Editing Telephony Application Programming Interface (section)

== History ==
TAPI was introduced in 1993 as the result of joint development by [[Microsoft]] and [[Intel]]. The first publicly available version of TAPI was version 1.3, which was released as a patch on top of Microsoft Windows 3.1. Version 1.3 drivers were 16-bit only. Version 1.3 is no longer supported, although some [[Microsoft Developer Network|MSDN]] development library CDs still contain the files and patches.

With Microsoft [[Windows 95]], TAPI was integrated into the operating system. The first version on Windows 95 was TAPI 1.4. TAPI 1.4 had support for 32-bit applications.

The TAPI standard supports both connections from individual computers and [[local area network|LAN]] connections serving any number of computers.

TAPI 2.0 was introduced with [[Windows NT]] 4.0. Version 2.0 was the first version on the Windows NT platform. It made a significant step forward by supporting [[Automatic call distributor|ACD]] and [[Private branch exchange|PBX]]-specific functionality.

In 1997, Microsoft released TAPI version 2.1. This version of TAPI was available as a downloadable update and was the first version to be supported on both the Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT/2000 platforms.

TAPI 3.0 was released in 1999 together with [[Windows 2000]]. This version enables IP telephony ([[VoIP]]) by providing simple and generic methods for making connections between two (using [[H.323]]) or more (using [[IP multicast]]) computers and now also offers the ability to access any [[streaming media|media stream]] (MSP driver) involved in the connection.

[[Windows XP]] included both TAPI 3.1 and TAPI 2.2. TAPI 3.1 supports the [[Microsoft Component Object Model]] and provides a set of COM objects to application programmers. This version uses File Terminals which allow applications to record streaming data to a file and play this recorded data back to a stream. A [[USB]] Phone TSP ([[Telephony Service Provider]]) was also included which allows an application to control a USB phone and use it as a streaming endpoint. TAPI 3.0 or TAPI 3.1 are not available on operating systems earlier than Windows 2000 and Windows XP respectively.

The [[Telephony Server Application Programming Interface]] ([[TSAPI]]) is a similar standard developed by [[Novell]] for [[NetWare]] servers.