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Release 1.3 |
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Release 1.3 |
As a Treo user you're sure to be impressed by the degree of integration between its "cell phone" and "PDA" functions. You probably already know that a record of each call you make and receive is added to a log file which you can view from within the PhoneBook+ application on your Treo. Now you have full access to this call log from you Mac as well, with the addition of tracking all your minutes for the current or past bills.
The program is designed to automatically locate and display the call log that is stored on your Mac every time you HotSync your Treo. The first time you run the program it will tell you that it really needs you to set up some preferences and then, assuming your log files are in the standard location (a Palm/Users folder within your documents folder), the program will find them and display a log window something like this:
Since the program needs to know a few things about the way your cellular provider bills your calls in order to calculate everything correctly, let's go ahead and set up those preferences now by selecting Preferences from the TreoCallLog menu. If for some reason your Treo log files are not in the standard location, you should read the section below on that topic. Otherwise let's get on with filling in the other information.
Use US/Canada phone number format: This displays any 10-digit number, or any 11-digit number starting with a 0 or 1 in the standard format for the US and Canada. If you are outside this region you will probably want to turn off this option (which is selected by default).
User Name: As you can see, there is a popup menu to select a particular user. This is not the same as an OS X user but is the name you gave to your Treo when you first HotSync'd it. If you have logs for multiple Treos, you can set different preferences for each of them by selecting the one you want to work with here.
Archive records for this many months: The program archives all call logs so that you can access old records even after they have been deleted from your Treo. In this field you enter a number to specify how long to retain old records, for example, enter 36 to retain records for three years after the call was made. Leave the field blank to retain call records indefinitely.
Billing Period: The program allows you to display your call logs by month. Your cellular provider will bill calls starting on the same day each month and you must enter that day here. Just enter a number between 1 and 28. For example, if your bill runs from the 17th of one month to the 16th of the next, enter the number 17.
Calls Billed by the Minute: Cellular providers usually round up the duration of each call to the next minute. For example, if you make a call lasting one minute and seven seconds, you will be charged for a two minute call. If your plan charges you this way, check the box. Otherwise the program will use for the call duration the exact number of seconds reported by your Treo.
Incoming Calls: Most cellular providers in North America will charge you for incoming calls just like outgoing calls. Elsewhere in the world, incoming calls are usually not charged to you but are paid for by the caller. This popup menu also provides a third choice which you should select if you have a plan which does not charge you for the first minute of incoming calls.
Peak Hours Each Day: Most service plans include a number of Peak and Non-Peak minutes in the standard monthly charge. Depending on your plan, the Non-Peak minutes may be called "weekend minutes" or "night-time minutes". The bottom half of the Preferences panel is where you input this information. Each day is either blank to indicate there are no Peak hours (typically this is the case for the weekend) or has two times indicating when Peak hours start and end. If there are no morning or evening Non-Peak hours and all hours that day are Peak hours then that day will indicate "All Day".
To set the peak hours, just click one of the days in the table and you'll see a sheet in which you can enter the start and end times like this:
After inputting the times as shown, click OK. If all 24 hours of the day are peak hours, click the Peak hours last all day check box before clicking OK. If there are no peak hours that day, the start and end time should be blank. After entering the times for one day, you'll find that you can very quickly enter the times for similar days by clicking them and pressing enter (the times you typed into the sheet will still be there).
When you've set up all the preferences you can click OK to close the Preferences panel and return to the main screen.
The main screen shows your calls in the right hand pane. You can resize the window, change some of the column widths and even reorder the columns. All the information displayed here is taken from the information recorded by your Treo, not the information measured by your cellular provider. Flixton Software cannot be held responsible for any difference that may appear when you receive your monthly bill.
Note the totals at the bottom of the screen for Peak and Non-Peak minutes and also for any Roaming minutes. Which of these totals is used for a particular call is shown in the rate column on the right of the screen. Peak and Non-Peak status is determined by the peak times you set in the Preferences panel whereas your Treo records whether a call is a roaming call or not when the call is made. If you are displaying the calls for the current month, the program will estimate what your total minutes would be by the end of the month assuming you continue to use your Treo for the same amount each day. The estimates are shown in square brackets after the actual numbers.
On the left hand pane you have the ability to select any one-month period of calls in your log or to display all calls. Calls will be available to display for the number of months you specify in the Preferences panel The dates shown in the left hand panel correspond with the days of the month you entered there. Immediately below this list is a small pane showing when you last HotSync'd your Treo with you Mac. Any calls made since then are not yet available for inclusion in the log.
By clicking on any of the column headings, you can change the order in which the records are sorted. To sort by the date and time of the call, click either of these column headings (the effect is the same). If you click a second time, the order of the sort is reversed so that the most recent calls are first. In the same way, you can sort by the name / number, minutes, type or rate columns. For example, the last of these will separate all your Peak and Non-Peak calls.
Note that there are two checkboxes in the lower right. The first one tells the program whether to include "free" calls. This would include any missed (unanswered) incoming calls and any calls which you started to dial and then hung up immediately. Depending on your other preferences, some or all of your incoming calls may also be free.
