What's new in version 17?

There are several interoperability improvements when integrating Pexip Infinity with Microsoft Skype for Business and Lync:

• Improved recording indicator support: when a SfB/Lync client records a conference, an indicator is shown on the video conferencing systems, and if recording via Pexip Infinity, an indicator is shown to SfB/Lync clients.
• Improved call quality in SfB/Lync meetings: SfB/Lync clients that are connected to a SfB/Lync meeting now receive smoother video streams from gatewayed VTC endpoints.
• Improved audio and video FEC (Forward Error Correction): Pexip Infinity now supports audio FEC (RED) for audio content sent to and received from Skype for Business / Lync 2013 clients. Video FEC now supports Reed-Solomon encoding, which enables the recovery of lost video packets received by Pexip from Skype for Business / Lync 2013 clients.

The live view of the status of the Pexip Infinity platform has been substantially enhanced:

• More participant and conference information: new charts and graphs showing participant information by location, protocol, license type and conference type.
• Errors and warnings: any current errors or warnings are listed and the administrator can view further details about individual issues and view associated documentation for possible causes and suggested resolutions.
• Call quality issues: identification of individual participants or conferences that are experiencing call quality issues.
• Historic data for troubleshooting and platform analysis: when reviewing historic platform, conference and participant status information you now have access to historic call quality information and improved analysis tools and interactive charts where you can filter out or select specific elements such as participants using selected protocols or those accessing a conference from certain locations.

Note that some dashboard features (platform and issues summary statistics and the "Live" indicator) do not work in Internet Explorer browsers. We recommend using Chrome, Firefox or Edge browsers for the best experience.

Version 17 of Pexip Infinity includes several enhancements to support large-scale deployments:

• Parallel upgrades of Conferencing Nodes: when upgrading to version 17 or later, the system will now upgrade up to 5 Conferencing Nodes simultaneously.
• Reduced network traffic between nodes: optimized communication processes within the Pexip Infinity platform to decrease the amount of network traffic between Conferencing Nodes.

• High-resolution content sharing: improved high-resolution content sharing at lower bandwidths (1080p low framerate):

  • 1080p is automatically used for sharing high-resolution content with HD-capable endpoints if there is sufficient available bandwidth.
  • When sending presentation content to a conference participant, the resolution and framerate that is used adapts dynamically to match the presented content.
• Sharper text in participant names overlays: when the showing of participants' names is enabled on a VMR, the size of the text overlay varies automatically according to the type of layout and the resolution being received by the endpoint or SfB/Lync client. Participant names are also shown on the thumbnails (PiPs). In low resolutions the text overlays are not shown.

This release contains several improvements to the certificate management processes:

• Modify CSR content when updating existing certificates: when generating a certificate signing request (CSR) for an existing certificate you can now change the certificate data to be included in the new request, such as adding extra subject alternative names (SANs) to those already present in the existing certificate.
• Multiple certificates with the same subject name: you can now upload TLS certificates and trusted CA certificates with duplicate subject names. This provides increased flexibility when uploading and managing updates to existing certificates.

Managing TLS and trusted CA certificates

Certificate signing requests (CSRs)

This release contains the following administrative improvements:

• Enable/disable chat per VMR: conference chat messages support can now be configured on a per VMR basis.
• Enable/disable break-in resistance per location: PIN brute force resistance and VOIP scanner resistance can now be configured on a per location basis.
• VMR provisioning enhancements: the LDAP sync templates that are used to provision Virtual Meeting Rooms now let you specify/override the Guests can present, enable chat, and conference capabilities settings for the VMR.
• RTMP streaming support in Call Routing Rules: you can now specify RTMP (streaming) as the outgoing protocol to use in a Call Routing Rule.
• Virtual Machine information: configuration information about the Virtual Machine hosting a Conferencing Node is reported via Status > Conferencing Nodes. This includes system memory, the number of vCPUs, CPU model, instruction set and hypervisor.
• Change participant role via API: there is a new management API command of participant/role that can change the role of a conference participant.

Enabling and disabling chat

Break-in resistance settings to mitigate rogue calls

Provisioning VMRs and devices from Active Directory via LDAP

Configuring Call Routing Rules

Using the Pexip Infinity management API

Support to allow client applications (such as the next-generation Infinity Connect clients) to authenticate against Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) and Google has been added to Pexip Infinity.

This will enable "single sign-on" capabilities for those clients, allowing users to register using their AD or Google credentials, and complements the existing Pexip Infinity capability to provision users from Active Directory.

This feature is "technology preview" until Infinity Connect clients that support this feature are released.

Using AD FS for client authentication

Using Google for client authentication

This release contains the following administrative modifications:

• Replication of any configuration changes to Conferencing Nodes typically occurs after approximately one minute. Now, in very large deployments (more than 60 Conferencing Nodes), configuration replication intervals are extended, and it may take longer for configuration changes to be applied to all Conferencing Nodes (note that the administrator log shows when each node has been updated).
• The Status > Conferencing Node History page now shows when nodes were added or removed, and when a node was placed into or out of maintenance mode.
• A new "CPU instruction set is deprecated" alarm is raised when a Conferencing Node restarts, if it is deployed on a server that is not using the AVX/AVX2 CPU instruction set (e.g. if it uses SSE4.2).
• When using the management API, the bucketed_call_quality and historic_call_quality participant status fields are now a list of integers (previously a string).
• Conference status information reported via the management API includes an "is_started" field which indicates whether or not the conference has started due to a Host being present.
• On the Administrator interface, Exchange Servers have been renamed Pexip Exchange Integrations.
• On the Administrator interface, under the Users menu, User Authentication is now Administrator Authentication, Account Roles is now Administrator Roles, and LDAP Roles is now LDAP Role Mappings.
• Participant call quality information is now shown on the current and historic participants summary page on the Administrator interface.
• Registration alias requests sent to external policy now include the registration protocol.
• System location information (Location="...") has been added to administrator log messages for "Participant attempting to join conference" and for "Registration added" / "Registration deleted" messages.
• VMR and device sync administrator log messages are now logged to the administrator.ldap.sync module (previously administrator.vmrsync).
• The Conference-ID is now included in administrator log messages for conference created/stopped and participant joined/disconnected events.

Using the Pexip Infinity management API

Viewing alarms