I love Skype.

I use it as my primary inbound and outbound voice line for my virtual office. My wife and I video Skype with family & friends on a daily or semi-daily basis. For me it’s reliable, the voice and picture quality is good, and it has all the features I need without being feature-bloated.

Except: switching between headset and handsfree. I use a headset for work calls, and a mic and speakers for handsfree Skyping with family. The problem is, if a work call comes in and the last conversation I had was with family, then I’m handsfree until I can navigate through the Skype options screen to change my audio devices back to headset for mic and speakers. And the reverse is true if family calls and I was last on a headset call.

There ends up being a lot more time spent reconfiguring audio devices than I would prefer. Most other soft phones I’ve experimented with had separate buttons for “Answer” and “Answer Handsfree”. My recommendation would be to change this dialog:

To include an Answer Handsfree option. Then on the advanced Audio Settings screen:

Add the ability to flag which speaker and mic will act as the handsfree configuration. When a call comes in and the user chooses “Answer Handsfree”, use the chosen speaker and mic for that call, otherwise revert to the devices at the top of each box.

Until there’s a feature like this, I’ll always have an eye out for other soft phones, wondering if the grass is greener using something besides Skype for my business voice calls.