What's new in version 36?

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:

  • Connect 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).

Note that version 36 of the Teams Connector contains updates that necessitate an upgrade to your Pexip platform to ensure compatibility with the latest updates to the Microsoft Teams APIs and to the Teams Connector's latest features. We strongly recommend that you upgrade your Pexip deployment — both the Pexip Infinity platform and the Pexip Teams Connector — to version 36 as soon as practicable.

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 host the web app externally.

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 viewing current and historic media statistics for participants and backplanes, the media data is now also shown as time-based graphs. This time series data is also included in diagnostic snapshots.
• 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

Disable app shortcuts

Customization option: disableKeyboardShortcuts

• Mute indicators now show whether participants muted themselves or were muted by a Host.
• Hosts can decide whether Guests who have been muted by a Host can unmute themselves.
• Guests who have been muted by a Host are warned when they are later unmuted by a Host, and must choose whether or not to stay muted.

Muting a participant's audio

Prevent guests from unmuting

View a participant's status

• Meeting-wide controls (such as muting all guests and ending the meeting) are now under the participants panel Settings menu.
• Participant-specific controls that were adjacent to participant names (such as muting and disconnecting) are now under the options menu for each participant. Icons next to participant names are now indicators rather than controls.

• Information about participants joining and leaving the conference is now shown in the chat panel.
• When writing messages, pressing Shift+Enter on the keyboard enters a new line.

View information about participants joining and leaving the meeting

Send and receive chat messages, and share links

When a call changes from a being a direct media call to a transcoded call and vice versa:

• chat messages are preserved
• any active presentations are preserved.

Certificate-based authentication (CBA) is now the default method to authenticate the Teams Connector CVI application towards MS Graph. You can still use the previous password-based authentication method, but we plan to deprecate it in a future release, thus we recommend using CBA for new installations, or migrating to CBA as soon as practicable when upgrading existing deployments.