In-call features
Can they replace a business telephone system?
Abusiness telephone system can do a lot more than just make or receive calls. It can transfer calls, put the recipients on hold, forward calls automatically and more.
Empathy has the bare minimum of controls. It lets you disable your camera or to move your local camera stream to another corner of the video chat window. The one useful feature it has is the ability to swap cameras with a single click during the call itself, if you have multiple webcams. With other clients switching webcams requires a visit to their respective settings section.
Yate has the least number of in-call controls, but all of them are very useful. The client has buttons to transfer a call or invite other members to a call and turn it into a conference. When you select either of these options, Yate presents you with a pull-down list of contacts you’ve called earlier. You can even transfer calls to another SIP number with Ekiga.
As soon as you answer a call with Jitsi, you’re shown a string of characters to confirm the connection with the contact and your video and audio is secured. One interesting button is record, which lets you save the audio from the call as an MP3. You also get buttons to create a conference call or transfer a call both of which open up a dialog box to select contacts.
Skype, too has similar options. It has buttons to toggle chat, webcam and mic, and the ability to put a call on hold. Two interesting options are the ability to view the profile of a contact, which shows you the contact’s local time, and the ability to send contacts that are automatically added into the recipients contact list.
One major option that Skype is missing is the ability to transfer a call, although it can add people to a call. Also, the Linux client lacks some options that are available in the Windows client – such as the ability to take a picture, view call quality information and adjust different parameters during a call.