the voice data before it gets encoded as mp3 or wav. The rate at which this buffer is consumed depends upon several factors: the amount of ram available, the CPU speed, the sample rate of your recording etc. So the hardcoded value of 10 MB sometimes used to be too short in some cases. Which used to manifest itself as breaks in the recorded file. If your records have breaks in them then please increase this value to something like twice or thrice the default value of 10 MB.

Looking forward to your feedback and thanks again for using Call Graph.

Update: We made a stupid typo in this release: ‘Encoing’ instead of ‘Encoding’. Thanks to David for pointing it out. We’ve fixed it in version 1.0.6.3.

Several of our users have asked us how to increase the current limit of 1 GB of storage. So today we released an initial version of our paid storage plans. To keep things simple we only have two plans right now: a 50 GB storage option for $25 per month and a corresponding yearly plan of 500 GB for $250 per year. They have been designed with enterprises in mind who are into lot of calling. Think support, teaching etc. and need to monitor their calls. CRIMS with easy storage, search and sharing is a perfect solution for such needs. So if you are internet business involved in lot of Skype calling, do have a look at our plans. We can add a lot of value to your business.

To upgrade, click log in to your account and click on the ‘Upgrade Plan’ menu item.  Choose any one of the plans and checkout with Paypal. As soon as the payment is processed, we’ll add more storage to your account.

Also, these prices are not the final one. We are still trying to optimize our premium pricing so as to make it as much useful as possible. We might change it in the future. So please send in your feedback if you think its too high. Or too low for that matter. Also, we’ll be adding more features to the payment process to make it smoother. So watch out for further updates.

For our regular users, the 1 GB free plan is still there. So you can still use our system without paying anything!

We made some minor UI changes today to CRIMS: registration process and pagination.

The registration process has been made a bit more standard now. Earlier you had to provide your email and we used to send a link, which used to lead to the profile creation page. Now, you can create a profile and then verify your email later on whenever you wish. You can log in and view your account, but then cannot do much. We need your email address so that the notifications are sent whenever you add machines or upload call records. So for those you would have to verify your email.

The pagination of the Call Record history page was also made more standard. Instead of displaying all the page numbers in at the bottom of the page, which used to be a long list if you had more than 50, 60 records, we now display only around 9 pages. First three, three from the middle or your current page, and three of the last pages.

Another minor change was in the search box. Now its more intuitive and prompts you to enter your search term.

Happy call graphing!