The concept of presence in
unified communications aims at putting your contacts at reach, wherever you might be. It is very convenient to just click on a contact's name or any personal information about them in their email messages or contact details to call them, without actually requiring to launch a
softphone. And the call can be free. This can be achieved by integrating a VoIP softphone service like
Skype into your
MS Outlook email client. Here are ways you can achieve that.
This is the most popular and, according to me, most complete tool for embedding Skype functionality in Ms Outlook. In fact, it is more than completely, since it offers features that go well beyond simple Outlook integration. It may even contain features you might never need. Anyhow, it is a good tool, which is however quite expensive - nearly $100 for the latest edition. Among the features are call recording, answering machine and voicemail, alerts, forwarding, extended inbox, follow-up management, contact management, communication archiving, and many others. You can try the product for 14 days before buying.
With basic but adequate features, this product does some nice discreet work in integrating Skype in Outlook. It costs $25.
This relative cheap product ($15) embeds a toolbar into your Outlook application, doing just the essential. This is the cheapest solution to look for if you require only basic Skype embedding.
Skype Email Toolbar is for MS Outlook Express, and is completely free! It allows you to check buddy presence of Skype contacts and communicate through voice or instant messaging with them when they are online. It also allows yout o add a Skype button to your signature when sending emails. However, if you have Outlook 2007, this product might not support it, yet.
This is another completely free product that adds a toolbar to Outlook. Clicking on a contact allows you to either call, char with or SMS them.
This is a plugin that can add VoIP functionality (like automatic contact dialling) to almost any Windows application, not only Outlook. It costs $20.
