VCONSOL - Communication and Collaboration Suite
VCONSOL, the Communication and Collaboration Suite that combines various collaboration tools into a single, unified interface. The philosophy behind the communication and collaboration suite are the following.
VCONSOL - Major Features
Video Quality
VCONSOL offers robust support for leading video codecs, including VP8, VP9, and H.264. These built-in codecs ensure compatibility and high-quality video streaming capabilities within the platform.
Audio Quality
VCONSOL is compatible with a wide array of industry-standard audio codecs, ensuring seamless communication. Supported codecs include G711, G722, G729, OPUS, and more, providing users with flexibility and high-quality audio experiences.
File Sharing
VCONSOL provides versatile file sharing options for participants during conferences and scheduling, enabling seamless collaboration. Alongside chat functionality, both active and passive participants can share various file types. Video files, Audio files, PDF documents and Image files without compromising quality, can be shared in the conference facilitated by a unique feature in screen sharing. Furthermore, documents , presentations can be shared prior to the conference during scheduling, enhancing productivity and preparation for all involved.
SMS/ EMail Integration
VCONSOL adopts an API-First Philosophy, empowering seamless integration with external messaging channels such as SMS, Email, and WhatsApp. This flexibility allows users to leverage their preferred communication mode for inviting participants, sharing presentation links, distributing recordings, and more, enhancing accessibility and convenience in communication workflows.
Text Chat
VCONSOL provides various chat options during conferences, allowing participants to exchange text messages and files privately or publicly. Moreover, file sharing is seamlessly integrated alongside chat functionalities, enhancing collaboration and information exchange among attendees. Additionally, passive participants and webinar users have access to a separate chat option tailored for interaction with active speakers, facilitating seamless communication and engagement.
Q&A for Webinar Participants
In VCONSOL webinars, participants have the opportunity to engage with active speakers through the dedicated Q&A option. This feature enables attendees to ask questions, seek clarifications, or share insights directly with the speakers, fostering interactive and informative sessions. By facilitating structured communication channels, VCONSOL ensures that webinar participants can actively participate in discussions and receive timely responses from the presenters, enhancing the overall learning and engagement experience.
Secure Meeting Ids and PIN
VCONSOL Meetings feature unique IDs generated for each scheduled or instant meeting, ensuring secure access. Additionally, separate six-digit meeting passwords are assigned for active and passive users, enhancing protection against unauthorized entry. Both active and passive users are assigned distinct meeting passwords (PINs) to access the sessions securely. This differentiation ensures that each user category has its unique authentication code, enhancing the level of security and preventing unauthorized access to the meetings.
However, users also have the flexibility to maintain consistency by utilizing the same meeting ID for recurring meetings through the scheduling options, providing convenience without compromising security measures.
Host , Co Host and Meeting Moderation
In VCONSOL Meetings, the user who schedules the conference or initiates the instant meeting automatically assumes the role of the host. Hosts possess full control over participants and meeting features, including the ability to designate any active participant as a co-host. Co-hosts inherit all privileges of the host, granting them control over audio, video, screen sharing, and other features for active participants. Additionally, hosts and co-hosts can initiate various advanced functionalities such as recording, webinars, RTMP streaming, breakout rooms, and more, ensuring seamless management and customization of the meeting experience. Hosts and co-hosts in VCONSOL Meetings have the capability to elevate passive viewers to the active speaker role. This functionality enables seamless participation and engagement, allowing hosts to dynamically involve additional attendees in the discussion or presentation as needed.
Video Layouts and Voice Activity Detection
VCONSOL offers seven default video layouts for conferences, including options such as the 25-videos grid, 16-videos grid, and the default 8-videos octa layout. Additionally, layouts like the 7-videos hepta, 5-video penta, and 1-video solo are available, with the flexibility to customize or expand them according to specific customer needs.
Hosts or co-hosts can switch between layouts and prioritize active speakers by pinning them, ensuring their prominence. If no active speakers are pinned, VCONSOL employs Voice Activity Detection with an intelligent algorithm to prioritize speakers, effectively filtering out background noise from participants. This ensures a seamless and focused meeting experience with clear visual and audio representation.
