Integrating Google Meet with Pexip Infinity

The Infinity Gateway provides any-to-any video interoperability with Google Meet. It enables the seamless interoperation of HD video between Google Meet conferences and:

• H.323 & SIP room-based videoconferencing systems, including Cisco, Poly, Lifesize, and others
• Skype for Business
• Browser-based video (WebRTC)

Third-party systems can connect to Google Meet conferences via the Infinity Gateway either by dialing the conference directly or via a Virtual Reception (IVR).

You can also join Google Meet meetings where that meeting is being hosted by an external third-party organization (even if the host’s organization has not enabled Pexip interoperability themselves) — this is referred to as "SIP Guest Join". Note that this feature works by routing the call to the external organization via the Pexip Service.

Integration features

The Google Meet in-call features that are supported via the Infinity Gateway include:

• Active speaker switching
• Content sharing (both directions)
• Recording indicator
• Bandwidth optimizations

Pexip interoperability can be used with all paid Google Workspace licenses.

Note that Google Meet is inherently a dial-in service i.e. you can only dial from a third-party video system into Google Meet. You cannot dial out from Google Meet to a SIP, H.323 device etc — instead, you have to send the relevant joining instructions/invitation to the user of that device.

Deployment environments

The Pexip Infinity platform can be deployed in any of its supported environments such as on-premises or in a public or hybrid cloud (including Google Cloud Platform).

Pexip Infinity has a close integration with Google Meet and uses Google Meet APIs to provide Infinity's interoperability features. Even though Pexip strives to maintain backwards compatibility between older versions of Pexip Infinity and the latest release of Google Meet, to ensure compatibility with the latest updates to Google Meet we recommend that you aim to keep your Pexip Infinity deployment up-to-date with the latest Pexip Infinity software release. If, for example, you have a large Pexip deployment for non-Google Meet related services, and you have stringent upgrade procedures meaning that you do not always keep your Infinity software up-to-date with the latest release, you may want to consider deploying a second instance of the Pexip Infinity platform that is dedicated to your Google Meet interoperability requirements, and which can be managed separately and upgraded more frequently.

See Pexip Infinity installation guidelines for complete information about all of the platforms into which you can deploy the Pexip Infinity platform, and Configuring Google Workspace for Google Meet integration and Configuring Pexip Infinity as a Google Meet gateway for specific instructions about how to integrate Pexip Infinity with Google Meet.

Native user experience for all participants

All participants receive the appropriate native user experience of the Google Meet conference when there is a mix of direct and gatewayed third-party participants.

Scheduling and joining conferences

Users in your organization can schedule meetings as normal via their Google Calendar or Outlook (with the Google Outlook add-in for Office 365), and choose to add Google Meet conferencing within their event options. The joining instructions for internal and external standards-based video conferencing systems, and Skype for Business users, are then automatically included in, or linked from, the calendar invitation and event.

All calls are routed into the Google Meet conference by means of the meeting ID that is associated with that conference.

Meeting IDs are generated automatically by Google Meet and are added to calendar events and invites when events are created. Skype for Business joining instructions are available from a "More joining options" link in the calendar event or invite.

For ad hoc conferences, links to the meeting IDs are presented to the host when the meeting is initiated and are also available from the Meeting details option while in the conference.

Enabling access and admitting external participants into Google Meet conferences

After you have installed and performed the basic configuration of your Pexip Infinity platform, you have to link your Pexip platform to your Google Workspace account, so that it can route calls into your Google Meet conferences. This is handled via access tokens, which are private codes that can be used by a third-party system, such as Pexip Infinity, to identify your account.

You can set up two types of access tokens in your Google Workspace account: a trusted and an untrusted token. You can use these two token types to control whether an endpoint that is routed via Pexip Infinity into a Google Meet conference is automatically admitted into the conference, or whether an existing conference participant has to explicitly admit it into the conference. When you configure Pexip Infinity, you decide which type of token to associate with the access rules and dial patterns that allow devices to be routed into Google Meet conferences.

Pexip Infinity also adds an additional layer of trust control by including an explicit setting on each Call Routing Rule to indicate whether or not the devices that are routed via that rule into Google Meet are trusted endpoints from Pexip Infinity's perspective (for example, you could treat the device as trusted if the caller is coming from a specific location, or if the device is registered to Pexip Infinity).

In essence, when Pexip Infinity routes a call to Google Meet, it provides three pieces of information:

• the meeting ID (so that the endpoint joins the correct conference)
• the access token, which can be either a "trusted" or "untrusted" token
• a "domain member" flag, which indicates if the calling endpoint is a trusted endpoint from Pexip Infinity's perspective.

If the access token is a trusted token and the endpoint is trusted by Pexip Infinity, then the device is automatically admitted into the conference.

In all other cases, the device has to be explicitly admitted into the conference (this takes the form of a popup dialog as shown right, which is displayed to all participants who are connected directly to the conference). Any of those participants can then choose to allow (admit) or deny access. Guest devices must be admitted within 60 seconds.

Since version 31 of Pexip Infinity, to enable Pexip's gateway interoperability, you must also request and upload a gateway token (provided by Pexip) that is used to authenticate your Pexip Infinity system with Google Meet.

See Configuring Google Workspace for Google Meet integration and Configuring Pexip Infinity as a Google Meet gateway for details about configuring access tokens, requesting and uploading a gateway token, and Registering devices to Pexip Infinity for registration information.

Using SIP Guest Join

Pexip's standard Google Meet interoperability solution allows your own video conferencing endpoints (and your guests) to join Google Meet meetings that you are hosting. The "SIP Guest Join" (SGJ) feature lets you join Google Meet meetings with your own video conferencing endpoints where that meeting is being hosted by an external third-party organization who has not enabled Pexip interoperability themselves.

Note that this is a guest join experience, therefore someone has to be in the Google Meeting to admit you from the lobby. If nobody admits you within 30 seconds, you will have to dial again.

If you are invited to an externally-hosted Google Meet meeting, you can join it via One-Touch Join on your video conferencing endpoint.

Joining from a meeting room

1. Invite the room (as a room resource) to the meeting. Either:

   • Copy the contents of the meeting invite, and use that to book the room (in this case the accept/reject message from the room is sent to you); or
   • Forward the meeting invite to the room's mailbox (in this case the accept/reject message is sent to the meeting organizer).
2. At the start time of the meeting: enter the room and press the Join button.

Joining from a personal video endpoint (that is set up for One-Touch Join)

1. Accept the meeting invite as usual (OTJ only looks for "accepted" meetings).
2. Press Join at the start of the meeting.

See Enabling SIP Guest Join for configuration and setup details.

Presentation / content sharing

If a participant who is using the native Google Meet web client starts presenting, any VTC participants can see both the presentation content and the presenter's standard video stream. Similarly, if a VTC participant starts presenting, the other participants in the conference will see both the presentation stream and the video from that participant.

Recording, streaming and transcribing

If a Google Meet conference is recorded, streamed or transcribed, then an in-conference indicator is displayed and audio prompts indicating that streaming/recording/transcribing has been started/stopped are played to callers who are gatewayed via Pexip Infinity into the conference. Distinct messages are used depending on whether the conference is being recorded, streamed or transcribed, and when streaming, the audio prompts also vary according to whether the stream is public or not.