Tag Archives: VOIP

How to Build a VOIP Kit for High-Quality Remote Calls

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Close up of a business woman using a VOIP kit to connect to her team

Having a phone system with the right tools and features is key to a mobile workforce

When you work remotely, occasionally or every day, nothing matters more than communication. Staying in touch with your distant colleagues is the key to completing projects, attending meetings, and successfully collaborating. Fortunately, connecting is easier than it has ever been before. Between mobile devices and VOIP, you can connect to your team from almost anywhere in the world. But it’s a lot easier to do if you’re prepared.

Making your home office or favorite shared working space is a part of the course, but the true challenge is achieving easy calls when outside your comfort zone. How do you ensure good sound quality in a hotel room, on-site with your client, or on the road? The key is a well-packed VOIP kit that has everything you need to connect, hear, and be heard from almost anywhere in the world.

Here’s how to build one:

High-Speed Mobile Hotspot

The first thing you need is a mobile hotspot you can rely on. These transform cellphone network signal into a wifi network your devices can connect to. Not only does it ensure that you can connect from nearly anywhere, it also keeps you safe from honey-pot traps hackers set with free wifi networks. You won’t have to rely on hotel wifi, and you can connect anywhere your cellphone gets signal. With varying degrees of connection speed.

Soft Can Headphones or High-Quality Earbuds?

If you’re not in a sound-studio quality office prepared to filter audio, you’ll need some headphones so you can hear the conference without your mic sending feedback or echo. But the choice of headphones is highly personal. Some swear that large pillowy can-style headphones are the only way to hear the call clearly while many of us live with a pair of earbuds seemingly permanently attached.

For your kit, the difference matters only to you. Get a spare pair of your favorite type of headphones and pack them as part of your VOIP call travel kit.

Integral Microphone Headset

With a headset, you can transform any modern mobile device into a VOIP phone. All you need is earphones to hear and a microphone to be heard. That said, the microphone quality is important. Many can make do with a webcam or laptop that has an integral microphone, but the quality of how you sound is significantly improved with a real microphone on a headset positioned near your mouth. Be sure your headphones have a built-in mic that transmits in decent quality.

Camera-Bearing Laptop

VOIP platforms often include an option to make video calls, which can become popular depending on the team. If there’s a chance you’ll be called on to appear on video, you’ll want a laptop that has video capability. This is your first or last line solution to the video calls, giving you a place to start or a fall-back position if you choose to use additional cameras instead.

Separate Web Camera

You will probably also want to pack an external web camera, and don’t be shy about investing in some quality here. Your webcam will enable video call options that a laptop camera cannot. You can point it at items, paperwork, and other people without pointing your laptop. You can also upgrade your image or sound quality by choosing a camera with better capabilities than your laptop.

The separate web camera also gives you an alternative to the laptop camera should one or the other fail at an inopportune moment.

Mobile Charging Battery

Next, think about power SNAFUs you’ve experienced in the past. Sometimes, your best friend when telecommuting on the road is a portable charging battery. Something you can charge up at home or in a hotel room, then bring life back to a phone or laptop that has died right when you need it most. Or it can be used to keep your laptop alive longer off-grid when you have to hold a meeting from a place with no outlets. Just one portable battery in your go-bag can make a big difference when it’s needed.

For the truly rugged remote professionals, consider a solar-recharging portable battery. No outlets required.

Charging & Data Cables

Finally, don’t forget all the accouterments for all this mobile tech. You’ll need at least one charging cable for each one of your devices. At least these days, they can all share a few USB power ports instead of each having an individual power adapter. So remember your USB power strip just in case. Take your laptop power adapter, and whatever you need to charge the portable battery. We all know what it feels like to have everything you need but a power cord.

If you enjoy working remotely using the tools of today’s mobile workforce, you might as well the best tools for the job. By packing an effective VOIP call kit, you can optimize sound and signal quality no matter where you’re working from. For more on how to get the best VOIP performance possible, contact us today!

How VoIP Helps You Manage Remote Employees

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Business people using VOIP to manage remote employees

Having a phone service that works whether you’re in the office or on the road is key in today’s work anywhere workforce

Remote work is not just a fad or a way to draw in new talent, it’s a new way of doing business. Many businesses who already had remote workers are now celebrating the mobile technology that is making remote work so much easier and more efficient. Many more businesses are taking advantage of mobile technology to offer new remote positions or offer once office-bound jobs to remote candidates. But managing remote employees can still be a challenge for the supervisors and team leaders set to the task. Fortunately, there are tools for that, too.

