Features added in previous versions

There are several modifications to the Base theme and improvements to how some layout features are displayed:

• The Base theme has a new default background image that is used on splash screens. Also, most of the splash screens (such as the Welcome screen shown below) no longer display any overlay graphics/icons by default, but they still display any text-based messages, such as "Welcome".

  

  The PIN entry screens and "no presentation" screen do still display overlay icons as per previous releases.

• The in-conference indicators and messages that are shown in the information bar at the top of the layout (which indicate states such as a locked conference, raised hands etc), have been improved:

  • The information bar now has a line separator between indicators with associated numbers and those without numbers. It also has a more subtle border and tint.

  • Some of the icons used in the information bar (raised hand, locked conference, recording/streaming) have been updated, and the expanded in-conference message indicators now have a plainer background for improved accessibility. For example:

    

    
• When using participant pinning, you can now customize via themes a slot's appearance when there are no participants found.

• If you have a multiscreen system:

  • The second screen can now be customized via themes to show an image or background of your choice when it is not being used to display conference content. A black screen is used by default.
  • You can now display conference participants across both screens when using a 3x3 layout. If dual screen is enabled when using a 4x4 or 5x5 layout it now displays 3x3 on both screens (previously it would display 1+7).
  • Custom layouts now support multiscreen systems. Each screen can have its own layout configuration applied, up to a total of 26 participants across all screens.

Conference layouts and speaker names

Base theme and other preconfigured themes

Pinning participants to the layout during a conference

Customizing the unused screen in a dual-screen system

Custom layouts

Multiscreen participant display

Local and external policy has the following additions:

• In participant policy you can now override whether the participant is enabled for multiscreen participant display, and whether they receive presentation as part of the layout mix.

There are several improvements and updates to themes and splash screens:

• There is a new configurable unused_screen splash screen within the theme configuration file that defines the appearance of an unused second screen in multiscreen systems.
• "Inter" is now the default font for overlay text (splash screen text and in-conference messages).

• The text and background colors of the messages when the layout's information bar (notch) is in light mode can be customized via a new light_mode field in the indicator_color_config setting in the theme configuration file. You can also now separately specify the background and border colors of all messages.

  The new border field is required when customizing a message. If you have an existing custom theme that includes indicator_color_config you must update it to include a border value for each specified message type.

• Within a pinning configuration file you can now override the default behavior of what is displayed in an unused slot. You do this on a per-slot basis by defining a reserved_appearance dictionary for a slot.
• Many of the overlay icon SVG files that are used by splash screens now contain empty/blank images. However, they are still referenced by the splash screens for backwards compatibility, but as they are blank by default they do not affect each screen's new default appearance in version 37 (which many now typically only show a background image and a text label).

Rules and requirements for customized themes

With the release of AIMS v1, live captions is no longer a technical preview feature. You can now connect to multiple AIMS servers to enable live captions; these connections are configured under the new Platform > Media Processing Servers page.

The live captions feature requires integration with a Pexip Private AI platform. For full details, see Pexip Private AI and AIMS.

Live captions (Global settings)

Configuring media processing servers

Enabling live captions

One-Touch Join has the following improvements:

• You can now elect to bypass a configured web proxy for One-Touch Join connections to the Exchange server and to Microsoft Graph.
• You can now change the domain used to connect to the Webex API from the default if, for example, you are using Webex for Government.

Using a web proxy

Cisco Webex Cloud configuration

Enabling authentication (One-Touch Join)

Enabling authentication (Scheduling)

Two new administrator permissions that are dedicated to managing user groups have been added to Pexip Infinity: May view user groups and May modify user groups.

These permissions are typically used by the VMR portal to view and update VMR settings.

Managing administrator roles

Deploying the VMR self-service portal

This release contains the following administrative improvements:

• Improved account selection for administrator access via OIDC:

  • When configuring the OpenID Connect service, you can specify a Domain hint to pass to the service as a hint to the expected login account.
  • When logging into the Management Node via OIDC you now have the ability to log out of the OIDC service and to select a different account.
• You can now use the management command API to submit a background backup or snapshot creation request.

