App Voice and Video Calls
Making Direct Voice and Video Calls
You can make Direct calls to other Connect users. Direct calls differ from traditional calls to extensions or phone numbers as they also support Video and Screen Sharing.
Both one-to-one and group direct calls have a similar set of features.
Making a Direct Call
To initiate a direct one-to-one call via the Connect application, select the Call item from a Contact's (or Recent activity's) Actions︙ or by clicking on the phone button in the Chat. Both are shown in the image below:
After hitting the Call button, you will hear the dial sounds, and see the call in the Connect user interface:
The call status bar appears on top of the Chat with your Contact's name, a timer showing the duration of the ongoing call, and call control buttons:
Enable Camera turns the device camera on and starts streaming the video to the other party. If you already enabled the camera, this button will be replaced with the Disable camera button, which will allow you to stop video streaming.
Enable Screen Sharing starts streaming the contents of your computer screen to the other party. If you are already sharing your desktop, it will be replaced with the Stop Screen Sharing button.
Mute Microphone turns your microphone off. The person on the other side of the call will hear only silence without knowing that you muted your microphone. Once you mute your microphone, the Unmute Microphone button will show up.
Pause Call pauses the current call. The person on the other line will see the pause icon on the current call. After setting a call on pause, you will see the Resume Call button which allows to resume conversation.
Hang up stops the call immediately.
Note that in order for you to make direct calls to a contact, the Contact must be online. To reach contacts that are not online, you can call one of their phone numbers including their extension. The difference between direct calls and calls to phone numbers will be described in more detail in the next chapter.
Making a Video Call
You can also start video calls in the same way as direct audio calls by selecting the Call with Video menu item. In this case, the person you are calling to will be able to see your video camera stream once he or she answers the call.
The user interface of video calls allows you to view all incoming and outgoing video streams, switch between them by clicking on small previews and use a few additional control buttons:
Switch to Full Screen opens the video call on full screen. In full screen, it gets replaced with the Exit fullscreen button.
Open Chat opens the chat within the video call page.
Open Menu opens the chat menu which consists of the list of Channels members (for Channels) and the list of files in the conversation.
When you open a chat, you can hide the left part of the application (the floating arrow button on the left edge) to give your video call more space and thereby achieve this look:
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