VoIP is one of the best tools any remote-team manager can have, uniting the entire team through a shared communication system that works no matter where or how your team members are connecting. Let’s take a look at how VoIP solves classic remote management challenges and makes remote work management easier than ever.

Find Me, Follow Me

Nearly every modern VoIP system comes with a feature known as “Find me, follow me”. This sounds like something a pet dog might do, but it’s really a highly useful way to keep in touch in the multi-device world we live in. Once, a manager trying to get in touch with a remote employee would have to call three or four different numbers, send an email, and leave voicemails if the employee isn’t at their desk. Not anymore.

With VoIP, you call one number and the find/follow feature does all that extra checking. The VoIP number then rings the employee’s desk phone. If they don’t pick up, it rings their home office phone, then their cell phone, then their home phone. It can then call the VOIP app on their laptop, then their tablet, then leave a message in email about a missed all. VoIP does all the tedious phone-tag of chasing down someone on the device or phone closest to the remote employee in question.

Scheduled Availability

VOIP can also know where your remote employees should be during the day and which device they are most likely to answer. Let’s say a remote employee works at home but also takes lunch, meets clients, or occasionally takes their children to after-school activities. By filling out their calendar and schedule properly, they can ensure the closest device to them is always the one that rings first.

As the manager, you simply call their VoIP number and the system does the rest. If the schedule says your employee is scheduled to be at lunch, it rings their cell. If they’re working, it rings their desk phone. If they’re traveling, it rings their laptop app phone instead. The schedule can save hours of time each year by calling the right device first.

Call Forwarding To/From Anywhere

VoIP’s device flexibility also makes it easier for managers and remote employees to connect from anywhere on either end. It doesn’t matter if you’re calling from your cell, computer, or desk phone. It doesn’t matter if your remote employee is on their laptop, cell, in a hotel, or at their home office. The VoIP number can connect to any device or computer running the app and to any phone number that has been connected. This enables the ultimate in mobile workforce so that managers and employees can both be remote, office-bound, traveling, or any combination at all.

Pings, Alarms, and Messages

VoIP an also enable managers to send small pings, alerts, alarms, and messages to their remote employees without a complicated hassle. Many VoIP systems connect to SMS messaging, allowing managers and employees to trade texts and live chat messages as well as audio phone calls. The VoIP app installed on any computer or mobile device can also be used as a cloud management platform, allowing managers to build schedules for their employees including alarms, alerts, and messages. You can even call your employee’s voicemail directly to use the voicemail-to-email feature as a way to dictate memos to team members.

Emergency Device Flexibility

Finally, VoIP is not bound specifically to the devices and numbers that the team sets up on purpose. Let’s say a remote employee’s laptop dies, their toddler drops their cell in the toilet, and their dog chews their home internet lines. They can still be reached via their VoIP number on a borrowed, public, or emergency device simply by installing and logging into the platform app. At home, on the road, or on business trips your team will can always get back in contact no matter how many of their own devices are out of commission because VoIP is cloud, not network.

As the manager, even you can take advantage of this flexibility. If the office power goes out, if you’re away on a business trip, or if you suddenly need to connect while on a no-phones vacation: any computer or borrowed device can become an extension of your VoIP number by installing the app.

VoIP is one of the best things that has ever happened to remote work and managing remote employees. If you need to be a communication hub between team members who do not always share an office, VoIP is the best possible way to keep track of your team and provide a universal way to stay in touch. For more information about how VoIP can improve your business’ communication efficiency, contact us today!

Why Businesses are Adopting VoIP Phone Service

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Smiling Delivery Driver using VoIP

Can customers get a hold of you?

A company’s phone service is a crucial part of operations. All customers expect to be able to call in if they want to, even if they usually use other methods of communication. Phones are also essential for communication between employees, to suppliers, and other key people. Yet, more and more companies are telling their traditional phone services to go ahead and cancel their accounts.

VoIP: The Modern Telephone Option

VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is behind the shift in the way companies handle their telephony needs. This service, also known as “hosted PBX” or “internet phones,” provides all of the benefits of local PBX systems and more. It is often cheaper as well. When the factors are combined, they provide distinct benefits over standard landline phones.

