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About Communicator

1. Communicator Help

• Redirect to our official website www.bicomsystems.com
• Additional documentation and guides are available on our official website: www.bicomsystems.com. If you still have any questions, please feel free to contact our support department.

2. Check for updates

• Check online for official product updates.
• If there are updates available, the software will apply them automatically. If your software is up to date, you will receive a message as stated above.

3. Submit Feedback

• User can now easily send feedback from the “Help > Submit Feedback…”

4. About

• Communicator 5.3 About dialog contain information regarding application version, revision, PBX information, libraries, and other important information. Users can easily access/copy and paste info for support if needed.

Added automatic crash report system.

When Communicator crashes, the user has the option to send a crash report for developers to analyze the issue and solve the problem.

Preferences

General

Preferences

General settings

To start click on the Settings icon inside toolbar. Inside the General Settings section, checking the box next to “Launch application at startup” will start the application when your operating
system starts, while checking the “Log in automatically on startup” will log the user in automatically every time the application is launched. Depending on your Operating System,
the “Set default program associations” button will allow you to choose which protocols application will open by default (tel://, sip://, callto://, etc.).

From the drop-down menu you can select the language and if you have your own language file you can add it by clicking the Add language button, then select the language that you wish to add from a list and then choose your language file. You will need to restart the application for language change to take effect. In Communicator 5.3 two more languages are included, French and Italian.

Under the Always on Top section you can choose whether you would like to have call or call and contacts window always on top or if you wish to disable the always on top option. This
feature will keep the Communicator window on top even if another window, e.g., web browser window is selected.

You can turn on or off diagnostic logs by checking the box next to it. When turned on, Communicator will store all logs on your computer/machine. You can specify how much data/information you
want to store by editing SIP and Jabber logging levels. By default the SIP level is set at 3.

Depending on the situation you can choose between 1 to 10 levels where Level 1 would store the least amount of information and Level 10 would store all information. There are 4 logging
levels for Jabber. Error is the first level and will store only errors, each next level includes all previous levels.

e.g., Warning will include warnings and errors, Info will include info, warnings, and errors,… and debug will include all of them.

Below the Jabber settings, you can set for how long the Communicator tray icon will blink while you have notifications pending such as missed calls or unread messages.

Contacts

Users

Warning icon

To start click on the Settings icon inside toolbar, and navigate to the Contacts settings section. At the top you have 3 tabs: General, Google, and Outlook.

Under the Online users section you can enable or disable the option to display only online users, as well as set conditions when a user is considered to be online, e.g., if online on IM and Phone is set, the user will be considered online if he or she is available for both chat and phone calls.

Next option, if Online on IM or Phone options is selected, user will be considered online if user is available for either chat or phone calls. Online on IM will consider the user to be online if the user is available for chat – and Online on phone will consider the user to be online if the user is available for phone calls.

Under the “Default contact double-click action” you can set what action will be initiated when the user double-clicks on a contact. If chat is selected then a chat window with contacts will open, and if call is selected then double clicking the contact will call the contact. If you wish to sync your contacts daily, check the box next to “Sync my contacts daily”.

Next go to the Google tab. Here you can choose to integrate your google account contacts with Communicator. Simply check the “Enable Google contacts integration”, enter your Google email and password, and your Google contacts will sync automatically.

Outlook Plugin with Communicator navigate to the Outlook tab and check the “Enable Plugin in Outlook” Contacts box. This will enable you to initiate calls directly from Outlook.

Communicator automatically syncs your Outlook contacts. (When I receive a call from an unknown caller, automatically display the “new Outlook contact” window) option, when turned on, it will open a new Outlook contact form every time you receive a call on Communicator from a number that is not on your contacts list.

NOTE: Users can control if Outlook’s add new contact windows shows up on Call started, answered or finished.

If loading of contacts has failed for whatever reason, we currently display a warning icon which is fine. But the user should be able to click it and application to ask “do you want to retry?” Instead of opening the 3 dots menu in the modules bar, and finding the option “refresh contacts”

Phone

Phone

To start click on the Settings icon inside toolbar, and navigate to the Phone Settings section.

