PBX / VO - Conferencing

Conferencing
The Conferencing service allows you to create and manage conference bridges for both scheduled and impromptu meetings.

Please follow the steps below to enable and configure the conference service:

1. Go to Settings Extras and enable 'Conferencing'.

Figure 1. Enable Conferencing

2. Refresh the page and go to Settings Conference Rooms.

3. Click on 'Add Conference Room'.

4. Fill in the following fields:

• Conference room name: a text description of the conference room. 
• Moderator PIN: the code used by the conference moderator.
• User PIN: the code to enter the conference room.
• Conference Start Date/Time: specifies the date and time when the conference will start. By default, a room can be used right after its creation.

                Figure 2. Adding a new conference room

The 'Advanced Configuration' allows configuring the following options:

• Music On Hold (MOH): allows selecting a music file from the drop-down list.
• Maximum Participants: specify the maximum number of participants who can enter the room. The Moderator can enter the room anytime, even if the limit was reached.
• Maximum Duration (minutes): it specifies the maximum time that the conference is active. A recording will be played to notify all participants 5 minutes before the end of a session.
• Mute Options: specify the muting policy for the room.
• Announce Names: announces the name of a new participant who enters the room.
• Conference Recording: activates the conversation recording. The recording is available for download in MP3 format for 14 days.
• Active: This setting must be activated in order for conference participants to access the conference room.
• Wait for Moderator: if the option is enabled, conference participants will not be allowed to enter the room until the moderator arrives.
• Announce Joining/Leaving: plays announcement when a participant joins or leaves the room.
• Single Caller MOH: This can be used to determine whether to play Music on Hold to a single person in a conference room. So, a single caller will not hear silence, but will hear music unless one more person joins the room.
• Lock the Conference if Empty: the room will be locked if not in use.
• Announce participants: at the time of joining the conference, the IVR announces the number of participants in the room.

                Figure 3. Conference rooms

                Figure 4. Conference Extension

When the room is added it will be assigned an extension number and will appear in the Other Extensions section (Figure 4). Any Virtual Office / PBX extension user can dial the conference room number internally or a dedicated phone number can be forwarded to the conference extension (see Figure 5).

                Figure 5. Configure a phone number to transfer to a conference extension

You can invite participants to join the conference meeting by sending an invitation. Please click on 'Invite' next to the conference room (see Figure 3 above). You should specify the following information:

• Sender Email: an email address which will be seen as 'From', it is not mandatory to specify the existing address if you do not expect any response. For instance, it can be 'no-reply@example.com'.
• Recipients Emails: to whom the invitation will be sent.
• Dial-In Numbers: if you configured one of phone number to transfer calls to a conference extension, select it from this drop-down list. It is mandatory if you invite users who are not Office members (see Figure 6 below).
• Message: the invitation text. 
• Tokens: you can use tokens inside your message, they will be replaced with actual data (see Figure 6 below).

                Figure 6. Conference Invitation window/ Conference Tokens

An example of a conference invitation:

Hi there!

Please join us for our monthly conference call. 

Please dial [dids] and enter the PIN [conf:pin]. 

Conference Start Time:

[conf:start-time:short] 

Thank you.