What's new in version 22?

About global settings

Control another participant's camera

You can control the media encryption requirements on calls placed via Pexip Infinity. You can specify at the global platform level whether calls placed into a Pexip service (such as a Virtual Meeting Room or via a Call Routing Rule must be encrypted, use encryption when available i.e. "best effort", or whether encryption is not required. You can then override the standard behavior for each individual service if required.

The default behavior for new and upgraded systems is "best effort" (which is how all calls were treated in previous versions).

About global settings

About Pexip Infinity conferences

The following improvements have been made when integrating Google Hangouts Meet with Pexip Infinity:

• Full support for duo video between VTC participants and native clients: when a VTC participant presents content, the other participants in the conference will see both the presentation stream and the video from that participant (duo video was already supported to VTC participants when a native Hangouts Meet client presented content).

The client API transform_layout conference control option has a new streaming parameter which allows you to control the content sent to a streaming participant (such as a YouTube broadcast).

This allows you, for example, to send a different layout to the stream from that seen by standard participants, or to temporarily send a new "holding" splash screen while you are waiting for people in the conference to get ready to start.

You can invoke this functionality either by implementing your own calls directly to the client REST API, or by using the transformConferenceLayout Infinity Connect plugin function.

Pexip client REST API

Creating and deploying Infinity Connect plugins

The following elements (that apply to version 2 style themes only) have been added to support streaming participants:

• New icon_streaming_screen.svg graphic which is displayed on the 2 new splash screens described below.
• New stream_waiting splash screen which is used in conjunction with the client API transform_layout conference control.
• New streaming_in_progress splash screen which is shown if there are no other participants in the conference other than a streaming participant.

The following theme elements have also been added to provide support in the future for public streaming from a Google Hangouts Meet conference:

• New audio files for streaming started/stopped messages:

  • conf-public_streaming_started_48kHz_mono.wav
  • conf-public_streaming_stopped_48kHz_mono.wav

• New setting in the themeconfig.json file for the public streaming indicator text:

  • public_streaming_indicator_text

• New graphics file for the public streaming indicator icon (applies to version 2 style themes only):

  • icon_public_streaming.svg

This release contains the following administrative improvements:

• Several new administrator alarms have been added to indicate:

  • LDAP sync provisioning failures
  • PIN brute force resistance detections
  • VOIP scanner resistance detections

Viewing alarms

• Live View updates:
  • Live view and conference graphs can be filtered by participant or conference name.
  • The timeline now indicates historical call quality issues for participants and backplanes.

Viewing live and historical platform status

Version 22 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.

We strongly recommend that you upgrade your Pexip deployment — both the Pexip Infinity platform and the Pexip Teams Connector — to version 22 as soon as practicable.

In version 20 and 21 of the Teams Connector, Pexip used a trusted app and a guest app to connect participants to Teams meetings. In version 22, only the trusted app is required, which now performs both the trusted and guest joining workflows.

When upgrading your Teams Connector to version 22, you must use the latest deployment scripts as contained within the v22 documentation and follow the instructions as described at Upgrading the Teams Connector to the latest software.

The default Pexip logo has changed from    to    and the avatar image has changed to .

This affects the following end-user facing features:

• Themes: the in-conference video watermark watermark_icon.png file and the conference avatar presence_avatar_image.jpg file. If your services (VMRs etc) use the base Pexip theme then the new watermark and avatar logo files will take effect automatically. They will also take effect automatically if you use a customized theme, unless you have explicitly included an alternative watermark_icon.png or presence_avatar_image.jpg file in your theme. Note that the change to the avatar may take some time to appear in SfB/Lync users' contact lists due to caching.
• Infinity Connect web app: the Pexip watermark shown in the selfview prior to joining a conference. If you use the default web app branding then the new watermark will take effect automatically. It will also take effect automatically if you have customized your web app, unless you have explicitly included an alternative watermark_icon.png file in your branding package.
• VMR Scheduling for Exchange: the default Add-in image icon, which appears on the add-in button in Outlook clients. If you have uploaded your own icon, this will remain in use on upgrade to v22. If you have not uploaded an icon, the icon will change to the new default. Note that Outlook clients may cache the add-in icon, so it may be some time after upgrade that the new icon appears.

Customizing the Pexip Infinity user experience

Adding a Pexip Exchange Integration to Pexip Infinity and generating the add-in file

This release contains the following administrative modifications:

• Any leading and trailing whitespace is now stripped from content entered into text boxes in the Administrator interface.

• Previously when using the client REST API transform_layout conference control option, if you made multiple requests for the same conference you had to keep track of the state and respecify all of the relevant parameters in each request. In version 22, if you make multiple requests for the same conference, the changes are applied cumulatively (with the most recent settings taking precedence).

Pexip client REST API

• In the Administrator interface, Microsoft Azure tenants are now referred to as Microsoft Teams tenants.

• The setting to Enable support for Pexip Infinity Connect and Mobile App has been renamed to Enable support for Pexip Infinity Connect clients and Client API. If an administrator disables this option, they will get a warning that it will also disable WebRTC and RTMP calls.

As of Pexip Infinity v12, the SSE4.x instruction set was only supported in deployments that had upgraded from a previous version — SSE4.x was not supported in new deployments using v12 or later.

As of 1 January 2020, deployments on SSE4.x hardware will not be supported at all. Before this date you must ensure that all Conferencing Nodes in your deployment are relocated to hardware using the AVX or later instruction set. Please contact your Pexip authorized support representative if this may not be achievable.

To check the instruction set for each Conferencing Node, go to Status > Conferencing Nodes, select the Conferencing Node and scroll down to CPU instruction set.

This release contains the following branding and customization improvements:

• Ability to control whether the user's microphone is locally muted on the home page when the app is first launched. When performing manual customization this is configurable by defining defaultToMuted in the settings.json file.
• Ability to specify a URL to redirect the user to when a call is completed (instead of returning to the app home page). This can only be configured via manual customization by defining a disconnectDestination in the settings.json file.

Control another participant's camera

Spotlighting a participant

Participants in a Virtual Auditorium can indicate to the meeting Host that they wish to speak by raising their hand; Hosts can lower a raised hand after they have let the participant speak.

This feature can be used when a Host has elected to Mute all Guests — Guests indicate when they wish to speak, the Host unmutes the individual Guest, and when the Guest has finished speaking the Host mutes them again and lowers their hand.

Indicate that you wish to speak

Text-based controls

Participants now have the option to join without a camera or microphone, and still receive video and audio. When a participant joins without their camera, other participants will see a broken camera icon in place of their video stream.

Participants who join without a camera or microphone and subsequently wish to send video or audio must disconnect and re-join the meeting with a camera or microphone selected.

Configuring Infinity Connect clients

There is a new syntax for calling dialogs (via openTemplateDialog) which supports floating dialogs. It also replaces openTemplateDialog(...).subscribe() (which returned an observable) with openTemplateDialog(...) (which returns a promise). However, any plugins created in v21 that use the previous syntax will be supported in v22 although we recommend that you update your plugins to use promises as soon as practicable.

Creating and deploying Infinity Connect plugins