User Management
Users can log in to VCONSOL by using their individual user accounts and credentials. Alternatively, if available within the organization, VCONSOL also supports Single Sign-On (SSO) integration. This means that users can utilize their existing SSO credentials to access VCONSOL seamlessly. Moreover, VCONSOL offers the capability to integrate with various SSO and LDAP-based systems used by the organization, ensuring compatibility and ease of use within existing authentication frameworks.
Scheduling and Invitation
To schedule a conference, simply fill in the necessary fields and proceed to invite participants. You have the option to directly send the invitations via email or copy the conference information and distribute it through your preferred communication method.
VCONSOL offers three distinct modes of user presence: Active, Passive, and Webinar users. Each mode comes with its own set of invite information, providing the flexibility to engage a wider audience in conferences. By leveraging these modes effectively, you can maximize participation and involvement in your conferences.
Scheduled meetings on the platform automatically create calendar events, allowing invitees to seamlessly integrate them into their preferred calendars. These events include all necessary features for invitees to accept or decline the invitation as per their convenience.
Calendar events generated from the scheduling feature will provide reminders 10 minutes prior to the scheduled meeting time, ensuring users are well-prepared. Additionally, they will receive another reminder at the start of the meeting, helping to ensure punctuality and participation.
The scheduling functionality within VCONSOL empowers users to effortlessly create recurring meetings, whether on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This functionality allows users to establish a permanent meeting space tailored to their needs.
Contact Management
Users have the ability to compile an extensive list of contacts and groups consisting of their regular invitees. This way, when scheduling a conference, they can conveniently select the desired email addresses from the pre-existing list, streamlining the invitation process.
Scheduled Conferences and Instant Conferences
There are two methods to initiate a conference: scheduling a future conference or starting an instant conference. In both cases, users have the ability to invite additional participants even after the conference has begun using the invite option. This flexibility allows for seamless and dynamic expansion of the conference attendees during the ongoing session.
Hosts have the flexibility to cancel or reschedule scheduled conferences as needed, providing convenient control over meeting arrangements.
Conference History
Upon completion of a conference, the host gains access to the conference history, which encompasses an extensive log of user entry and exit times, along with a transcript of the chat conversation. Additionally, the host has the privilege to retrieve the recorded conference itself, as well as any presentations or documents that were uploaded during the conference. This comprehensive suite of resources allows the host to review, reference, and share the conference content and materials as needed.
User experience in day mode and night mode
Users have the option to choose between two distinct UI modes: Day mode and Dark mode. This allows users to select their preferred visual style based on personal preference or situational preference. Whether you prefer a brighter, daytime-inspired interface or a sleeker, darker interface, VCONSOL offers the flexibility to customize the look and feel to suit your taste.
Multilingual UI and UX
VCONSOL prioritizes user satisfaction by providing a language selection feature for both the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). Users have the freedom to choose their preferred language from a range of options currently supported by VCONSOL, including Arabic, English, Spanish, Norwegian, Hindi, and various other Indian languages. User profile management.
User preferences
VCONSOL empowers users to personalize their meeting page, recordings, and broadcasts by allowing them to set their own watermark. This feature enables users to incorporate their unique branding, logo, or customized watermark onto these assets, adding a professional touch and reinforcing their identity during meetings, recordings, and broadcasts.
Control user permissions inside your conference
During the scheduling process, the host holds the ability to moderate certain conference features for participants. This includes the screen share permission, where the host can decide whether anyone can initiate screen sharing in the conference or restrict it to specific individuals. Additionally, the host can choose to mute the audio of participants upon joining the conference, effectively minimizing disruptions and maintaining a focused environment during ongoing conferences. These moderation options empower the host to customize the conference experience and ensure a smooth and controlled communication environment.
Decide the video layout options.
During a conference, when presenting the video layout, the host can choose to either include audio-only users alongside video participants or move them to a separate section, typically placed at the end of the layout. This flexibility allows the host to customize the visual presentation of participants based on their preferences and the specific requirements of the conference.
Upload documents and presentations while scheduling
As a host in VCONSOL, you have the capability to upload presentations or documents before the conference. These files can be shared with the invitees well in advance by providing them with the conference link. By visiting the conference link, invitees can access and view the uploaded presentations or documents, allowing them to review the content and come prepared for the conference. This feature facilitates efficient communication and collaboration by providing attendees with the necessary materials ahead of time.
Conduct large conferences.
