What's new in version 20?

Pexip Infinity provides any-to-any video interoperability with Microsoft Teams.

It enables any video conferencing system to join Microsoft Teams meetings and allows authenticated systems to join as trusted participants without additional user interaction (i.e. lobby by-pass), including:

• H.323 & SIP room-based videoconferencing systems, including Cisco, Polycom, LifeSize, and others
• Browser-based video (WebRTC / RTMP)

Third-party systems can connect to Teams meetings via the Pexip Distributed Gateway either via a Virtual Reception (IVR) or by dialing the conference directly.

Conference participants and directory contacts within Pexip Infinity can be represented by an avatar or image.

You can configure user records to represent those participants/contacts and associate each user with an avatar URL that points to an external service (such as Gravatar) which can be used to retrieve that user's avatar/image. Then, when that user is participating in a conference, their avatar can be shown to any of the other conference participants who are using an Infinity Connect client.

User records can be created manually (Users & Devices > Users), or they can generated from directory information contained in an AD/LDAP server via the existing VMR and device provisioning mechanism (Utilities > LDAP Sync Templates).

This release contains the following administrative improvements:

• New brandingURL Infinity Connect provisioning parameter that can be used to instruct the Infinity Connect client to use the same branding that has been uploaded to Pexip Infinity (and which is being used automatically by the web app).
• You can specify the maximum number of days of logs and call history to retain on Pexip nodes (Platform configuration > Global settings > Maximum log age).
• Improved diagnostics, including the ability to create custom graphs, to make it easier to identify system dynamics such as call rate and participant creation times.
• The Enable distributed database setting for a Conferencing Node can be modified via the Administrator interface after a node has been deployed.
• New pex_md5 and pex_to_uuid filters that can be used in LDAP sync templates.
• New conference participant status attributes that indicate if mute, disconnect and transfer actions are supported for that participant.

Registering and provisioning the Infinity Connect client

Creating and viewing diagnostic graphs

The base theme built into Pexip Infinity has been updated:

• The background image is now a fjord (previously clouds).

  

• The +n participant indicator overlay is now white on dark gray (previously orange on dark gray).
• The default conference avatar, which is used in the contact list in Microsoft Skype for Business and Lync clients and in the legacy Infinity Connect clients, is now (previously an orange Pexip logo).

When customizing your own themes:

• There are three new splash screens: no_main_video, no_incoming_video and no_presentation which are used when there is no video or presentation stream.
• All of the in-conference indicators now use SVG files (previously PNG files).
• There are new settings, audio files and indicators for Google Hangouts Meet interoperability as described below.

This contains important information for administrators who have configured Google Hangouts Meet interoperability in v19 and are upgrading v20.

Updated themes

There are new and updated theme settings, audio files and indicators that are used by default for callers who are gatewayed via Pexip Infinity into a Hangouts Meet conference:

• New "conference recording stopped/started" audio files and new content for the existing "conference streaming stopped/started" audio files.
• New icon_recording.svg visual indicator.
• New recording_indicator_text setting in the themeconfig.json file, which is set to "Recording".

Previously in v19 we recommended that you use a customized theme (hangouts-theme.zip) supplied by Pexip for your Call Routing Rules used to route callers into Hangouts Meet conferences. In v20 the audio file and indicator customizations contained in that theme are now included by default in the base theme that is supplied automatically with Pexip Infinity. Therefore if you have used the Pexip-supplied hangouts-theme.zip in your deployment, to ensure that it does not conflict with the new base theme built into v20, we recommend that you delete that custom theme:

1. In Pexip Infinity, go to Service configuration > Themes.
2. Select your existing "Hangouts theme" you created previously.

3. Select Delete and confirm.

   Any services that were using that theme will now revert to using the default theme instead. If that theme was the default theme, then the default theme will revert to the base theme.

Note that if you had applied further personalized customizations to the "Hangouts theme", you should create and use a new theme that only contains those extra customizations.

Call Routing Rules into Hangouts Meet conferences

When integrating with Google Hangouts Meet you must explicitly set a new Treat as trusted flag on your Call Routing Rules if you want the devices routed via that rule to be trusted in Hangouts Meet.

Previously in v19 the devices were automatically treated as trusted from Pexip Infinity's perspective if they were registered to Pexip Infinity. You must still also associate the rule with a trusted access token.

On upgrade to version 20, any existing rules with a Call target of Google Hangouts Meet meeting will automatically have the new Treat as trusted flag enabled if that rule has Match incoming calls from registered devices only selected.

Configuring Pexip Infinity as a Google Hangouts Meet gateway

Base theme and other preconfigured themes

This release contains the following administrative modifications:

• The Users top-level menu is now called Users & Devices. The Device aliases option has moved from Service Configuration to Users & Devices.
• Policy profiles include a new Use local avatar configuration option.
• "Connectivity lost between nodes" alarms are now only raised once per node which has been lost, and the alarm contains details of all of the other nodes that have reported it as lost.

Stop/start sending presentation to a participant

Recents

Favorites

Administrators can now enable additional languages.

If a browser or device's default language is supported by the Infinity Connect client, that language will be used automatically. Alternatively, administrators can specify a default language to use.

Customizing the Infinity Connect clients

Users can now use the timeline to select and zoom in on the events during a specific 10-minute period.

Timeline

Information about the software version of the client and the Pexip Infinity deployment it is connected to is now available during a call.

View diagnostic information about your call and client

Users are no longer able to disable their camera prior to placing a video call. If users wish to receive but not send video, they must place a video call first and then disable their camera.

However, the muteCamera=true parameter can be added to a meeting URL to disable the camera prior to placing a call.

Allow waiting Guests to join a new meeting without a Host