gloCOM 6.4 brings a unified presence that is synced across all of your devices (Desktop, Mobile, and Web). For a currently online user you can see if they are connected via Desktop, via Mobile, via Web or even all three. For users who are not currently connected, you can see when was their last activity, in order to have a better understanding of their availability. For example, if you see that the user was last seen a few minutes ago, you might assume they will probably be able to respond to your calls/messages. On the other hand, if a user has not been seen for a few days, it might indicate they have limited availability and are out of office. User’s presence and availability are represented by the icon visible in the bottom right of their avatar. Details about a user’s presence are shown in a tooltip after hovering over them in both grid and list view. The tooltip contains information such as: the device that the user is connected with, their last activity, their status message and their phone status (idle, on call, do not disturb etc.).
Status icon indicator can be any of the following:
- If there is no icon in the bottom right of the user’s avatar, it means that they are currently online and available
- The user is currently on a phone call
- The user is currently online, and they’ve set their status to Busy
- The user is currently online, and they’ve set their status to Do not Disturb
- This icon has multiple meanings:
- The user is currently online, and they’ve set their status to Away
- The user is currently connected via Desktop, but they are Away from Desktop
- The user is not currently connected, but they were last active less than 8 hours ago
- The user was not active in the last 8 hours
Status and status message
You can choose your own status by clicking on the status icon in the bottom right of your avatar in the main window, or by clicking on the tray icon.
A menu will pop up and you can choose between:
- Available
- Busy
- Do not disturb
- Away
- Any of the statuses defined by the PBXware administrator
- Custom status
PBXware administrator can add statuses through PBXware GUI and those will appear as an option in the menu for all users. For example, an administrator could add Lunch Break status so users can easily inform others when they are using their lunch break and are not at their desk.
Also, you can set your own custom status, and write any message to describe your current availability. For example, if you have to attend a meeting, and you are not available to respond to calls or messages, you could choose Custom status… from the menu, select Busy from the dropdown, and type “In a meeting” as a message. This informs all other users that you are busy and the reason for that is you’re currently attending a meeting. This allows all users to have a better understanding of each others availability since each user can type a custom message to describe their current availability.
After you choose any of the statuses, you also have to specify status expiration. This allows you to let the application revert your status back to Available after a certain period of time. Using the example mentioned above, you could set your status to Lunch Break with the expiration of 1 hour,
so when you come back to the office you don’t have to remember to change your status back to Available since the application will automatically
do that for you.
When setting status expiration you can choose between:
- Today
- 1 hour
- 4 hours
- 8 hours
- 12 hours
- 2 days
- 5 days
- This week
- Always
Do not Disturb status
Setting your status to Do not Disturb (including custom Do not Disturb statuses) disables chat notifications, conference join notifications and notifications informing you that someone has come online via Desktop. This allows you to easily remove distractions during an important period of the day when you need to fully concentrate on the task at hand. Note that this overrides the settings in Alert section inside of the Preferences window.
Away from Desktop
When there is no user activity on your computer for a certain period of time gloCOM can inform other users that you are away from your desk. This can be configured by clicking on the status icon next to your avatar in the main window, hovering over the Set away from Desktop when inactive for item and choosing the desired option.