Unison: Free Unified Communications Software
Unison Server and Desktop provide a decent unified communications experience for free, but what’s the catch?
From the control panel, administrators can also configure many aspects of Unison’s telephony behaviour. I could control inbound and outbound routes from the Unison system, assign phones, extensions and external numbers to users, and set up hunt groups and ACDs (automatic call distributors). Unison includes a TFTP server for easy centralised configuration of certain Cisco Systems phones.
Because Unison utilises SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), I also found it fairly simple to configure third-party IP phones to register with the system, as I successfully used Polycom IP phones and CounterPath softphones with Unison.
The Unison Desktop client is currently available for Microsoft Windows XP and Vista, and there are betas available for RHEL and Ubuntu but nothing for Mac OS X at this time. I tested the Desktop on XP, and found the e-mail and calendaring experience quite similar to that provided by Outlook, so users should be able to get comfortable with the client quickly.
I found on-screen call control worked pretty well, with a few oddities. I could click on a contact in any of my address books and quickly choose between chat, e-mail and a phone call, although presence is not viewable from these sources. Selecting a voice call rings the desk phone or softphone associated with my account, then places the call through once I pick up the phone.
I could also easily record the call, park it or put it on hold from on-screen prompts.
When I had an incoming call, a notification message would appear in the lower right part of the screen. Unfortunately, I could not answer the call via the Unison Desktop, but rather I had to perform that action on the desk or softphone.
Unfortunately, Unison does not do much to take UC mobile at this time. The Server features are designed to work with the Unison Desktop only, and there are no clients for mobile devices at this time. I found that mobile users could access their e-mail via IMAP, but this will not open up the IM, calendar, contacts or voice features that make Unison appealing.
Unison has also added a barrier to IMAP adoption. During my tests, I discovered that a user’s IMAP password differs from the password used to log in to the Unison Desktop. To obtain the IMAP password, administrators actually have to log in to the MySQL database, then run a small script to extract a user’s IMAP password. Unison officials said this hindrance was put in place to “encourage people to use the Unison Desktop.”
Fortunately, Unison officials claim easier IMAP support and ActiveSync support will be in place sometime this summer.
The Unison Desktop delivers IM chat to other Unison users via a pane within the Desktop called the Unison Messenger. Users can also configure Unison Messenger to communicate with a few external IM networks as well. To access MSN or ICQ networks, users can input their credentials for those networks as a gateway, or users can interact directly with GoogleTalk via XMPP (although administrators will need to open a TCP port on the firewall for this to work).
