Automatically dialing out to a participant from a conference
You can configure a Virtual Meeting Room, Virtual Auditorium, or scheduled conference to automatically dial out to one or more participants, for example the VMR "owner" or a streaming service, when the first participant joins that conference.
You can also manually dial out to participants from a Virtual Meeting Room, Virtual Auditorium, or scheduled conference on an ad hoc basis. For more information, see Manually dialing out to a participant from a conference.
When is the participant called?
When an Automatically Dialed Participant (ADP) has been added to a Virtual Meeting Room, Virtual Auditorium or scheduled conference's configuration, a call is placed from the conference to the ADP's endpoint as follows:
| Meeting type | Participant is automatically dialed... |
|---|---|
| No PIN | when the first participant joins the conference |
| Guests not allowed; participants must enter a PIN | when the first participant has entered a valid PIN |
| Guests allowed; Hosts must enter a PIN but Guests do not | when the first participant joins the conference |
| Guests allowed; Hosts and Guests must enter a PIN | when the first participant has entered a valid PIN |
Note that:
- The role of the first participant does not matter — Hosts or Guests can trigger a call to an ADP.
- It takes at least 10 seconds (after the first participant joins) for the call to be placed to the ADP.
- A call is not placed to the ADP if that participant is already in the conference.
- Only one attempt is made to call the ADP — it does not retry.
Host and Guest PINs
When the call is answered, the Automatically Dialed Participant joins the conference as either a Host or Guest, depending on which role was selected when configuring them as an ADP. They are never required to enter a PIN, even if one is required for that role.
Choosing the calling location
Usually, the call to the ADP is placed from the same Conferencing Node that is being used by the participant who initiated the conference.
However, you can optionally configure the call to be placed from a Conferencing Node in a specific location. The behavior varies according to whether it is a manually routed ADP (where Route this call is set to Manually) or the ADP is called according to Call Routing Rules (where Route this call is set to Automatically).
- Manually routed ADPs: the nominated location is the location of the node that will dial the ADP.
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Automatically routed ADPs: the nominated location is the notional source location used when considering if a Call Routing Rule applies or not — but the rules themselves determine the location of the node that dials the ADP. In this case, the configured Outgoing location for the ADP is deemed to be the location handling the call (when matched against the Calls being handled in location setting for the Call Routing Rule) and the rule's Outgoing location setting determines the actual location of the node that dials the ADP.
This behavior is useful if, for example, you have configured lowest-cost-routing rules that only allow calls to be placed from "internal" Conferencing Nodes but you have a conference that is triggered by a call to an "external" Conferencing Node. In this case you still want the call to the ADP to be initiated, but you don't want, in general, to allow calls to arbitrary ISDN destinations to be placed from Conferencing Nodes in the external location.
Incoming call alias
When the endpoint is called, the Automatically Dialed Participant sees the call as coming from one of the Virtual Meeting Room or Virtual Auditorium's aliases. This means that if the participant misses the call, they can easily return it by dialing the alias that appears on their endpoint.
When deciding which alias to use to identify the call, Pexip Infinity selects the first in the list that is valid for the selected call protocol. So if your Virtual Meeting Room has two aliases, the first meet.sales and the second meet.sales@example.com, when you place a call to an ADP over SIP it will show as coming from meet.sales because that is the first valid SIP address in the list. However, endpoints may not always be able to return a call to this alias because it is missing the domain. Therefore, if you want ADPs to be able to return calls to Virtual Meeting Rooms and Virtual Auditoriums, we recommend that you list the most routable aliases first when assigning them to these services. Note that you can also use external or local policy (see policy profiles) to specify the source alias for calls to ADPs.
Keeping a conference alive
Automatically Dialed Participants with a role of Host may or may not prevent a conference from being automatically terminated, depending on their Keep conference alive setting and whether any other ADPs remain in the conference. For more information, see Automatically ending a conference.
Bandwidth limits
When dialing out from a conference, the outbound call bandwidth limit is inherited from the VMR's bandwidth settings. (If a Call Routing Rule is applied, the rule's bandwidth settings are not used.)