Managing administrator access via OIDC

Management command API

There are several minor improvements to how some layout features are displayed:

• The text-based in-conference messages that are temporarily shown at the top of the layout (which indicate states such as a locked conference, live captions, recording/streaming/transcribing/AI enabled, raised hands, and audio-only participant names when speaking), have been restyled. By default they are now shown in white text on various different background colors. For example:

  

  

  The text and background colors can be customized via a new indicator_color_config setting in the theme configuration file.

• There is a new "AI" indicator, shown when Google Meet AI features are enabled.
• Any content classification messages are now shown in an overlay banner at the top of the layout. If a banner message is also being displayed then they are combined into the same overlay.

Conference layouts and speaker names

Theme configuration file (themeconfig.json)

There are several improvements and updates to themes and splash screens:

• There is a new dtmf_conference_control_command in the base theme: toggle_raise_hand, which is assigned to *3 by default, and toggles the raised hand status of the participant in a VMR.
• There are two new supported fonts for overlay text: "Inter" and "Inter Medium".

• In support of the new AI indicator for Google Meet, there are:

  • New audio files: conf-ai_started_48kHz_mono.wav and conf-ai_stopped_48kHz_mono.wav.
  • New fields in the themeconfig.json file: "disable_ai_indicator" and "ai_indicator_text".

Rules and requirements for customized themes

Using a DTMF keypad to control a conference

Pexip's Cloud Video Interop (CVI) integration with Microsoft Teams has been enhanced:

• Improved interoperability with Microsoft Teams Rooms:

  • Pexip app Hosts can now admit a Teams Room into a locked Pexip conference.
  • Dual-screen Teams Rooms are now automatically detected and will display conference participants across both screens when joining a Pexip Infinity VMR, providing it uses the Teams Room calendaring service* when using "Cross-platform meetings via SIP join for Teams Rooms". to join the conference. Local or external policy can also be used to provide similar behavior (by modifying the dialed alias) when calling into a Zoom meeting.
  • Improved support for sending DTMF commands from a Teams Room into a Pexip conference. This includes toggling receiving presentation content in the layout mix (*4), and toggling multiscreen participant display (*9).
• Any in-lobby notification messages are now displayed at the top of the screen. Previously they were displayed as slide out indicators. The displayed message is still generated from the conference_locked_indicator_n_waiting_text theme configuration setting, but the conference_locked_indicator_text and conference_unlocked_indicator_text settings are no longer used in this context.
• We now recommend assigning *2 to the DTMF command for toggle_teams_large_gallery in any customized theme for Teams integration. This is because *3 was previously recommended but this digit is now assigned by default to toggle_raise_hand (which is not currently supported in Teams meetings).

Breakout rooms, which are separate sessions that are split off from a main VMR or Virtual Auditorium that allow smaller groups of people to meet together, is now a fully supported feature. Updates in this release include:

• The ability to customize the length of time the transfer modal is shown to Webapp3 users being moved to or from a breakout room.
• Updates to workflow and dialogs in the breakout rooms panel when managing rooms via the web app.

Breakout rooms

transferTimeout

Support for Safe Links URL rewriting:

• One-Touch Join now supports meeting invitations that include URLs rewritten by Safe Links in Microsoft Defender for Office 365.
• There is a new custom jinja filter, pex_safelinks_decode, which can be used to decode strings that have been encoded by Safe Links.

Custom Pexip filters

Local and external policy has the following additions:

• In participant policy you can control whether a participant's overlay text (display name) is disabled.
• You can specify a DTMF sequence to send in a Infinity Gateway service type response.

• When a Microsoft Teams Room joins a call via One-Touch Join the following fields are now included in service configuration requests (external policy) and call information (local policy):

  • display_count: the number of screens signaled by the Teams Room.
  • third_party_passcode: the passcode field provided by the Teams Rooms calendaring service* when using "Cross-platform meetings via SIP join for Teams Rooms"..
• You can specify the live captions source (audio) language and captions language.
• External policy registration alias requests include support for single sign-on (SSO). Requests now include the remote_address field, plus a new policy request field of auth_type which can be either "credentials" or "sso".

Administrators can now opt to remove the use of pop-up windows for Webapp3 participants when authenticating using SSO in order to join a meeting. There are two new options in the Administrator interface associated with this feature:

• Disable pop-up windows (Users & Devices > Identity Providers > Add Identity provider) enables and disables this feature.

