Hi all, Polycom has suggested that we make use of their centralized conference feature.
A Polycom configured with a conference bridge URI will start conferences on that bridge, instead of locally, when the user presses the 'Conference' button/softkey. One advantage of centralized over local conferences is that the number of participants is not limited by the Polycom's resources. (Currently 3 or 4 total participants, depending on the Polycom model.) Here's a user story: User A is in a call with User B, and they decide an ad-hoc conference is in order. User A calls User C, then joins the two calls with the 'Conference' button. All users are then connected to User A's conference bridge. User A can then pull in more participants by dialing them directly, and joining then after consultation. (Some users would prefer this to the user portal invite, see http://list.sipfoundry.org/archive/sipx-dev/msg17880.html.) A's user portal can of course also be used to control the conference. We could implement a very basic version of this with relatively little work in sipXecs (see XX-6576): 1. When a user is the owner of a conference bridge, then profiles of all Polycoms assigned to that user will automatically have 'voIpProt.SIP.conference.address' set to the bridge URI. 2. The Contact header in INVITE responses from the conference bridge will need to have the "isfocus" tag. I refer to this as a basic version, because the usability suffers when the conference bridge is protected with a PIN. All participants entering the conference will need the PIN. But you would expect participants pulled in by the conference owner to be joined directly, without being prompted for the PIN. This could be solved I'm sure, but it would be challenging. Here's why. A Polycom with two established calls starts the Conference by sending an INVITE to the bridge. That call is established when the bridge returns an OK. The Polycom then Blind Transfers (REFER without Replaces) the two other parties to the Contact from the bridge OK. We want the two REFER'd parties to enter the conference without a PIN. It may be helpful if the bridge OK uses an obfusticated Contact in lieu of a PIN. But the main challenge is that the owner is prompted for the PIN only after the call has been established. That is, the other participants are REFER'd (and will surely have sent their INVITEs) before the conference owner has been authenticated. The two non-owner INVITEs will need to become established calls before the conference starts. They should be "held" (with MOH) and then put into the conference only after the owner has entered the PIN. Thoughts? -Paul [email protected] -Paul [email protected] _______________________________________________ sipx-dev mailing list [email protected] List Archive: http://list.sipfoundry.org/archive/sipx-dev Unsubscribe: http://list.sipfoundry.org/mailman/listinfo/sipx-dev sipXecs IP PBX -- http://www.sipfoundry.org/
