I've realized after looking over a call accounting package, that is as basic as we want it to be, that all they are really doing is taking data off the serial port and putting it into an access database. I tried hyper terminal and sure enough the data comes in beautifully. So now I just need a way to go from that data to an access database and telling it that each column mean this or that. For example the first column is the long call indicator. The next few are the call start time.

The data is coming out of an old mitel sx-200 from the serial printer port in the rear. It was designed to hook up directly to a printer. If there is a nice little program out there that could do this I'd be very interested. The reason I'm not just buying the commercial software is that it is over $1000 and it really is just displaying the data.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Jesse

Well, the software is there, it just costs money

Do you need the data in real time? You could just dump the serial input to a text file and then import from that text file to Access, Excel or whatever.

The costing money part I understand, it's the costing a really large amount of money for what appears to be little work that bothers me. We don't need real time so the text file might be perfect. I'm not familiar with doing this though so I'd appreciate any information that you could provide. Thanks.

Jesse

Ok, a little Googling and a virus scan latter, I found an open source data logger. It is working beautifully so now all I need is a better knowledge of access. That I can manage though. Thanks for your help.

Jesse