For large conferences that exceed the regular quota on the system, VCONSOL offers the flexibility to select server nodes with larger capacity, provided they are available within the specific instance of VCONSOL being used. This feature enables the allocation of additional server resources to accommodate a higher number of participants, ensuring a smooth and stable conference experience. By utilizing server nodes with larger capacity, VCONSOL can handle the increased demand of largescale conferences efficiently.
Secured conference with invitees.
VCONSOL ensures that only invited participants can join a conference by implementing email verification for invitees. This means that invitees' email addresses are verified before granting them access to the conference. This verification process adds an extra layer of security and ensures that only intended participants with valid email invitations can join the conference, maintaining the confidentiality and exclusivity of the event.
Authenticated conferences
VCONSOL provides the option to enable a feature that allows only verified participants to join the conference. When scheduling the conference, the host can choose to enable this feature, which requires participants to go through a verification process before gaining access.
Virtual Background
In VCONSOL, users have the option to enable virtual backgrounds during conferences, allowing them to customize their video backgrounds. This feature lets participants choose from a variety of virtual backgrounds.
In- conference features
As a host or co-host in a VCONSOL meeting, you will have access to a variety of features to facilitate smooth and effective communication. While a subset of these features will also be available to all participants in the conference, here are some of the features specifically available to the host or co-host.
Meeting Controls
Hosts and co-hosts have full control over the meeting, including the ability to start, pause, and end the meeting at any time.
Participant Management
Hosts and co-hosts can manage participants' audio and video settings, allowing them to mute or unmute participants, enable or disable video, and control participants' access to certain features.
Webinar
VCONSOL offers the host the ability to start a webinar directly from the conference itself. By initiating a webinar, the conference can be webcasted to a larger audience, expanding the reach beyond the participants directly involved in the conference. This feature allows hosts to share the conference content with a broader set of viewers, facilitating remote attendance and engagement. Whether it's for informational purposes, training sessions, or presentations to a wider audience, starting a webinar through VCONSOL enables seamless broadcasting and extends the conference's impact.
Live Streaming
VCONSOL empowers hosts to live stream conferences to RTMP supported social media platforms such as YouTube or Facebook. This feature enables hosts to reach a larger audience, potentially reaching millions of viewers by leveraging the vast user base and reach of these popular social media platforms.
Recording
VCONSOL incorporates a built-in recording feature that captures the entire conference, including the participants' video feeds and screen sharing activities. These recordings are automatically saved in MP4 format on the server side. The host has privileged access to these recordings, allowing them to review, retrieve, and manage the conference recordings as needed.
Each recorded file within VCONSOL is uniquely linked to its respective meeting, ensuring accurate organization and retrieval. In instances where multiple recordings occur during a single meeting, each file is associated separately with the meeting, providing comprehensive documentation with timestamp information. This meticulous recording system allows for easy identification and access to specific recordings within the context of their corresponding meetings.
Notifying the Recording Status
Whenever a recording starts within a video conference, each participant will receive an alert informing them that the session is being recorded. Additionally, a visible indicator, which shows recording in progress will appear on the screen for all attendees throughout the duration of the conference. This feature ensures transparency and keeps all participants aware of the recording status at all times.
Invitation for H.323/SIP users
VCONSOL includes the option to provide invitation information specifically for legacy video conferencing devices that utilize H.323 or SIP protocols. This information enables devices from popular brands such as Polycom, Cisco, or Tandberg to dial into the conference using the provided details.
Breakout room
VCONSOL includes a feature that allows participants to group into child conferences when necessary. This functionality enables participants to split off into smaller, separate meetings, referred to as Breakout rooms, while still maintaining a connection to the original main meeting. Once the side meetings or discussions in the child conferences are completed, participants can rejoin the main meeting.
Conference Control – Waiting Room and Lock Conference
VCONSOL offers a waiting room facility to provide control over conference entry. When the waiting room is enabled, participants joining the conference are directed to the waiting room before entering the main conference. The host then has the authority to allow participants to enter the conference from the waiting room, ensuring that only authorized individuals are granted access.
Additionally, VCONSOL provides the option to lock the conference, which adds an extra layer of security. When the conference is locked, it prevents unauthorized access, ensuring that only participants who have already joined the conference can enter. This feature helps maintain the confidentiality and integrity of the conference by preventing any uninvited participants from joining.
