Skype offers a free Skype for Business Control Panel to centrally manage Skype Credit for your employees.

• Web-based tool – quick and easy to sign up
• Centrally manage your Skype accounts
• Allocate credit to employees
• Automatically recharge accounts
• Print consolidated invoices

Be sure to check out the Skype for Business Control Panel to see what it has to offer for your business.

Does your business require Skype hardware? Check out our Skype hardware store to kit out your business with the best Skype webcams, headsets and other gadgets.

Once you have set up Skype you can start to make calls.

There are two types of calls you can make: PC to PC (these are free) and PC to Phone (these require Skype Credit which you can buy here

PC to PC

Everyone on Skype has a “Skype Name”. This is like an ID. It is a single string of letters and/or digits – e.g. jsmith436, fredflintstone.

If you know the Skype Name of the person you want to call, you can just type it straight into the box at the bottom of the Skype window, then press the green “Call” button to call that person.

If you don’t know the Skype Name of the person you want to call, you will need to search the global Skype network for it. To do this, choose “Contacts > Search for Skype users…” from the main Skype menu. A search window will appear. Enter the full name of the person then click the “Search” button. Keep in mind that there are millions of registered Skype users, so there may be a number of people with the same name as the person you want to contact. If this is the case you will need to narrow your search by entering other criteria, such as Country, State etc. Another option is to enter an email address instead of the name. (All of these additional criteria require that your contact has filled in all the relevant details in their Skype profile).

Once you locate the person, you will probably want to add them as a contact before you call them. To do this, click the contact then click the “Add Selected Contact” button. If you don’t want to add them as a contact, just write down or remember their Skype Name, close the search window, then type the Skype Name straight into the box at the bottom of the Skype window and press the green “Call” button to start a call.

If you added the person as a contact, simply select the contact from the list of Skype contacts in the main Skype window, then press the green “Call” button to call the contact.

PC to Phone

Jargon alert: This is known as “SkypeOut”. To learn how to make calls to normal phones from your PC, click this SkypeOut link.

Recording Skype calls

a href=”http://www.callburner.com/download”>Download your free 30 day trial of CallBurner to start recording your Skype calls.

Save with these CallBurner special offers:

As a CallBurner Desktop + Laptop customer you get:

* 12 months of CallBurner Software Updates
* 12 months of  CallBurner Customer Support (24 hour response even over weekends!)
* Use on up to 2 PCs at the same time (standard license is single PC only)

Buy CallBurner Desktop + Laptop license

As a CallBurner Extra Hot customer you get:

* Free Upgrades for Life
* Three Years Support
* Use on up to 3 PCs (standard license is single PC only)

Buy CallBurner Extra Hot!

As a CallBurner Desktop + Laptop customer you get:

* 12 months of CallBurner Software Updates
* 12 months of  CallBurner Customer Support (24 hour response even over weekends!)
* Use on up to 2 PCs at the same time (standard license is single PC only)

Buy CallBurner Desktop + Laptop license

To activate CallBurner on your computer, follow these steps:

1. Double-click on the CallBurner icon in your system tray to launch CallBurner

2. In CallBurner, click on the Options tab, then click on the Purchase/Activate CallBurner button to launch the CallBurner Licensing Wizard

3. In the CallBurner Licensing Wizard, click Activate Now (with serial key previously acquired) and click Next.  Then enter in your serial key and click Next.

CallBurner is now supported on Windows 7 (both 32-bit & 64-bit versions).

Upgrade to the latest version of CallBurner from www.callburner.com/download.

CallBurner has built-in “Anti-Drift” technology to keep both sides of the call synchronized.

Often, the speakers and microphone device drivers on a PC have their own separate internal clocks.  Although these all run at approximately the same speed, there are slight variations.  These variations can build up over time and on long calls can become quite significant, causing the recording from the microphone (your side of the call) to drift out of synchronization with the recording from the speakers (the other side of the call).

If you are recording long interviews, e.g. for podcasting, this can be a significant problem.

To overcome this, CallBurner has “Anti-Drift”, which monitors the clock speeds and automatically adjusts for any variations, by making small, virtually undetectable changes to the audio recorded for either side of the call.  You can see if this is occurring on your system by going to the “Stats” tab and looking at the “Pads” and “Trims” statistics during a call.

“Anti-Drift” is enabled by default – there is no need to turn on any options.

Got a question about Anti-Drift?  Leave a comment on this post and we will get back to you.

SkypeOut is a service which Skype offer which allows you to make calls on your computer with Skype to ordindary phone numbers (such as landlines and cell or mobile phones). SkypeOut calling is typically a lot cheaper than calling on an ordinary phone. You can call people on SkypeOut locally, and internationally. See the latest SkypeOut calling rates. Buy SkypeOut Credit.

How does SkypeOut work?

On the Call Phones tab within Skype, enter a phone number (we’ll help you get the country code right) and hit the big, green call button and start chatting. When you begin to run low on credit, it’s a quick trip back to your Account to top up.

For more information on SkypeIn, see the SkypeOut page on Skype’s website.

Follow these steps to record each party on a Skype call to a separate file.  You can use this CallBurner feature if you require each party to have their separate audio track.  One reason for recording each party to a separate file would would possibly be in the event of an interview (such as on a podcast for example) where the interviewer would like to edit the conversation in a later stage during post-production. Having each party in a separate file, gives you a lot of control and flexibility when it comes to editing the call later (i.e. one side of the call could be a too loud or too quiet and you can easily adjust the volume levels to make the overall conversation more audible).

These steps assume you have Skype and CallBurner installed. Do you need help with installing CallBurner, or perhaps installing Skype?

To configure CallBurner to record each party on a Skype call to a separate file, follow these steps:

1. Click on the CallBurner chilli icon in the system tray to bring up the CallBurner Call Monitor window as shown below:

2. Click on the ‘Options’ tab (4th tab from the left) as shown below, and then click on ‘Configure…’:

3. When you see the ‘CallBurner Options’ dialog, select the “Recording” (as shown below):

4. Note the ‘Advanced Recording Options’ panel of the Recording Options dialog.  In this dialog, you can configure audio encoding options, audio format options etc.  More information on audio encoding and audio format options.  To configure CallBurner to record each side of the call separately, you need to check the ‘Store raw audio in addition to the audio recorded in the format above’ checkbox.  When this option is checked, CallBurner will record a single file with combined audio to the file format specified in the ‘Audio Format’ section, and an additional two .wav files – one for your side of the call and one for the other side.  The separate wav files contain raw audio (as in, uncompressed audio) which can be then edited in your post production software of choice.

Note: CallBurner names each of the wav files with the following names, in the directory specified in the ‘Folder to store recordings in’ setting:

• ‘This side.wav’ – This file contains audio only from your side of the Skype call
• ‘Other side.wav’ – This file contains audio only from the other side of the Skype call

CallBurner can record ecah party to a separate file on the the following types of Skype calls:

• Skype to Skype (computer to computer)
• SkypeOut calls
• SkypeIn calls

If you have any problems getting this to work, we can help – just email us at callburner@callburner.com for assistance.