Video meetings

Video meetings let you talk face to face with colleagues, clients or anyone else from a web browser. There's nothing to install, and the people you invite don't need a RapidMX account. They open the link, check their camera and microphone, type their name and join.

There are two ways to start one:

• From a calendar invitation. When you schedule a meeting, turn on video conferencing and every guest receives their own join link inside the invitation. This suits planned meetings with a known guest list.
• From your personal room. A permanent link that's always yours. Share it whenever someone needs to talk to you right now, or put it in your email signature.

For example, a project lead schedules Monday's status meeting with three colleagues and one outside contractor, and checks Add video conferencing. Each of them gets an invitation with a personal join link. On Monday they each select the link, and the call starts in their browser.

note

Video meetings come from the Meet plugin. If you don't see Add video conferencing in the calendar or Video Conferencing in Settings, your administrator hasn't turned it on. See Plugins.

Video meetings are designed for small groups. Everyone's camera connects directly to everyone else's, so calls work best with up to about four to six people.

Add a video call to a calendar invitation

1. Create a meeting in the calendar and add your guests. See Calendar.
2. Check Add video conferencing. You need at least one guest besides yourself.
3. Save and send the invitation.

The event's location becomes "Video call — link in this invitation", and each guest's invitation contains a join link made just for them. On the event, a Join video call button opens the call for you, and the link itself is shown underneath in case you want to open it in another browser.

tip

If you add or remove guests after turning on video conferencing, the guest list of the video meeting isn't updated. Clear Add video conferencing, check it again and send the invitation, so everyone on the current list gets a link.

To remove the video call, clear Add video conferencing and save.

Use your personal meeting room

1. Open Settings and choose Video Conferencing.
2. Under Your personal room, select Create my personal room.
3. Optionally, change the Room name and select Save.
4. Select Copy to copy the room's link, and share it.

Anyone with the link can join at any time, so share it only with people you'd let into the room. Once you have a personal room, a Meet button appears in the web app's app rail, and selecting it takes you straight into your room.

If the page says no public join page URL is configured, ask your administrator to set one (see For administrators).

The Meetings list on the same page shows your other video meetings, including the ones created for calendar invitations, with their Title, Visibility, Status and Created date. Select Copy link to copy a public meeting's link, or Cancel to cancel a scheduled meeting.

Join a meeting

These steps are the same for you and your guests.

1. Open the join link. The page shows the meeting's title and who is hosting it.
2. Select Allow camera and microphone, and allow access when your browser asks. If you'd rather not, you can still join without them.
3. Check your camera preview. Use Choose a camera and Choose a microphone to switch devices, and the microphone and camera buttons to start muted or with your camera off.
4. Type your name under Your name.
5. Select Join meeting.

Your browser remembers the camera, microphone and effects you chose, and whether each was on, for the next meeting you join from the same browser.

Some meetings ask for more before you get in:

• A password. The page says "This meeting requires a password to join." Type the password the host gave you.
• A waiting room. The page says "The host must let you in before you can join." After you ask to join, you see "Waiting for the host to let you in…" until the host admits you.

During the call

The bar at the bottom of the call has these controls:

Control	What it does
Microphone	Mutes and unmutes you. While unmuted, bars move with the sound it picks up. The arrow next to it (Choose microphone) switches microphones.
Camera	Turns your camera on and off. A green dot shows while it's sending. The arrow next to it (Choose camera) switches cameras.
Video effects	Opens the effects described below.
Share screen	Shows a window, tab or your whole screen to everyone. Select Stop sharing to end it. Only one person can share at a time. If your shared window appears sideways or mirrored to others, use Rotate shared screen or Flip shared screen.
Send a reaction	Shows a quick emoji reaction to everyone.
Raise hand	Lets everyone see you want to speak. Select Lower hand to take it down.
Grid or focused view	Switches between seeing everyone the same size and focusing on one person.
More options (…)	Diagnostics, Connection method, Hide self / Show self, and for the host, Settings.
Leave call	Leaves the meeting. You can select Rejoin meeting afterwards.

The participant count at the top of the call opens the list of everyone in the call. It shows who is the host, who has raised a hand and who is muted.

Video effects

Open Effects in the lobby, or the effects button during the call, to change how your camera looks. The effects combine, and everyone in the call sees the result.