Conference Audio Video Controls
In VCONSOL, active participants have control over their audio devices and cameras during a conference. They can freely change their audio input and output devices or switch them on and off as needed. Similarly, participants can control their camera settings, such as enabling or disabling video. VCONSOL also provides convenient keyboard shortcuts to streamline access to these features, allowing participants to quickly toggle their audio and video devices without interrupting the flow of the conference.
Raise Hand
VCONSOL incorporates a "Raise Hand" option to facilitate effective communication and participation during conferences. Active participants can utilize the Raise Hand feature to seek attention or indicate their desire to speak, signalling the host and other participants that they have something to contribute or a question to ask.
Passive participants also have the ability to use the Raise Hand option to request permission to transition from passive mode to active mode within the conference. By raising their hand, passive participants indicate their intent to actively engage in the discussion or participate more actively in the conference. This allows the host or conference organizers to manage the transition of passive participants to active participants, ensuring a smooth and orderly flow of communication.
Share Screen – Desktop/Application Sharing
Share Screen - PDF Document
VCONSOL offers a dedicated feature for sharing PDF documents, providing participants with the ability to share the original file in real time. This feature allows participants to share PDF documents with the conference attendees, enabling them to browse through the pages of the document directly within the conference interface.
Furthermore, participants have the option to download the shared PDF document, allowing them to save a copy and use it beyond the conference. This enhances collaboration and reference capabilities during and after the conference.
Share Screen – Document Camera
Indeed, VCONSOL supports the functionality to share a second camera as a document camera within the conference. This feature enables users to utilize a secondary camera to showcase physical documents, objects, or even display the participants in a hybrid room environment.
By leveraging the second camera as a document camera, users can easily share live video feed of physical documents during the conference. This functionality is particularly beneficial for presentations, demonstrations, or collaborative discussions involving physical materials that need to be shared with remote participants.
Additionally, in a hybrid room setup, where some participants are physically present, the second camera can be used to showcase the physical participants in the room, ensuring their active involvement and engagement within the conference.
Participant Management (Active – Passive – Webinar users)
VCONSOL provides a directory listing of active and passive participants, offering the host or co-host the ability to effectively manage and control the conference. This directory serves as a centralized interface for managing participants' audio, video, and camera settings, ensuring seamless communication throughout the conference.
Furthermore, the host or co-host has the authority to remove participants from the conference if necessary, providing a means to maintain the integrity and security of the meeting environment.
Conference Chat (Active – Passive – Webinar users)
VCONSOL offers three distinct instant messaging options within the conference, catering to different communication needs:
Chat between Active Users: This option allows active participants to engage in real- time text-based conversations with other active participants. They can exchange messages, share information, ask questions, and collaborate directly within the conference.
Chat between Active and Passive Users: This feature enables communication between active participants and passive participants. Active participants can initiate conversations with passive participants, allowing for one-way or two-way communication depending on the conference setup.
Chat between Active Speakers and Webinar Participants: This option facilitates communication between active speakers (presenters) and webinar participants (viewers). Active speakers can interact with webinar participants, answer questions, and engage in discussions while maintaining a structured presenter-audience communication dynamic.
Active participant chat also includes a file sharing feature, enabling participants to share files within the conference.
MultiLingual Translation (Available with additional pricing)
Real-time translation in VCONSOL, participants who speak different languages can communicate seamlessly without the need for human interpreters or additional tools. The translated speech is usually displayed as subtitles or text on the screen, allowing all participants to understand the conversation in their preferred language.
Note - The feature is available with VCONSOL , but will be provided on demand it will be charged separately. This is not included in the base price provided in the commercial proposal.
Screen Sharing Permissions
VCONSOL provides meeting hosts with the option to control screen share permissions both when scheduling and initiating meetings. Hosts can choose whether to allow participants to start screen sharing only with host permission, ensuring smoother video conferencing experiences by preventing unwanted screen sharing incidents.
VCONSOL Administration Features
VCONSOL Dashboard
The VCONSOL dashboard offers an insightful graphical representation that provides an overview of various conference metrics for a selected period. Some of the metrics available for visualization on the dashboard include:
Total Conferences: The dashboard displays the total number of conferences held within the selected period, providing a quick snapshot of conference activity.
