CMS Snap-Shot Functionality

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For those of us that have been around conferencing and collaboration for some time, the video pre-view images that used to be available on the previous generation “Codians” have been sorely missed. It is therefore great to be re-introducing video snapshots to the Activity page.

Please note that snapshots are enabled on CMS via a CMS license key; these can be purchased from Cisco. Once you have the CMS license key installed, enable “snapshots” on the People CoApp at the UX Profile when logged in as an Administrator.

Please also note that Snapshots are “expensive” in the terms of CMS resource consumption and should only be used sparingly. We have produced an extensive test report and will make it available as a whitepaper shortly after releasing 3.11. The report shows how the snap-shot functionality performs under different CMS call loading levels.

As a general rule, please work on limiting snap-shot usage to 25 participants across all Operators with snap-shot visibility enabled. VQ’s implementation of snapshots caches the snap-shot data to minimize the loading on CMS.

The snapshot is requested via the three ellipses button on the right-hand side of a participant row…

Activity View

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Operators can do all of the following on a single screen….

• View and manage up to 50 active Spaces/meetings
• Pane Placement/Layout Management
• Home coApp and “Webex style” Join functionality for Spaces and Meetings
• Local User support
• Auto gain control at the participant level
• Participant labelling and bandwidth control when placing outbound calls
• Move participants between Spaces and change participant roles
• Add or remove participants
• Mute or unmute audio
• Alter video layouts and user importance
• View statistics
• Dial DTMF tones
• Create new Spaces
• Lobby; admit participants individually or all-at-once into calls
• Call lock; once locked, any new participants are held in the lobby
• Active Speaker

Pane Placement

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VQ Conference Manager gives your call operators precise control over how in-call video appears.
For any live call, the Pane Placement feature enables an operator to:

  • Define the video layout
  • Specify which participant’s video appears in each pane
  • Reserve panes for participants who haven’t yet joined the call

Re-labelling Participants

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If participants join the call with, for example, an IP address, they may need to be identified with something more meaningful. This can be done with Participant Re-labelling.

Watch from 7:00 in this video…

Local Users

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In environments without LDAP/AD, you can provision Local Users…

Local users are currently associated with the default Tenant

  • A local user can create/update and manage calls
  • A local user/operator can create/update and manage calls
  • A local user/administrator can access Kibana, add CMS nodes, add/change UX Profiles, Templates etc. and run LDAP imports

The Local User option is enabled at the UX Profile level.

Navigate to UX Profile->Select the UX Profile you require->coApps->Local User:

Local User Password complexity

NOTE: From VQCM 3.9 Local User’s use the same password complexity as CM-Admin. Existing Local Users do not have their passwords reset on upgrade to VQCM 3.9 and above and will retain their pre-VQCM 3.9 passwords.

Control Cisco Meeting Server calls and Spaces from Outlook

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VQ Conference Manager integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook, enabling your employees to manage their calls and meeting Spaces using the tools they already use to plan their days.
Compatible with Outlook 2016/2019 and Office 365 on Windows and macOS, VQ Conference Manager 3’s user control panel puts conferencing at the heart of workplace productivity – and removes the need for employees to log into a separate web portal. (If you’re using an older version of Outlook, scroll down to discover our Plug-in).
Add Space details to meeting invitations
When users create an Outlook meeting invitation, the VQ Conference Manager control panel enables them to add their Space details in a single click. This injects all the details recipients need to join the call.
Meeting Space management
The VQ Conference Manager Outlook Add-in enables users to manage their virtual meeting Spaces and passcodes from within Outlook. This includes:
• Update existing Space settings
• Create new Spaces
• Remove Spaces
• Change PINs/passcodes
Self-service call control
As well as managing meeting Spaces, users can control calls, directly within Microsoft Outlook.
For any in-flight call, the meeting Space owner can:
• See who is on the call
• Mute or unmute participants’ audio
• Change the video layout
• Set participant importance
• Remove participants
• End the call
Plug-in for Outlook 2013 and later on Windows

The VQ Conference Manager Outlook Add-in works with Outlook 2016 and later. For organizations using Outlook 2013 for Windows, the VQ Conference Manager Outlook Plug-in provides a one-click way to add the details of a user’s Space to an Outlook meeting invitation. This provides the recipient with all the details they need to join the call.
The Outlook Plug-in has been upgraded to include the following new functionality:
• inject details for a space into a meeting
• schedule a meeting on a Space
• schedule a one-time meeting on a Space
• for multi-role Spaces, the role can also be selected
• configuration options for label names and functionality subsets
Outlook Add-in

Space Locked

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On Spaces where you may want people to limit access to people scheduling calls, on the Space with Space Locked a Space can be locked until a call is scheduled on it and the call is due to start. Once the call is finished, the Space will be locked again, until the next call is scheduled and due to start.

Bandwidth Limits

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VQ Conference Manager supports Bandwidth Control when placing outbound calls.

Auto Gain Control

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From VQ Conference Manager’s activity page, set Auto Gain Control if you wish to equalize the volume of each of the participant’s in a call.

Move participants between meetings

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Transfer users from one meeting to another, and ensure they’re assigned the correct role in their new call.

When you’re running a white-glove ‘concierge’ conferencing service, your operators can move individual or multiple users between meetings, or between a waiting lobby Space and the main conference.

If the destination meeting Space has more than one role-type, the operator can set which role the moved participants will have. They can also set the bandwidth for that individual.

Once the move is complete, VQ Conference Manager automatically expands the destination Space on the operator’s Activity screen, to show that the individuals have been moved successfully.

Note that limitations in the Cisco Meeting Server API mean individuals using the Cisco Meeting App or WebRTC client cannot be moved between meetings in this way. If this applies to you, we suggest you consider switching to the Webex Teams Client or the Cisco Meeting Server Web App, both of which are supported. Move Participant functionality requires that the Endpoints are registered with Cisco Unified Communications Manager (“CUCM”).

Watch from 8:00 in this video…