  • VoIP phone systems can be accessed in many ways. You no longer need separate numbers for cell phones, office phones, and home phones. You and your employees can log into a company VoIP system from any location; all they need is the password to their accounts. This makes it so that someone like a salesperson can sit at home to make calls without losing any of the benefits of the office phone. The system will show the office’s number for his call, allowing the privacy of his home phone number to remain uncompromised. It works the same way for calling from mobile phones and even hotels.
  • VoIP phones offer all of the benefits of PBX systems. This is why they are sometimes referred to as “hosted PBX” systems. You get standard office phone system features like hold music, 3-way calling, call blocking, unlimited voicemail, unlimited local calling, international calling, caller ID, and much more.
  • VoIP surpasses landline PBX systems in many ways. You don’t have to fuss with complicated equipment, install dedicated phone lines, buy expensive hardware, or buy new hardware when you expand. Instead, everything is administered through an easy online interface. The physical connections are done using your cable internet lines, so if you already have those at all of the necessary workstations, you’re all set when it comes to connectivity.
  • Scalability is no problem. Our VoIP services can handle anywhere from one to 500 lines.
  • Our software updates are free. You won’t be hit with surprise costs just to keep your system secure and functional.
  • You can keep your current phone number. There is no need to have a landline to enjoy the benefits of number portability.
  • In almost all cases, VoIP systems sound as good as their landline equivalents. All it takes to enjoy excellent sound clarity is a good, hardwired broadband internet connection (cable or better). This sort of connection allows voice data to be transmitted with no lag, dropped packets, or other problems. As long as you have cable, customers will never know you’re using VoIP unless you choose to tell them.

With all of these benefits, it’s no wonder that businesses are switching to VoIP more and more. There is no need to pay high landline costs or deal with expensive phone packages that are padded with useless features. Instead, VoIP offers reasonable costs, the freedom of being able to use the company phone system away from your desk, and freedom from the expense and hassle of dealing with an on-site PBX box. You also don’t need to lease an expensive T1 or other high-end line – standard cable internet will do the trick in all but the most congested markets.

To learn more about our VoIP offering or VoIP in general, just contact us here at SystemsNet. We’ll be glad to discuss your needs and get you set up with the most modern telephony option that will do everything you want.

Tips for Speed Testing your VoIP Service

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business man speed testing his VoIP service. Business man in office. Looking at camera

Items to check to improve the quality of your calls

One of the most important things to keep in mind in terms of a VoIP is that having good call quality requires you to have a decent internet connection. Lower speed networks will likely result in call degradation, dropped calls, breaks, delays and so on. The best way to avoid this is to do a simple quality test for your VoIP before starting to make regular use of it to make calls. This will ensure that you know if your network will suffer similar issues and if you need to make a network upgrade or otherwise alter your VoIP setup before you start trying to use your VoIP setup to make calls in order to avoid problems.

What is a VoIP Test

Just like all other types of information found on the internet, VoIP calls are passed from point to point as a form of data transfer through the use of various data packets. Calls are sent to and from callers by packets of data that travel across the web in order to transmit data from one specific point to another specific point. If packets are dropped, or lost, in transit from point to point then the loss of those data packets will affect the call quality due to the fact that not all of the call data was successfully transmitted from one endpoint to the other. The loss of these data packets may potentially result in missing audio, grainy audio quality and even dropped calls.

What a VoIP does is that it basically tests how well your Internet connection handles data packets. The majority of these tests work by measuring things like jitter, latency, and the bandwidth of your upload and download speeds. All of these components put together will determine how the data packets are handled and how those packets affect your call quality.

 

How to run a VoIP Test

The best way to run a VoIP test is to use one of the many free tests that run in a web browser. To obtain the optimal results, you should run the test at the busiest and most populated time of day. This will allow you to test what you’re going to get an idea of what you will see during busy times. Testing a VoIP will only take a bit of time and it will monitor what you find to send you appropriate speed measurements to give you an idea if your network is capable of handling VoIP calls at the moment.

 

Potential Problems

If the outcome of your network test tells you that you will not be able to handle VoIP calls without experiencing a significant amount of stutters, call drops or quality degradation then you should not attempt to use your internet for VoIP calls regardless.

If this is the outcome you get on your test and you still want to be able to make calls then your choices are to either upgrade your network so that it can make calls properly and then test again to make sure or alternatively, you can make your calls from a different location that already has better internet. For example, if the area you are attempting to connect in is somewhere with poor network service then you might be better served to either rent an office space or simply make your calls from a public location such as a coffee house in the future.

 

If you are looking for more information on VoIP testing or you need some tips or suggestions to help you choose a VoIP system for your use then contact us today to get whatever hints, tips and suggestions that you need.