Improvements to Voice/Video Call Feature in Upwork Messages

[Valeria K]

We are rolling out some improvements to the Video/Voice feature in Upwork Messages. We’ve heard your feedback about the interface not being intuitive and call quality unreliable. We are excited to share some of the steps we’re making to make those experiences better.

Current Experience:

• To start a call you need to click the phone icon at the top right corner in your message room. This creates and posts a link in the chat window accessible to everyone in the room.
• Click on the link to join the call.
• A new window opens users need to click Join the Call button again.

Overall the process involves too many steps and often results in one of the participants waiting for others in an empty call. Other participants are often not aware a call was started because they have to be in the room to see the notification and the call opens in a separate window.

What’s changing:

• You’ll need to only click once to start the call.
• If you initiate a call, you’ll see a page with a photo of the person you’re calling. There will be an animation and sound clearly indicating an outgoing call. 
• If you have an incoming call, you’ll see a modal pop-up if you're on Messages page as well as desktop and mobile notifications and an incoming call sound.
• The overall design and colors will change to match the rest of the site.
• You’ll be able to minimize the call window.
• We’re providing better call and connection quality.
• We’re improving settings and error messages.

Here are some screenshots of the new experience:

Initiating a call

Incoming call

Active call

Minimized call window.

We’re excited to be able to offer clients and freelancers a better way to connect with each other and we welcome your feedback about the new flow.

[Remi O]

Thanks Valeria.

This has been a long time coming. 

Looking forward to testing it.

[Nichola L]

It's not clear which one is Albert Hammond - but the one with the "bonnet rouge" looks like a French revolutionary. 

ETA: Well, the bonnet phrygien to be more precise, which represents the downtrodden (historically, slavery).  Somebody at Upwork should do their research ... Unless, of course, this is the image it wishes to put across! 

 

[Preston H]

I think your characterization of that person as a French revolutionary is inappropriate. **edited for Community Guidelines**

[Paolo C]

Nice to see improvements but the feature that will make it the #1 conferencing of choice is screensharing.
The very reason to use skype/hangouts/zoom etc. is that in every meeting, every interview, always basically, there is a moment that an image will say more than a thousands words.

[Avery O]

Thank you for your feedback, Pablo. 

I'll make sure to share this with the team for their consideration. 

Hi Paolo, I updated this post to correct myself. The screen sharing feature is available on video calls. You may see my post here.

[Avery O]

Hi Paolo, 

I'm coming back here to let you know that the screen sharing option is available when doing a call through Upwork Messages. You can click on the screen sharing button as noted in the screengrab below to be able to share your screen. 

[Jay D]

Well, sometimes just a screenshare isn't enough. We need to give/gain access (mouse/keyboard control) to the other person like TemViewer / AnyDesk does, so that we/they can perform some actions on the other device - a use case would be to ask a freelancer to demonstrate that they have understood the process and can operate a private software as required. Having an access would be unavoidable in such case - a screen sharing is not enough!

And I believe this isn't possible on Upwork messaging platform either, as a webpage cannot aquire control over the device.

[Tatiana E]

Hi, can I make a video call using iPad?

[Abdo M]

It's really buggy, I wish I didn't use it with my client today.

# The app crashed two times on my Mac

# The app was very slow and the camera was stuck

# I couldn't switch the Mic & Speaker from my laptop to my headset, I got null error!!