Making an Audio Call

Initiating an audio call is as simple as clicking Call and then choosing a contact. After this is done, the contact receives a pop-up and an audio notification and has the option to answer, decline, or redirect. Answer and decline are obvious in what they do. Redirect gives the option to reply through IM or to set one’s status to Do Not Disturb. Accepting the call updates both users’ status to In a call.

When the call connects, a new window appears that looks similar to the IM window. In fact, it is the same window, but with some additional buttons and status items, as shown in Figure 22.6.

Figure 22.6 The Call Window

The call window offers several buttons, including the following:

• Hang Up

• Put call on hold

• Mute microphone

• Adjust volume or mute speakers

• Network Quality

• Time in the call

Muting the microphone alters the icon on the client that muted the microphone. No indication of this action is given to other participants of the call or conference. Sliding the blue ball on the speaker range raises or lowers the speaker volume. The hold button places the call on hold, which notifies other participants on the call. Clicking resume returns the call to an active status. Both “on hold” and the call itself display the amount of time the call has been at a particular status.

One of the other icons visible in the window is a Network Connectivity status. This indicates the quality of the network connection and is useful in troubleshooting issues with voice quality on a call. At the upper-left corner of the window is an icon of a red phone that is used to end the call.

Although calls are archived into the Conversation History folder on the local system, they contain only IM conversations from the Macintosh client. Call information is not recorded nor stored here.