Viewing current conference status

To see a list of all the conferences currently in progress, go to Status > Conferences. You can select individual conferences to see more detailed information, including an interactive conference graph, and perform some conference control functions such as muting all Guests or disconnecting all participants.

To view historical information on conferences after they have finished, including the ability to rewind and replay the conference graph, see Viewing historical information about conferences.

The pages showing conference status information do not refresh automatically — you must refresh them manually — except for the conference graph which does dynamically refresh. A "Conference instance no longer active" message indicates that the conference whose details you were viewing has now finished.

The Administrator interface uses color coding when reporting media statistics, such as perceived call quality, packet loss and jitter. In general, statistics that are shown in green text represent good quality, orange represents intermediate quality, and red is used for bad quality. See media statistics and perceived call quality for more information.

Each conference has the following information available:

Field Description
Service name

The name of the Virtual Meeting Room, Virtual Auditorium, Virtual Reception, Media Playback Service, Test Call Service or Call Routing Rule. For Infinity Gateway calls, the rule name is followed by a unique identifier to distinguish between separate calls.

For Virtual Receptions, Media Playback Services and Test Call Services, if there are multiple concurrent users of that service you will see a single instance of that service (rather than one instance per participant, as all participants are using the same service even though they cannot see or hear each other).

Click on the service name to view more information.

Duration

For Virtual Meeting Rooms and Virtual Auditoriums: the length of time since the first participant joined the conference.

For Virtual Receptions, Media Playback Services and Test Call Services: the length of time that this instance of the service has been in continuous use (note that this could involve more than one participant if their usage overlapped).

For Infinity Gateway calls: the length of time since the call was received by the Infinity Gateway.

Participant count

The number of participants currently in the conference or using the service.

Service type * The type of conference, e.g. Virtual Meeting Room.
Service tag * The unique identifier that an administrator has assigned to this service. If this field is blank, no tag has been assigned. For more information, see Tracking usage via service and participant call tags.
Is locked * Indicates whether a conference has been locked to prevent further participants from joining. For more information, see Locking a conference and allowing participants to join a locked conference.
Guests muted * Indicates whether all Guest participants are muted.

* Only displayed when you have selected an individual conference to view.

To view more information about the conference, click on the service name. This gives you access to some conference control functions, and 3 tabs: Participants, Backplanes and Graph.

Conference control

When viewing conference details you can use the controls at the bottom of the page to:

  • dial out to a new participant
  • mute all Guests
  • lock the conference
  • disconnect all participants from the conference.

Participants

The Participants section lists all the participants that are currently in the conference.

For more details about a particular participant, including media stream statistics, click on the Participant alias. This takes you to the Participant details page.

Field Description
Participant alias

The name of the user or the registered alias of the endpoint.

When viewing a Google Meet conference, you will see additional aliases (typically in the form "spaces/<id>/devices/<id>") for each external participant.

Duration

The length of time since this participant joined the conference or accessed the service.

Display name The name that has been configured on the participant's endpoint.
System location The system location of the Conferencing Node to which the endpoint is connected. However, when the participant is connected to a Proxying Edge Node, this is the location of the Transcoding Conferencing Node that is processing the conference media for this participant.
Signaling node The IP address and name of the Conferencing Node to which the endpoint is connected. This node is handling the call signaling but may or may not be handling the call media (for more information, see Handling of media and signaling in locally distributed conferences).
Media node The IP address and name of the Transcoding Conferencing Node that is processing the call media for this participant (for more information, see Handling of media and signaling in locally distributed conferences).
Role

Host indicates that either:

  • the conference has no PINs configured (in which case all participants have a role of Host)
  • the participant accessed the conference using the Host PIN.

Guest indicates that the participant accessed the conference using the Guest PIN.

Unknown indicates one of the following:

  • the participant is at the PIN entry screen and has not yet successfully entered a PIN
  • the participant is at the Waiting for Host screen but their role has not yet been determined
  • the participant is connected to an externally-hosted conference, such as a Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business meeting, or Google Meet (these participants appear in the Connect app participant list with a role of External Guest).

For more information, see About PINs, Hosts and Guests.

Is presenting Indicates whether the endpoint is currently sending a presentation stream.
Is muted Indicates whether the endpoint's audio has been muted (using a Connect app, the Administrator interface, or by a third party using the Pexip API).
On hold Indicates whether the endpoint has been put on hold (usually by the endpoint user).
Streaming or recording device Indicates if the participant is a streaming or recording device.

Backplanes

The Backplanes section provides information about the media streams being transmitted between Transcoding Conferencing Nodes for the selected conference. Backplane links between Conferencing Nodes are unidirectional, so for a conference involving two transcoding nodes there will be two backplane links: one from node A to node B, and another from node B to node A. Note that a bidirectional backplane is created when a Conferencing Node connects to a Teams Connector or to a Skype for Business / Lync meeting.

Field Description
Media node

The IP address and name of the Conferencing Node that is transmitting media.

For details about the media streams being sent over a particular backplane link, click on the media node's IP address.