Configuring an ADP
If you have a large number of ADPs to configure, you can import them using a CSV file. For more information, see Bulk import/export of service configuration data.
To configure a Virtual Meeting Room or Virtual Auditorium to automatically dial out to a participant when a conference starts:
- Go to .
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Select .
You are taken to the page.
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Complete the following fields:
Field Description Participant alias The alias of the participant to dial when a conference starts. If you select a Protocol of SIP, this must be a valid SIP alias. Creation time This read-only field shows the date and time when this record was first configured.
Participant display name An optional user-facing display name for this participant, which may be used in participant lists and as the overlaid participant name (if enabled).
If this name is not specified then the Participant alias is used as the display name instead.
Description An optional description of the Automatically Dialed Participant.
Route this call Select how to route the call:
- Manually: uses the requested Protocol and the defaults for the specified System location.
- Automatically: routes the call according to the configured Call Routing Rules. This means that the dialed alias must match an outgoing Call Routing Rule for the call to be placed (using the protocols, outgoing location and call control systems etc. as configured for that rule).
Default: Manually.
Protocol The signaling protocol to use when dialing the participant. Select either SIP, H.323, or if the endpoint is a Skype for Business / Lync client, select Lync / Skype for Business (MS-SIP). The RTMP protocol is typically used when adding a streaming participant. Note that if the call is to a registered device, Pexip Infinity will instead use the protocol that the device used to make the registration.
Default: SIP.
This field only applies when Route this call is set to Manually.
DTMF sequence An optional DTMF sequence to be transmitted after the call to the Automatically Dialed Participant starts.
A DTMF sequence can include: the digits 0-9, "*" (asterisk), "#" (hash) or "," (comma).
The DTMF tones are sent 3 seconds after the call connects, one at a time, every 0.5 seconds. A comma is a special digit that represents a 2 second pause (multiple commas can be used if a longer pause is needed).
For example, if you need your Automatically Dialed Participant to dial an audio bridge and then enter conference number 777 followed by #, pause for six seconds and then supply conference PIN 1234 followed by #, you would configure 777#,,,1234# as your DTMF sequence.
Role The level of privileges the participant will have in the conference. For more information, see About PINs, Hosts and Guests.
Default: Guest.
Conference Select the names of the Virtual Meeting Rooms, Virtual Auditoriums and scheduled conferences from which this participant will be dialed automatically whenever a conference using that service starts. Outgoing location For Manually routed ADPs, this is the location of the Conferencing Node from which the call to the ADP will be initiated.
For Automatically routed ADPs, this is the notional source location used when considering if a routing rule applies or not - however the routing rule itself determines the location of the node that dials the ADP. For more information, see Choosing the calling location.
To allow Pexip Infinity to automatically select the Conferencing Node to use to place the outgoing call, select Automatic.
As with all calls, signaling and media may be handled by different Conferencing Nodes in that location.
Streaming Identifies the dialed participant as a streaming or recording device. When a conference participant is flagged as a streaming/recording participant, it is treated as a receive-only participant and is not included in the video stage layout seen by other participants. See Streaming and recording a conference for more information.
Keep conference alive Determines whether the conference will continue when all other
- Yes: the conference will continue to run until this participant has disconnected (applies to Hosts only).
- If multiple: the conference will continue to run as long as there are two or more If multiple participants and at least one of them is a Host.
- No: the conference will be terminated automatically if this is the only remaining participant.
Default:
For streaming participants, we recommend that this option is set to No.
For more information, see Automatically ending a conference.
Call capability Allows you to limit the media content of the call. The participant being called will not be able to escalate beyond the selected capability. For more information, see Controlling media capability.
Default: Main video + presentation.
This field only applies when Route this call is set to Manually.
This field does not apply to RTMP calls.
Dual stream (presentation) URL When adding a dual streaming RTMP participant, this specifies the RTMP URL for the second (presentation) stream.
Leave this field blank when adding a single streaming participant.
- Select .