• External Webapp Host address (Web App > External Web App Hosts) is required if you have disabled pop-ups and you either host the web app externally, or access the web app from a URL that is not a Conferencing Node's Configured FQDN.

About pop-up windows

Adding external hosts to Pexip Infinity

This release contains the following administrative improvements:

• You can now view a history of registered devices via History & Logs > Registration History.
• In Status > Participants:
  • A new field Is locally muted has been added which indicates whether the participant is muted locally on the client side.
  • The On Hold field has been removed (from the Administrator interface only — it is still available via the Management Status API).
• When generating a diagnostic snapshot you can now navigate away from the page while the file is being generated and then download it later when the process has completed.
• When performing a packet capture you can now filter it on IP address / subnet and you have more flexibility in selecting the type of traffic captured.

Viewing current and historic registrations

Viewing participant status

Downloading a diagnostic snapshot

Performing a network packet capture

Pexip Infinity now includes support for JWK Set URL (JKU), which may be required in a future release of Epic.

If your planned upgrade to Epic means your organization will be impacted, you should upgrade to v36 or later and then work with your Epic support representative to make the required changes on the Epic side, quoting Epic reference SLG 8598020 or Sherlock Checklist 1696.

Managing administrator access via OIDC

Authentication overview

You can send a banner message that is displayed at the top of the screen to all conference participants. It is supported in Virtual Meeting Rooms and Virtual Auditoriums, and in all layouts.

A new "1+1" conference layout is available. It displays one large main speaker with one overlaying participant.

When configuring a custom layout you can now specify within the layout's JSON file:

• Where to position the watermark.
• Whether to use a dark or light mode for the indicator display area at the top-center of the layout.

Pexip's Cloud Video Interop (CVI) integration with Microsoft Teams has been enhanced:

• The Teams-like layout has improved framing logic.
• An alarm is now raised in Pexip Infinity if the CVI app certificate is due to expire, or has expired.

Pexip now recommends the use of a blue-green deployment model for Teams Connectors to make upgrades easier and minimize downtime.

There are several improvements to participant policy:

• There is a new display count configuration option which allows the display count (the number of screens possessed by the endpoint) to be overridden. This could be used, for example, to override multiscreen participant display.
• You can now override the call tag that is assigned to a participant.
• You can specify a spotlight priority value to a participant.

Ducking reduces the volume of certain participants when another participant is speaking. If a participant is set to prominent, the audio of all non-prominent participants will be ducked when the prominent participant is speaking.

Ducking is for use as part of the Human Interpreter feature in Pexip Secure Meetings for Justice deployments only, and can be controlled from participant policy, or the client REST API with the new functions receive_from_audio_mix and send_to_audio_mixes.

Pexip Secure Meetings for Justice

Participant configuration responses

Pexip client REST API

Writing local policy scripts

This setting controls whether Guests see other Guests during a Virtual Auditorium.
Previous setting options were Yes or No to Guests seeing other Guests when the last Host left the conference. These have now been replaced with the following options:

• If no hosts are present (default): Guests see other guests only if no other Hosts are present.
• Always: Guests are always shown to other Guests (if there is space in the layout after Hosts).
• Never: Guests never see other Guests.

Note that this setting still does not effect the behavior at the start of a meeting — Guests always still see the "Waiting for the host" screen.

Changes to local/external policy:

The data type of the Virtual Meeting Room / Virtual Auditorium service type response field guests_can_see_guests has changed from a boolean to a string.

• true is now no_hosts. This is the default. Guests see other Guests only if no other Hosts are present.
• false is now never. Guests never see other Guests.
• always is a new option. Guests are always shown to other Guests, if there is space in the layout after Hosts.

If you are currently providing a value for guests_can_see_guests then you need to revise your policy response to use the new data type / values.

The behavior of Pexip's classic layouts has been updated. All of the classic layouts now have a similar look and feel to the Adaptive Composition layout:

• All in-conference indicators, such as participant counts, audio participants, recording indicators and locked status are now shown at the top-center of the layout. This replaces the previous "slide out" indicators. The only exceptions to this are the "in-lobby" notifications in Teams CVI calls which still employ the slide-out mechanism.
• Active speaker text overlays are now supported in all layouts.
• Any classification indicators now appear below any in-conference indicators for all layouts.

Note that the classic layouts still do not apply any face detection or framing technologies.