Remote media node The IP address and name of the Conferencing Node or remote system e.g. a Teams Connector, that is receiving media.
Remote conference name * The name of the conference on the remote node. For external backplanes, this identifies the conference on the other platform, such as a Microsoft Teams conference ID.
System location * The system location of the Conferencing Node that is transmitting media.
Duration The length of time since the connection was established.
Backplane type

Geographic indicates that the two Conferencing Nodes are in different system locations.

Local indicates that the two Conferencing Nodes are in the same system location.

External indicates a link between a Conferencing Node and an external node, such as a Teams Connector.

* Only displayed when you have selected an individual media node to view.

Backplane media streams

Media stream details are displayed when you have selected an individual node to view.

Field Description
Type Indicates whether the information is for an Audio, Video, or Presentation stream.
Start time The time that the media stream started.
Tx codec The format used by the transmitting Conferencing Node to encode and decode the media stream being transmitted.
Tx bitrate (kbps) The quantity of data currently being sent from the transmitting Conferencing Node to the recipient Conferencing Node for this particular media stream.
Tx resolution The display resolution of the image being sent from the transmitting Conferencing Node.
Tx framerate The video frame rate per second being sent from the transmitting Conferencing Node.
Tx packets sent The total quantity of packets sent from the transmitting Conferencing Node to the recipient Conferencing Node since the start of the conference.
Tx packets lost The total quantity of packets sent from the transmitting Conferencing Node but not received by the recipient Conferencing Node.
Tx jitter (ms) The variation in the expected periodic arrival of packets being sent from the transmitting Conferencing Node to the recipient Conferencing Node, in milliseconds.

Graph

This section displays a dynamic graphical view of the connections for this conference, as follows:

You can use the timeline controls at the bottom of the graph to rewind and replay the graph at a variety of speeds. When viewing or replaying the graph you can:

  • See when participants and Conferencing Nodes joined or disconnected from the conference.
  • See when participants started and stopped presenting.
  • View participant packet loss statistics during the conference by hovering over a connection.
  • View summary details of individual participants, such as the protocol they are using and their bandwidth usage, by hovering over a participant. You can double-click on a participant to see more information.
  • View summary details of individual nodes, such as its media load or any alarms, by hovering over a node. You can double-click on a node to see more information.
  • Click within the graph to use your mouse to pan and zoom.

(See Rewinding and replaying status for more information about how to use the controls.)

Conference statistics and issues: the number of Conferencing Nodes and participants that are involved in the conference is displayed at the top left of the graph.

If any participants are experiencing call quality issues then the number of affected participants is displayed (in orange). You can click on this number to reveal the affected participants and also drill down to view more details about each of those participants.

The timeline indicates in blue any times when a participant or backplane had call quality issues. You can hover over these blue indicators to see more details of the issue.

Filtering: the Search box at the top left of the graph allows you to search for participants by name or alias.

When a filter is applied, any participants who match the filter text are highlighted in yellow. The timeline also indicates in yellow when there was a participant who matched the filter. You can hover over these yellow indicators to see more information about the match.

Colored areas: each colored area highlights a system location and shows the Conferencing Nodes and endpoint connections within that location. A different color is used for each location.

Small dark blue dots: all participant endpoints. Some may have an icon next to their name, as follows:

You can hover over an endpoint to view participant information.


Large green circles: the Transcoding Conferencing Nodes to which the endpoints are connected, or are processing conference media. The amount of green fill within the circle indicates the current media load (in terms of percentage of estimated HD ports in use), so an unused node is white and a fully loaded node is filled entirely green.


Large blue circles: the Proxying Edge Nodes to which the endpoints are connected. The amount of green fill within the circle indicates the current media load (in terms of percentage of proxying capacity in use), so an unused node is white and a fully loaded node is filled entirely green.
Large pale blue circles: an externally-hosted conference, such as a Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business meeting, or Google Meet.
Green lines: backplane links between Conferencing Nodes, or links to external nodes. These become dashed green lines if total packet loss is greater than 1%.
Gray lines: connections between an endpoint and a Conferencing Node. These become dashed gray lines if total packet loss is greater than 1%.
Red dashed lines: any connections with total packet loss greater than 2%.
Blue lines: a media-forwarding link between a Proxying Edge Node and a Transcoding Conferencing Node. Only one link is shown regardless of how many connections/streams are being proxied. Packet loss information is not available on media-forwarding links.
Keyhole: a keyhole in the top right of the screen indicates that the conference is locked.

Example graph showing endpoints and a Skype for Business / Lync meeting connected to two Conferencing Nodes, where each Conferencing Node is in a separate location.

Example graph showing a system location containing two Conferencing Nodes that are hosted in AWS and are being used as an overflow location from an on-premises location containing one Conferencing Node.

Example graph showing packet loss on a backplane between two Conferencing Nodes in separate locations.

Example graph showing endpoints connected via a Proxying Edge Node to a VMR hosted on a Transcoding Conferencing Node in the "Oslo Transcoding" location.

Example graph showing packet loss for a connection.