• Background: None, Blur, or Custom image (a picture from your own device).
• Look: None, Black & white, Sepia, Night vision or Pixelate.
• Fun: None, Sunglasses, Cat, Party hat, Crown or Mustache.

A custom background picture never leaves your browser. While a background effect is starting, your real background is hidden rather than shown. Effects need your camera to be on, and they make your computer work harder.

When a connection is slow or blocked

Each participant's video tile may show a label that explains how their video reaches you:

Label	Meaning
Awaiting connection…	The connection to this person is still being set up.
Relayed	A direct connection wasn't possible, so the video goes through a relay server.
Relayed (TCP)	The same, over a connection that copes with stricter networks. Sound or video may pause briefly.
Server relay	Nothing else worked, so the video goes through the RapidMX server. Video quality is lower and sound may lag.
Can't connect	This person can't be reached from your network.

If calls from one network keep failing, show More options > Diagnostics to your administrator. Leave Connection method on Auto unless your administrator tells you otherwise.

Host a meeting

The host is the person whose mailbox the meeting belongs to: the organizer of a calendar meeting, or the owner of a personal room. The host gets extra controls.

In the participant list, the host can:

• select Mute on someone to mute them. They can unmute themselves again.
• select Remove to remove someone from the meeting. They see "Removed from the meeting". Removing someone doesn't take their link away, so to keep a removed person from coming back, turn on the waiting room or set a password.
• when the waiting room is on, see who is under Waiting to join and select Admit or Deny.

Under More options > Settings, the host can change the Meeting settings:

• Mute new participants on join: people who join from now on start muted. They can unmute themselves.
• Set a password: people must type it to join. Use Change or Remove password later.
• Require the host to admit participants: turns on the waiting room.

Talking stick

For a meeting where only one person should speak at a time, the host can select Talking stick. Everyone else is muted and can't unmute, and the host holds the stick at first. People who want to speak raise their hands, and the host selects Give stick next to a name in the participant list. That person is unmuted and everyone else, including the host, is muted. Select End talking stick to give everyone their microphone back.

For administrators

The Meet plugin's settings are changed on the Plugins page of the admin console (see Plugins).

Setting	Key	Default	What it does
Public join page URL	mail:videoconf:public_url	this server's address followed by /meet	The address of the public join pages. Filled in when the plugin is installed. Calendar invitations include join links only when it's set.
TURN server URL	mail:videoconf:turn:url	empty	One or more turn: or turns: addresses, separated by commas, for example turn:turn.example.com:3478,turns:turn.example.com:5349. A plain turn: address is offered over both UDP and TCP. Leave empty to use public STUN servers only.
TURN server username	mail:videoconf:turn:username	empty	Used as-is unless a shared secret is set.
TURN server credential (static)	mail:videoconf:turn:credential	empty	The TURN password for the username above. Ignored when a shared secret is set.
TURN server shared secret (for expiring credentials)	mail:videoconf:turn:shared_secret	empty	coturn's static-auth-secret. When set, every join gets its own short-lived credentials instead of one permanent password. Recommended.
WebSocket media relay	mail:videoconf:relay:enabled	true	The last-resort path through the RapidMX server for participants whose network blocks both direct and TURN connections. With several server replicas it needs the Redis that the push system uses.
Video effects assets URL	mail:videoconf:effects:assets_url	empty	Where browsers download the effects' machine-learning files from. Empty uses cdn.jsdelivr.net and storage.googleapis.com. To host them yourself, point it at a directory holding wasm/ (from the @mediapipe/tasks-vision package), selfie_segmenter.tflite and face_landmarker.task.

Calls try three paths for each pair of participants, in order: a direct connection, then the TURN server, then the server's WebSocket relay. Without a TURN server most calls still connect, but people behind strict firewalls may fall back to the slower server relay or not connect at all. To run a TURN server alongside RapidMX, see Video relay.

Limitations in the current version:

• Calls are peer-to-peer with no media server, so they suit small groups (about four to six people).
• The server relay needs a browser that supports WebCodecs (recent Chrome, Edge and Firefox).
• The lobby doesn't fill in a signed-in user's name. Everyone types it.
• Mute, Mute new participants on join and the talking stick rely on each participant's browser to obey them. Remove, the password and the waiting room are enforced by the server.
• If the host leaves during talking-stick mode, nobody else can hand the stick on.