Introducing VQ Conference Manager 3.8
Here we are about to press the ‘go’ button again on a new VQ Conference Manager release.
VQ Conference Manager 3.8 is very personal for me. We finally got to the point where we addressed some of my personal pet peeves. I’m delighted to say I’m really pleased with how it looks.
Let’s start with what customers are asking for: a solution that enables them to deliver conferencing services on CMS (call quality/experience, interoperability, scale and media security) that gives a user experience similar to the cloud based offerings. TMS customers are looking for a TMS replacement that addresses their OBTP, Directory Services and Device Management needs.
Then let’s throw in my pet peeves:
1. It was difficult to find a soft client that worked consistently and well. There was also the challenge that we wanted to use one that we knew all our customers could use. We really needed a great soft client that shipped with every CMS that didn’t rely on a cloud based service.
2. It was too difficult to share join details with the people I wanted to have calls with. It was embarrassing how many times I had people ask me to send them the details for their space/meeting so the people they wanted to meet could join their call.
VQ Conference Manager 3.8.0 and CMS 3.3 come together really nicely. Add Expressway with MRA and Web App works incredibly well; it gives us a client that ships with every CMS and VQCM’s new “Home” coApp makes it really easy to get the join details for a Space or Meeting. From the VQ UI, you can click Join for click to call ‘ease of join’. Sharing the details is a breeze; preview them or simply copy them and paste them into a mail, slack or meeting appointment.
What I really like is that in about 4 clicks, I can get the details for a Role on a Space (or meeting), copy and paste it into an email, send it out to people and then have them join from wherever they are – room system, soft client or out on the road, from their iPhone. It’s especially satisfying joining a call either via the Web App or Webex client from my phone – I still have that sense of disbelief how good the video is and I can do it from wherever I have Wi-Fi or 4G.
The results are sensational. I’m completely sold and have been loving the experience.
Activity got a pretty major rework and looks really good for it. Active Speaker now works across all call types. Recurring Meetings got some love and now support irregular patterns and a selectable end date (how did we miss that the first time around)?
Other ‘make my life easier’ functionality includes the addition of Local Users for those of us without AD/LDAP.
On the theme of ‘make my life easier’ – system installers will love the certificate management changes now in CM-Admin. Trusted certs, cert chain editor along with issuer labels and the ability to paste certs. Ansible playbooks start to appear with CMS backup playbooks and one for CMS certificate renewal.
VQ Conference Manager 3.8.0 paves the way for two follow-on releases:
· VQCM 3.8.1 adds Pane Placement and more filtering of Meeting Lists (e.g., relative dates)
· VQCM 3.8+ adds One Button To Push.
VQCM 3.8.1 is currently planned for the January 2022 time frame; VQCM 3.8+ will be made available as an update to VQCM 3.8.0. No dates yet for 3.8+; we’re hoping sooner rather than later.
For all the details, please read the release notes available from the vqcomms.com (Menu->VQ conference Manager->release notes).
We’re really pleased with how it looks and we hope you like it too.
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