Active Participants: It presents a graphical representation of the number of active participants in the conferences over time, allowing you to track and analyze participant engagement.
Passive Participants: The dashboard provides an overview of the number of passive participants in the conferences during the selected period, helping you understand the audience size and reach.
Conference Duration: It showcases the duration of each conference, giving you insights into the length of individual meetings and helping identify patterns or trends.
These graphical representations offer a visual summary of the selected period's conference data, enabling you to easily comprehend and analyse the overall conference activity, participant engagement, and conference duration. The dashboard provides a comprehensive overview that assists in monitoring and assessing the effectiveness and impact of your conferences. Manage and Monitor running conferences.
See an overview of conferences running on the platform with a backend control to monitor and administer each conference with out access to the conference data.
Manage your organisations inside the conference
Within VCONSOL, you have the capability to manage your organization and its departments effectively. The platform provides management tools that allow you to organize and oversee users and departments within the specific VCONSOL instance running for your organization.
By utilizing these management tools, you can efficiently handle user accounts, roles, permissions, and access levels. This enables you to define and manage user hierarchies, department structures, and user privileges based on your organization's requirements.
Manage the user accounts and their capabilities on the platform.
VCONSOL's admin dashboard offers comprehensive options to manage user accounts within the system. As an admin, you have the authority to set user-level features and capabilities based on your organization's requirements and policies.
Within the admin dashboard, you can perform tasks such as: User Account Management: Create, modify, or deactivate user accounts, granting access to the VCONSOL instance for authorized individuals.
User Permissions and Roles: Assign specific roles and permissions to users, defining their access levels and capabilities within VCONSOL. This allows you to tailor the user experience based on their roles and responsibilities within the organization.
User Authentication and Security: Manage user authentication methods, such as Single Sign-On (SSO) integration, to enhance security and streamline user access to VCONSOL.
User Activity Monitoring: Track and monitor user activity, providing insights into usage patterns, participation levels, and overall system engagement.
Conference Management
In VCONSOL, the admin user is equipped with a high-level management tool that allows them to monitor all active conferences within the instance. This tool provides a comprehensive overview of ongoing conferences without accessing the actual conference data, ensuring privacy and security.
The admin user can view real-time information about active conferences, including details such as participant count, conference duration, and other relevant metrics.
This enables the admin to have an up-to-date understanding of the conferencing activity within the system.
Additionally, VCONSOL provides a history of conferences to the administrator, offering valuable high-level debugging information and forensic data. The conference history allows the admin to access key details about past conferences, aiding in troubleshooting, analysis, and gathering insights into the system's performance and usage patterns.
Conference Nodes
As an admin, VCONSOL provides you with the capability to manage the MultiConference Unit (MCU) or Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU) attached to your instance. You have the option to switch the MCU/SFU on or off based on your scaling requirements and resource availability.
Furthermore, the admin dashboard allows you to monitor the real-time usage of each node in the MCU/SFU. This monitoring feature provides valuable insights into where conferences are taking place and how users are allocated across the nodes. With this information, you can efficiently allocate resources, optimize performance, and ensure a smooth conference experience for all participants.
By having control over the MCU/SFU and access to real-time usage data, you can effectively manage and scale your conferencing infrastructure to meet the demands of your organization, ensuring optimal performance and resource utilization within your VCONSOL instance.
Configurations
The admin dashboard in VCONSOL provides a powerful feature for configuring instance-level settings and applying high-level control over the system. Within this area, you can set various limits and configurations to fine-tune the conference experience. Some examples include:
- Conference Participant Limits: You can define the maximum number of participants allowed in a conference, setting limits for both active and passive participants. This ensures that conferences remain within desired capacity levels.
- Conference Timeout: You have the ability to specify the time interval for conference timeouts. This determines the duration after which a conference will automatically end or disconnect if there is no activity.
- System-wide Configurations: The admin dashboard enables you to configure system-wide settings such as default audio and video quality, default language preferences, and other global configurations that apply across the entire VCONSOL instance.
By leveraging these instance-level configurations, the admin has comprehensive control over the behaviour and parameters of the VCONSOL system, allowing for customization based on organizational requirements, resource allocation, and desired conference settings.
User Tags
Indeed, tags provide a valuable tool for admins to categorize and manage users beyond the organization level in VCONSOL. By assigning tags to users, the admin can create customized groups, categories, or labels based on specific criteria or characteristics.
