Setup & Configuration

Setup

Installation

The app is provided only as a Flatpak. This means that it can be installed via the software management tools (KDE Discover or GNOME Software).

Open the corresponding software management application and search for GOnnect. Choose to install the application, and you should be done.

Preparing the desktop

Notifications

On KDE desktops, there is already a system tray enabled by default, so you don’t have to do anything here. For GNOME desktops, this functionality must be enabled:

  1. Open the GNOME "Extensions" App

  2. Activate the Extension AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support

URL handler

You can set GOnnect to be the default application for handling telephony. This enables you to click on tel: or sip: URIs and allow other applications to open GOnnect when they want to start a call.

Use the settings menu of your desktop environment - for example, on GNOME, navigate to Settings  Apps  Default Apps and change the entry for calls to GOnnect.

Desktop Search (GNOME only)

GOnnect has a search provider that lets you find contacts and start calls via the desktop search. This must be enabled manually.

In the GNOME settings, navigate to "Search", find the item "GOnnect" and enable it. You can adjust the search result order to your liking.

Now, when you press the Windows key on the keyboard and type a name or phone number of one of your contacts, it should show the search results. Activating a search result item starts the call.

Configuration

GOnnect, as a Qt application, uses INI files for configuration.

To allow a structured provisioning, the settings could be distributed over multiple files and GOnnect aggregates them in order of their file names.

To make the file order deterministic, the filename must follow the convention:

  • two digit number

  • a dash

  • a description

  • .conf extension

00-number.conf
01-sip-base.conf
10-jitsi.conf
20-toggler.conf
40-addressbook.conf
99-user.conf

GOnnect process all config files in the order of their name and aggregates the setting. Settings in a later file override the setting in a former one.

The 99-user.conf is a special file and must be named exactly like this. This is the only file where GOnnect saves the user configuration for the UI settings. All other files are readonly.

Presets

GOnnect is bundled with some configuration presets. If GOnnect starts the first time and does not find a configuration, it asks the user to choose a preset. Some presets also include substitutions like username for which GOnnect will ask for.

Variable substitution

The config files may contain special strings which are replaced by the value of environment variables or by other config settings.

Environment variables

%ENV[<name of env var>]%

Example 1. 01-sip-base.conf: insert the value of the environment variable USER
[account0]
...
userUri=sip:%ENV[USER]%@example.net
...

Config setting

The substitution can replace a setting with a previously defined value.

%CFG[<a setting definition>]%

The setting definition consists of the section heading (which is the part of an INI file in brackets) and the config name separated by a forward slash.

This only works, if the value is defined in an earlier processed file or section.

Example 2. 20-toggler.conf: insert the value of the setting number in the generic section
[toggler_0]
...
subscribe=sip:*2%CFG[generic/number]%@example.net
...