The second of these checkboxes tells the program to subtotal any call which have the same value for the current sort key.
In this example the calls are sorted by the name / number field so any calls to or from the same person will be subtotaled, Notice the ten call to Home, totaling 15 minutes, and the three calls to Martin, totaling 6 minutes. Notice that when you turn on the subtotals option, the normal alternating light and dark stripes are changed to allow you to pick out the grouped entries and their subtotal.
Some service plans give you free calls to and from selected numbers. In some cases this may be all mobiles on that service provider's network or the other people in a group or family plan.Once you tell the program that a particular call is to a zero rated number is will remember the number and zero rate all other calls to and from the same number.
To mark a number for zero rating, select a call to or from that number and click Zero Rated on the Edit menu to set the check mark. All calls to and from that number will now show "zero" in the rate column and the minutes will be omitted from the totals. Unless you have checked Include free calls, the calls will not be shown on the log. The exception is that roaming calls to and from these numbers will still be shown and counted since presumably you will still be charged for these.
You can turn off the Zero Rated check mark in the Edit menu in the same way (thought you'll have to include free calls in order to see any zero rated calls.) You can also review, and if necessary remove entries from, the list of numbers you've zero rated from the preference panel by clicking Manage zero rated numbers. You'll see a sheet like the one below. To remove any of these numbers from the zero rated list, select them and click Delete Selected. Click OK when you're done.
You can print a log by selecting Print from the File menu. You can also select one or more entries and Copy and Paste them into a text file or a spreadsheet. Alternatively, by using the Export command on the File menu, you can export a file of tab-separated values which can be opened in a spreadsheet program. You can even have the program read one or more entries to you be selecting them and using Start Speaking under Speech on the Edit Menu. The standard Find... and Find Next commands allow you to search the records for a name or number (or anything else).
For some reason, you might want to view a call log in some non-standard location on your Mac. It should be pointed out that the HotSync Manager you use to read these files from your Treo will only work with files in the "standard" location so there is little need to deal with files elsewhere. To select another file, click the button Use this file... on the Preferences panel and either type the full path name of the file or navigate to it using the Browse button. Note that these files are normally named PhoneCallDB.pdb.
If you have multiple user logs (HotSync'd from different Treos) you can display each of them by selecting from the popup menu at the top of the screen. You'll need to set up preferences for any additional users just like you did for the first one.
Why don’t the files for other users show up? If you have more than one user on your Mac, each with a Treo, then the Treo files are presumably stored under separate Mac accounts (e.g. "/Users/Peter/Documents/Palm" and "/Users/Jane/Documents/Palm"). The files of one OS X user are typically not even accessible to the others. TreoCallLog is really designed just to allow you to pick among several HotSync user names stored under one OS X user, perhaps because the user has now or in the past had several PDAs. We’d be happy to consider your particular needs, drop us an email.
Why is my call log not showing up or terribly out of date? TreoCallLog doesn't read the file onto your Mac, that's the job of the the Palm HotSync software. For TreoCallLog to work you must have the "Backup" conduit installed and turned on. Run HotSync Manager and check the Conduit Settings Window. You should see the Backup Conduit installed and active. If it's not there, you need to reinstall it (and perhaps the iSync conduit afterwards). If it's there, just turn it on (set it to "Backup").
Why don’t the minutes shown match my cellular bill exactly? It’s important to realize the call duration reported by TreoCallLog is that recorded by the software in your Treo at the time the call was made. You can verify this by looking in the call history in your PhoneBook application. The cellular service provider makes a separate record of the call, which may not match exactly. Make sure you have set you preferences on TreoCallLog to match the way you are billed, particularly whether you are billed by the minute, and the rule for billing incoming calls.
Why is there no estimate of minutes to the end of the month? Probably because it's too early in the month. With only one or two days use, it's statistically impossible to estimate how much you'll use your Treo this month. Estimates will start to show when you're three days into the month. Obviously the estimate will get better and better as the month goes on.
Why is zero rate menu option dimmed? Probably because of the records you've selected. You can select several records and tell the program to zero rate all those numbers or to cancel the zero rating on all of them. If you've selected a mixture of both zero rated and non-zero rated calls, it's not obvious what you want to do. You'll also notice the same thing if your selection includes a roaming call, a subtotal line, or an incoming call with no caller ID. You can't zero rate calls from unknown numbers!
I accidentally zero rated a number and it's disappeared, how do I get it back? You can either turn on Include Free Calls, select the record and click Zero Rated again to turn the check mark off or you can go to the Preferences Panel, select Manage Zero rated Numbers and delete this number from the list.
How do I read the exported file with AppleWorks? Select Open on AppleWorks' file menu and set the document type to Spreadsheet and the file format to ASCII text. The file should import as a spreadsheet. (Frankly, Excel makes a better job of this).
Is there a PC version? We have no interest in supporting the PC platform but there is a program called Comet by Natara that might suit your needs. From the screen shots we've seen, it doesn't seem to provide as much flexibility in terms of configuration. There are so many reasons to do your HotSyncing on your Mac.
Is this program shareware? Not really, you are free to use it without paying anything. However, if you find it useful, we'd appreciate a small donation (say $5) via PayPal.