Initiating a Call All calls are initiated through the contacts that appear in your Contact Window. There are several ways to place a call to one or more persons. In each case, you must first select the people you wish to contact. For example in the image below, the contact Jimmy has been selected by clicking on his contact with the mouse. Contacts.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0
 

Initiating the Call


To initiate a call you must select your preferred service with the mouse. By default, the last service you used is already selected.  Once the desired service is selected, press the “Contact” button.  You can also double click on the desired service as a short cut to quickly initiate the call.  After performing either of these actions, the call will initiate and the people in the list will be contacted with an invite to join the call.  Your session will begin immediately and a Session Window will appear which hosts the services you have chosen.


If you are trying to contact a single person and they do not respond after several rings, the following dialog will appear:











If you choose to leave a message, you will be taken to the Message Board service where you can enter a message that will be sent to the Message Board of the person you were attempting to call.


Moderating the Call


Above the participant list is a checkbox called “Moderate All Services”.  If you turn this on, all services in the new session will be under your strict control.  If you leave it unchecked, each service will assume its default moderation policy.  You can find more information on moderation policy here. For tips on managing large sessions see the Large Sessions documentation.


Attempting to Call Someone Who is Already in a Session


When someone in your contact list joins a call, an icon shows up next to their name.  This icon will disappear when they leave the call.  This helps you avoid contacting someone who is already in a call when desirable.  For example, the user George below is currently in a call, while Ron is not

However, it may be that this person is in a call that you were supposed to be participating in.  If you try to contacting someone who is already in a call, one of two things will happen.  If you have been given permission to join one or more of the calls this user is in, these calls will show up in a list such as shown here:

Once the appropriate contacts are selected, you may initiate a call in several different ways:


Quick Start


You can press one of the three buttons at the bottom-left hand corner of the Contact Window to immediately start a session with the selected contacts:


1) This button will start a Complete session with the selected users


  

2) This button will start a Chat session with the selected users


   

3) This button will start a Remote Desktop session with the selected user (note: this feature is only available when one user is selected)

Service Browser Start


If you double-click on a given contact, this will open the Service Browser panel.  The Service Browser allows you to choose which services you would like to use in your call, and reflects the participants that you are about to invite into a conference.   A default name for the session you are about to initiate is created for you.  You can edit this name to something more appropriate if you choose.  A good session name can be important for people who may need to join the conference after it is already in progress (described in more detail in “Attempting to Call Someone Who is Already in a Session.”).

Popup Menu Start


You can also right mouse click (or Control click) on any user (or selected users) and a popup menu will reveal all the available services.  Choosing a service from this menu will immediately initiate a session with the selected users.