Under the General tab, check “hide the keypad after a call is placed” to minimize the Keypad once the call has been placed. When turned on, “Confirm the Number when calling from web browser and other apps” will ask you to confirm the number and will also give you an option to make corrections if necessary. Use the ring Volume slider to adjust the ring volume.

You will need to restart the application for changes to take effect. “My phones…” button allows you setup your deskphone, softphone, and add a mobile number.

Inside the “Audio Devices” tab, you can set input, output and ringtone device. It is recommended to leave these settings at default values.
Check “Enable Plantronics headset support” option in order to integrate a Plantronics headset with Communicator. This will enable the use of Plantronics headset buttons such as answer, hold, transfer…

The same applies for Jabra headsets. Turn on “Enable Jabra headset support” option, in order to integrate a Jabra headset with Communicator. Inside the “Dialing rules tab” you can set rules for outbound calls. e.g., If you enter 061 under “text to replace” and under “replacement text” you enter 0038761, Communicator will replace every phone number that has “061” with “0038761”. However, sometimes you would only want to replace numbers that begin with 061, and not the ones ending in 061…

We have implemented Sennheiser call control integration. Integration can be enabled inside Preferences > Phone > Audio devices > Sennheiser tab.

Supported features on the headset (HS):
• Incoming call accepted by HS (tap call button while there is an incoming unanswered call)
• End active call from HS (tap call button while there is an active call)
• Incoming call rejected by HS (LONG press call button)  (not supported for DECT devices)
• Hold active call on HS (double tap call button while an active call is not held)
• Resume held call on HS (double tap call button while an active call is held)
• Redial call (double tap call button while there are no calls)
• Off-hook (tap call button while there are no calls)
• On-hook (tap call button after off-hook event)
• Mute from HS (tap the mute button while on active call)
• Unmute from HS (tap the mute button while muted on active call)
If connection to HeadSetup (or HeadSetup Pro) is lost, Communicator 5.3 will try to reconnect every 30
seconds. Logs are written in Headsets tab inside Diagnostic Logs.

Enabling “Detect and format USA and UK phone numbers for outbound calls” option will auto detect and format your local USA&UK numbers so that they can go through the system. This may cause problems in some countries so be careful when using this feature.

Inside the Speed Dial tab click on the Add button and from a drop-down menu and choose a number from 1 to 99, and in the field next to it assign the phone number that you want to Speed dial. For example , dialing #7 will dial 061-123-456 To edit an existing speed dial number select the number from the list and click the Edit button or press Remove to remove the number.

Inside the Codecs tab select the codecs that you wish to use. Some codecs offer higher quality but take more bandwidth, some offer better compression so they are less heavy on network resources, depending on your needs you might want to turn some codecs on or off, and if you have more than one codec you can sort them by priority using the up and down arrows on the right.

Inside the Advanced tab, you can choose to turn the encryption on or off for voice and video calls, or you can select “Use the settings from server” to use the settings that your admin has set.

Under the Register field you can set how often Communicator will send SIP register to the SIP Server or voip provider to let it know where it is. It is recommended to leave local sip port empty to allow SIP Protocol to use any port available. However, if you wish to restrict SIP (outgoing) traffic to a specific port you can enter the port number here.

Check the “Send keep alives” option to send SIP keep-alives to the server.

Check the “Enable QoS” to enable Quality of Service feature. QoS is a set of technologies that work on a network to guarantee its ability to dependably run high-priority applications and traffic under limited network capacity (must be supported by user network).

Call waiting added as a new feature in softphone mode:

When “Call Waiting ” option is disabled , softphone will automatically reject incoming calls if user is on another call already.
Callee will hear a message saying that user is currently busy on another call.

Video

Video Quality

Video Settings section is divided into 4 tabs. Inside the Quality tab, you can set the resolution of the video call. You should adjust these settings based on the quality of your network connection.

For example: If your bandwidth is low or you are experiencing temporary network issues, you can set the video quality to Low resolution to get better video call performance. Inside the Codecs tab, you can enable or disable video codecs, and if you have more than one codec you can sort them by priority using the up and down arrows on the right.

