Aptela (News - Alert) – a provider of VoIP phone service to small businesses, teleworkers and mobile workers nationwide – has announced the availability of a new Department Dashboard with the issuance of its Aptela v5.2 release. It is designed to improve VoIP phone service communication between small businesses and remote employees.

This announcement comes soon after the recent launch of the Aptela v5 calling platform, which was designed to give customers the tools required to manage business communications.

The Department Dashboard supports virtual departments with at-a-glance visibility, real-time activity monitoring and one-click resource allocation. Regardless of work location, supervisors will be able to monitor daily operations and adjust resources on the fly.

Aptela's Department Dashboard puts managers in control of department management – from initial setup to day-to-day operations.

"The Telework Coalition (TelCoa), America's leading nonprofit telework education and advocacy organization, has relied upon Aptela's services for over eight years. We appreciate the reliability, flexibility of Aptela's call handling, web-based call information, ease of use and now, department management," said Chuck Wilsker (News - Alert), president and CEO of TelCoa. "Aptela continues to lead the way in its support of teleworking and remote worker management. The new Department Dashboard, coupled with the Aptela Anywhere Apps suite, makes it easier than ever to stay connected regardless of one's physical location."

With Aptela's Department Dashboard, a small business can:

Reduce telecommunications and management expense; with significant savings over more complicated – and costly – call center solutions.

Support telecommuting and teleworking, by supporting virtual departments with flexible staffing features. Regardless of the physical location of employees, managers can monitor their workers and drive overall productivity.

Features include:

The ability to proactively monitor call activity from the dashboard, which provides an at-a-glance view of calls for the current calendar day and includes a useful metric summary (total calls, answered calls, missed calls and average length).

The ability to monitor department calls for quality purposes; "whisper" into an agent's ear for in-call training; and/or barge into an active call for an impromptu three-way conference call.

Enables managers to quickly adjust to call volume fluctuations. With one-click, it enables department members to take calls. Managers can disable them just as easily.

Allows the department manager to see who is available to receive a call versus who is currently on a call.

"This release was designed specifically to improve collaboration and communication for small businesses with remote employees and teleworkers," said Ann Santorios, vice president of Product and Business Development for Aptela. "With real-time activity monitoring, one-click resource management and quality monitoring tools, small businesses now have the tools they need to improve productivity and ensure their teams are responsive to their customers and prospects – whether employees are sitting side-by-side or working remotely."

For more details on Aptela’s Department Dashboard – the latest addition to Aptela's v5 calling platform – please click here for a video introduction.