Fonality upgraded its unified communications platform HUD. HUD ties presence management and detection into a single interface to be used by employees for all types of office communications, including SMS, instant message, landline calling, mobile calling, chat, voicemail, email, conferencing, recording and barging. It gives companies with five to 500 employees a secure and affordable system that meets the demand on today’s businesses to support remote and home-based workers, and save workers time by tying together the many communications channels that have become a routine part of workplace communications.

HUD 3 is built on the market proven HUD platform with over 100,000 paid users to date. It delivers a unified communications dashboard that shows who is available, both onsite and remotely, eliminating wasted time created by busy signals, voice mails and phone tag. It’s easy to drag and drop calls onto somebody’s desk or mobile phone, and sessions that start on chat can be instantly converted to voice calls. Photo caller ID puts a face with a number, bringing the system to life with real people and making it easy for everybody to react and connect quickly.

Google Talk integration opens up the HUD chat feature for instant communications beyond the network of HUD users. Google Talk IM can be downloaded to any desktop, BlackBerry or iPhone, allowing users to interchange email and chat contacts, and see who’s online and available for calls and messaging. Google integration enables user of HUD 3 to communicate and stay connected with the over five million Google Talk users today.

Mobile presence provides visual presence to other HUD users when a cell phone is connected to the system. Mobile presence is extended into queues and conferencing and optionally allows users to perform an all-new Busy-Ring Back™ so as not to disturb a fellow employee who is on their mobile.

Visual conferencing makes it easy to initiate and manage conference calls. You can drag and drop calls into conferences, and create permissions for recording, muting and removing people from calls. HUD 3 displays the names and faces of everybody on a conference call, and lets you IM conference participants.

Visual voice mail sends alerts to HUD when voice mail arrives and allows you to search, sort, play, and save messages right from your PC or MAC desktop. You can click on voice messages to send email, text messages, initiate chats and return calls.

HUD 3 can also be used by phone-based sales and support teams to manage call center queues. A visual queue performs like expensive call center applications, providing a virtual wall board to show agents and managers all calls in queue. A real-time queue control system allows managers to drag and drop calls onto agents, and broadcast instant messages to some or all agents simultaneously. Managers can set up alerts to notify when calls have been holding too long or an abandoned call has occurred. Real-time queue statistics can also be broadcast, allowing for up-to-the second views of your call centers vitals such as completion rate, abandonment rate, holding volume, and even ASA (average speed of answer). HUD also now supports integration with premise-based and hosted CRM systems, without having to write custom code.

HUD 3 will be available in October 2008. For information about updates and availability join the HUD mailing list at www.gimmeHUDnow.org.