Under Advanced codecs settings you can adjust how much compression the codecs will use. The higher the bitrate the less compression codecs will use, which directly relates to a better video quality but also larger files. Use default values for codecs if you are not familiar with video codecs.

Inside the Devices tab you can select the video capture device. e.g., if you have a laptop with an integrated web camera, and you connect another web camera to your laptop, you can specify which camera Communicator will use for video call from a drop-down menu.
Next, inside the surveillance camera tab you can enable or disable surveillance camera and choose if the surveillance camera video should always stay on top even if another window is selected.
Under the URL field, enter the url of your IP surveillance camera stream.

NOTE: Please be aware that only MJEPG stream over HTTP is supported at the moment.

Modules

Modules

Call Popup

Communicator is compatible with several Customer Relationship Management solutions, such as Salesforce, SugarCRM, Zoho, Zendesk, MS Dynamics, and Bullhorn.

To enable CRM integration with Communicator, click on the Settings icon, navigate to the CRM section and check the box next to “Enable CRM integration”. Under the “Popup Options” you can set when a page with customer information should open. You can have it open when you answer the call, or immediately when your phone starts ringing, before you even answer, and you can choose not to have the customer page open at all on incoming calls.

On outbound calls, you can have it pop up when the call is initiated or when the call is answered, and same as with incoming calls – you can disable it by selecting Never.

Under Authentication you can enter account details for your CRM. Each CRM is different and requires you to enter a security token, password or a combination of both.
Next, under logging options, you can specify which information you want to log… or you can choose to log information that your admin has set by selecting “Use the settings from the server” option.

Call Popup Settings, call popup module can be used to push the call details to browser-driven third-party software. You can set the call popup to open when call has started, when call has been answered and/or when call has finished. For each setting you can specify to enable it for inbound and/or outbound calls, and you can turn on silent mode. In the silent mode, a URL request will silently be sent to the server, meaning it will not open a web browser.

Call popup is macro based. In the URL field the following macros can be used: callerid, callerid name, extension, duration, call id, direction, queue number and queue name.

e.g., In Call started URL field you could enter “yourcrm.com/calls?id=%callerid%” and check the inbound calls bellow. Now, whenever you receive a call from customer call popup will open a web browser and will write the customer’s phone number.

You can send all these information silently to your CRM server and create reports such as how many inbound calls you have received, how many outbound calls you have made, average call duration etc.

NOTE: Specify EXE file, APP in MacOS, or URL that will be executed in Call Popup module.

Alerts

Alerts

To start click on the Settings icon inside toolbar and navigate to the Alerts section.
Check the “bring application to front when I receive a call” option to bring Communicator to front whenever someone calls you. You might not want to have your work interrupted by call alerts, in that case you can uncheck this option.
You will still be able to receive the calls, however, you will have to navigate to the application yourself.

Inbound Call Alert duration can be set between 5 and 15 seconds. This option controls the duration of a small notification window that pops up in lower right corner of the screen whenever you receive a call.

To turn off inbound call alert completely, simply uncheck the “Notify me when I receive a phone call” option. You can also set to receive notifications when a contact comes online, when you receive a new message, when somebody joins a conference and or when call is finished.
Only the duration of the call alert notification can be adjusted, all other notifications have a fixed duration of 5 seconds.

Under the Sounds section, you can choose to turn sound notifications on or off for contact sign in and or for new chat messages. If you select “Always play notification sound for new messages”, you will hear a sound notification for every message received, even if you have a chat window currently open.
For this feature to work the “New instant message received” option has to be selected as well, otherwise you will hear no sound.

To preview a sound, click on the play button on the right, and if you wish to change a sound, double-click an item and select the sound file you wish to use. Please note that only .wav files are supported.

Chat

Chat

To start click on the Settings icon inside toolbar, and navigate to the Chat section. If you want Communicator to change your online status to Away when there is no user activity for a certain period of time, enable the “Automatically set status to Away when I am idle option”, and set the time anywhere between 1 and 60 minutes.
For example, if you set it to 10 minutes, and there is no user activity on the computer, Communicator will change your current status to away after 10 minutes have passed. As soon as the Communicator register any user activity it will change from
away status to your previous status. This option does not work if you have set your status to offline.