Tags can be utilized in various ways, such as:
- User Segmentation: Admins can assign tags to users based on their department, role, location, or any other relevant criteria. This allows for easy segmentation and targeted management of user groups.
- Access Control: Tags can be used to define access levels and permissions for different user groups. Admins can set specific privileges or restrictions based on the assigned tags, ensuring appropriate access rights for different categories of users.
- Reporting and Analytics: Tags enable admins to generate reports and analytics based on specific user groups. This facilitates data analysis, insights, and decision-making based on user categories.
Using tags, admins can effectively categorize and manage users in VCONSOL beyond the organizational level, providing enhanced control, segmentation, and customization options based on the unique requirements of the organization.
Branding and Theming
VCONSOL understands the importance of branding and offers extensive whitelabeling and theming options, making it effortless to customize and align the platform with your customer's unique brand identity. This feature allows you to tailor the look and feel of VCONSOL to reflect your customer's branding, resulting in a cohesive and personalized user experience.
With the branding and theming options available, you can easily customize various aspects of VCONSOL, including:
- Logo and Branding: Replace the default VCONSOL logo with your customer's logo, ensuring consistent brand representation throughout the platform.
- Color Scheme: Customize the color palette to match your customer's brand colors, creating a visually consistent and harmonious user interface.
- Typography: Select and apply fonts that align with your customer's brand guidelines, maintaining brand consistency in text elements.
- Custom CSS: Utilize custom CSS to further modify and refine the visual appearance of VCONSOL, offering greater flexibility in branding and theming.
White-labelling and theming options in VCONSOL enables you to transform the platform into a branded and cohesive experience that aligns with your customer's unique identity and enhances their brand presence.
Monitoring and Alerts (DevOps Tools)
VCONSOL incorporates real-time alerts and monitoring tools utilizing Prometheus and Grafana. These tools enable proactive incident detection and reporting within the system. In the event of an incident, alerts are automatically triggered and sent to administrators and the respective DevOps team through multiple communication channels.
By leveraging Prometheus, VCONSOL can continuously monitor various metrics and performance indicators in real-time. When any predefined thresholds or anomalies are detected, alerts are generated. Grafana provides visualization and dashboarding capabilities, allowing administrators and DevOps teams to gain insights into system health and performance.
The alerts can be configured to notify administrators and DevOps teams through multiple channels, such as email, SMS, or other communication platforms. This ensures that the right personnel are promptly informed about any incidents or potential issues, allowing for swift response and resolution.
With real-time alerts and monitoring powered by Prometheus and Grafana, VCONSOL enhances system reliability, facilitates proactive incident management, and enables efficient communication and collaboration among administrators and DevOps teams for prompt issue resolution.
Post Meeting Features
Playback of Recording
VCONSOL records meetings server-side in encrypted MP4 format, granting exclusive access to hosts. Hosts can download recordings to their local machines and playback using any preferred video player. Additionally, hosts can share the download link with participants, enabling them to download and utilize the recording as needed. This feature enhances accessibility and flexibility in post-meeting usage of recorded content.
Transcript and Meeting Minutes
A meeting transcript is a verbatim record of everything that was said during the video conference. It includes a word-for-word account of each participant's spoken words, capturing all the details of the conversation. Meeting transcripts are typically used for legal, official, or detailed documentation purposes.
Note - The feature is available with VCONSOL, but will be provided on demand it will be charged separately. This is not included in the base price provided in the commercial proposal.
Chat Transcripts
Hosts in VCONSOL have the capability to access and download chat transcripts for active participants, passive participants, and webinar users. This comprehensive feature allows hosts to review and retain a record of all chat interactions that occurred during the meeting. By providing access to chat transcripts, VCONSOL ensures transparency and accountability, facilitating effective communication management within the platform.
Statistics and Attendance
VCONSOL offers hosts access to comprehensive statistics and attendance records through Call Detail Records (CDR), providing valuable insights into meeting dynamics and participant engagement. By leveraging this feature, hosts can analyze attendance trends, participant interactions, and overall meeting performance, enabling informed decision-making and optimization of future meetings. This functionality enhances the effectiveness of meetings by empowering hosts with actionable insights derived from detailed analytics.