Overview

On KDE desktops, there is already a system tray enabled by default, so you don’t have to do anything here. For GNOME desktops, this functionality must be enabled:

You can set GOnnect to be the default application for handling telephony. This enables you to click on tel: or sip: URIs and allow other applications to open GOnnect when they want to start a call.

Use the settings menu of your desktop environment - for example, on GNOME, navigate to Settings  Apps  Default Apps and change the entry for calls to GOnnect.

GOnnect has a search provider that lets you find contacts and start calls via the desktop search. This must be enabled manually.

In the GNOME settings, navigate to "Search", find the item "GOnnect" and enable it. You can adjust the search result order to your liking.

Now, when you press the Windows key on the keyboard and type a name or phone number of one of your contacts, it should show the search results. Activating a search result item starts the call.

One or more active calls are shown in this call screen. You can switch between a detailed view of each call by selecting it in the right column labeled "Person(s)".

The center part of the window shows details and call-specific features, such as holding or finishing the call and adjusting audio levels.

Acoustic dial tones might be needed when calling a hotline with an automatic response or entering the PIN when joining a conference call. When the call window is focused and the specific call is selected, simply press the number buttons on your keyboard to send the appropriate sound.

When someone is calling you, a desktop notification will pop up, allowing you to accept or reject the call. Clicking on the notification itself will open the aforementioned call screen.

GOnnect can handle several calls at the same time.

For example, when you have an active call, another call might come in. Depending on the settings for handling this (the client might just send "busy" and ignore it, if you have chosen this option), you can simply accept the new call like any other. Any existing calls will automatically be put on hold.

The same applies when you have an ongoing call and start a new one. The previous call will be put on hold automatically while starting the new one.

Once you have two (or more) active calls, you can end individual calls or choose one of the two options described in the next paragraphs.

With exactly two active calls, you can start an ad-hoc three-party conference with the visible button. Please be aware that the conference will be routed by the client that started it (the host). If the host has connection issues or ends the conference, it will affect the communication between the other participants as well.

The other option is call forwarding. In the right "Persons" column, simply drag and drop one list item onto the other. Those two people will now continue their call on their own.

When all participants of a phone call use the GOnnect client and have that option enabled in the settings, a camera and screen button will appear in the call window to automatically upgrade the call to Jitsi Meet. The call is transferred seamlessly to a Jitsi conference, and the conference screen will be shown.

This is very useful if you decide to share your screen during an ongoing call or want to invite more people to the conversation.

GOnnect allows you to change the so-called preferred identity, which describes the phone number that appears on the other side.

For example, the default identity might be to show the central number of your company when calling someone. For some specific calls, you might want to transmit your direct dial, which would be another identity. A third one could be to send a hotline phone number when calling customers of a specific company.

This part of the settings window lets you create and manage those preferred identities and define how they are selected.

The first dropdown box sets the default behavior, which defines the default selection of the dropdown box in the main window next to the search and dial input field. It provides these options:

Each identity has configurable properties such as a display name, a prefix for auto selection and the number that the caller will appear as.

GOnnect uses the concept of audio environments. Whenever the audio device setup changes, that state is treated as its own environment. For example, you might have a different headset in the office than at home - that would be two different audio environments.

Whenever a new environment is detected, a popup window will appear and ask how to handle it. The settings available in that window are the same in this settings window, so any changes made here will always apply to the currently active environment.

This section allows you to change the input and output devices for a call, select the device on which to play the ringtone, and change the ringtone itself.

The final part of the settings window is a button to start a debug mode. This will restart the app and increase the logging level for five minutes, during which additional information can be downloaded from the same place. Whenever you encounter a reproducible bug, please use this feature to provide detailed information in a bug report.

Although they are refreshed periodically, the reload LDAP contacts button may be used to refresh them manually.