“Show status change message in chat window option”, if checked, will display status change message in every active chat window.

If you enable the “send my seen status” option, you will be able to see when someone has read your message, and vice versa, other users will be able to see when you have read the message they have sent you. If you disable this option, you will not be able to see when someone has read your message nor will other users be able to see when you have read messages they have sent you.

Below the “Save received files” click on the drop-down menu and choose Other to specify the location where Communicator will save received files. And under the “Change font” menu you can choose the default font for chat layout.

To save all your chat history on your computer, check the box next to “Save Chat history on this computer”.

Profiles

Profiles

To enable profiles click on the “Enable multiple login profiles mode”.
With this option enabled you can add, edit or remove an existing profile.

To add a profile click the Add button, follow the setup wizard, enter the profile name, enter your Communicator email and password, and under the Advanced tab enter the server address, and if needed specify the SIP proxy as well. When done click Next to continue.

Adjust the phone settings to your preference and click Next, review your information once more and click Finish to create a profile. Once created you can edit the profile by selecting it from the list, and clicking the Edit button or you can remove selected profile by clicking the Remove button.

To log in with your newly created profile on the Communicator login screen, from a profile drop-down menu select your profile and click on the Login button.

Advanced

Advanced

In the Advanced menu you can change the Polycom listening port to suit requirements of your Polycom phone.

The default port is set to 10983 which can be changed by clicking inside the box and entering your listening port number.

Skype for Business Module

Skype for Business Module

Click to Dial

Click to Dial

Click to Dial

Conferencing

Conferencing

Settings

Skype For Business module is used for integration between Skype For Business and Communicator. The idea behind this module is to provide integration between Skype For Business client and user’s phone system (PBXware).

It consists of four parts:

• Presence
• Click to dial
• Conferencing
• Control of ANY SIP deskphone/softphone/mobile device registered on the PBXware telephony platform from the PC

Presence

Whenever a user is on a call with ANY of their devices, including deskphone, softphone or mobile phone, Skype For Business will change its presence automatically, and other Skype users will see this presence as “On a call”. Once the call is completed, Skype presence will revert back to the previous state.

NOTE: Red marked squares are showing status change inside Skype for Business.

Click to Dial

The click to dial plugin allows you to make regular or conference calls from Skype For Business using PBXware phone system. It allows the user to use ANY of their devices to make the call through their Phone System.

This includes: deskphone, softphone and mobile phone. The user can even make a call from Skype with a single click through the mobile network (GSM) and Skype will still show its status as “On Call” until user hangs up on GSM. When click to dial plugin is enabled, two options appear in Skype For Business: “Call via Communicator” and “Conference via Communicator”.

When we click on the “Call via Communicator” option, a dialogue appears, as seen in the next image. We have to choose the contact number that we want to call and the device from which we want to make a call. Only one Skype For Business contact can be selected if we want to use this option. If check box below “Show this window before placing a call” is selected, every time we are placing a call from Skype for Business this windows will popup (this can be changed in preferences). Once we press “Call”, the call will be placed, in this case using our deskphone.

Conferencing

We can also invite Communicator contacts in this conference. We add them by typing their name or number into search field where we can also enter any other number we want, and then press “Enter”. [X] button is used to remove contact/number from the list of users that we want to invite to the conference.
Once we press “Start Conference”, an audio bridge will be automatically created on the PBX, and all the invitees will join automatically. We will join on our deskphone in this example.
Although the call is in progress on our deskphone, we can see and control this audio conference on the PC in the Communicator app, as displayed in the next image.

Settings

If we want to enable/disable Skype For Business module plugins for all Communicator users on one computer, we need to navigate to Preferences > Modules > Skype. After we enable/disable Skype For Business module plugins, we have to restart the Skype For Business application in order to apply the changes made. Even if these plugins are enabled, we can use them only if the logged user has Skype For Business module enabled by supplier.