Four Tips to Extend Your Skype Functions

Skype is a very handful tool for VoIP that is widely used for business purposes. However, I bet that even for someone who conducts a daily use of it, they don’t really discover its hidden functions. Today, I’d like to introduce some knacks who can help users exploit the functions of Skype to the full and greatly facilitate their calls.



1. Check the statistics when you are making a call



Please click "Tools"->" Options"->"Advanced", and then tick the last option-"Display technical info during calls", by which way you can have a look at some important technical statistics. When bothered by the bad effect of the call, you can analyze why the calling quality is so poor or why the transmission of files is so slow with resorting to those statistics.



There are two categories of statistics you should know. The first one is "Roundtrip", and the other one is "SessionOut" and "SessionIn". The former will tell you the time it takes when your voice has a roundtrip. If it exceeds 100 milliseconds, your call is affected and the delay constantly happens. The latter will show that whether your call has been transferred. If it says "Relay UDP" or "Relay TCP", then your call is not directly connected to your friend, but transferred by a third party. Besides, the transferred calls usually have high "Roundtrip."



2. Set your status, privacy, and mood information.



You hope to facilitate your communication with others through Skype rather than be disturbed by some people. Besides, you may get calls from some strangers or those who you don’t like to talk to. It is essential to set your status, privacy and mood information.



First, you can set your status, which is quite easy and can be conducted on the panel. Through this way, your contacts can know if they are able to contact with you. Also, by clicking "Tools"-> "Options"->"Privacy", you can select out who you want to talk or not



3. Buy yourself a Skypeln number



Skypeln allows you to have a fixed local phone number, through which anyone can call you by using fixed telephones or mobile phones. All you have to do is pick the call on Skype. For example, if you are in the US, and your family or business partners are in Japan, you can buy a Skypeln number of Japan, and you family can call you at the local fee, and you can pick your calls from all over the world through Skype. And Skype now provides SkypeIn numbers of the following countries: America, Britain, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Portland, Swiss, and Switzerland.



4. Install Skype call recorder



As is known to all, though Skype has hundreds of millions of users across the world, an obvious drawback undermines its function- being unable to record calls. In fact, many people have special needs to record their calls, especially for business purposes. Therefore, Skype users had better download a Skype call recorder, which can help keep a record of calls effectively. Just use your search engine and find one that can serve your purpose.



Those tips are easily ignored when users use Skype. However, since we get such a useful tool, why not exploit it to the full?