Release date: 4 September 2019
With our latest update, we release two exciting collaboration features: breakout rooms and lobbies. Under the hood we've implemented some improvements to the dashboard, emails and content library.
To make group works easier, we introduce breakout rooms. With these you can use a dedicated space for your participants or students to work on group assignments and pull them back afterwards.
We also implemented a new lobby feature, allowing speakers to manage who enters the room. This enables you to set up a waiting room for your attendees.
Additionally, we have updated the design of the email invites and allow you to customize the dashboard welcome message. When joining private events, users who are previously signed up for a free account will now be able to edit the "First Name" and "Last Name" fields in the registration form.
Account Center
New features
- Added in-place editing of configs in Admin Settings, and a search feature.
- An export to csv/excel option has been added to the new JS dashboard chart (replacing the flash chart).
- Added meta html definitions to improve SEO for public pages.
- Added service plan setting to control child-friendly emoji display.
- The design of the email invites has been updated with a more modern look.
- Added permalinks for recordings, so that links do not break if recordings are moved.
- System Admins will now be able to customize the wait music on telephony conferences.
- When the "Users can register for accounts" is unchecked in the admin interface, the sign-up link will be completely disabled in the login form.
- Account holders will now be able to define the default value of the "Enable request to broadcast" checkbox in the room Settings > Workspace menu.
- The duration for which guest files are being retained can now be set to as low as 30 days in the Config options.
- The participant/audience and moderator/speaker lists is now sorted alphabetically in the Participants Schedule Meeting tab
- The simultaneous broadcaster limit has been implemented with a default value of 10. Admin Users will be able to change this value in the Service Plan Settings.
- When joining any private events, users who are previously signed up for a free account will now be able to edit the "First Name" and "Last Name" fields in the Registration form.
- The Dashboard Welcome message has been made fully-customizable.
Fixed
- Disabled ability to delete a meeting room if it is in use in a live meeting.
- Encoding issues with special characters in custom_data field of session registration data exports have been resolved.
- Encoding issues with special characters in custom form fields on registration page builder have been resolved.
- Improved email subject UTF-8 encoding to improve email spam rating.
- When recording a session, the recording description will now be automatically populated with the session name.
In-Room
New Features
- A new lobby feature has been implemented, allowing speakers to manage who enters the room.
- An "Enable lobby" option has been added for in-room sessions.
- When the lobby, recording or hand raise are in active state, a green dot will appear right next to the icon.
- A new breakout room feature has been implemented, allowing speakers to assign audience users into various breakout rooms where they can collaborate until the speaker pulls them back into the main room.
- Breakout room checkboxes have been added to the Service plan and Sessions settings. Users may now choose to enable or disable breakout rooms.
- Speakers can broadcast a custom message from the main room to all breakout rooms.
- Speakers that are in a breakout room will now receive a notification when someone joins the main room. This will allow the speaker to go back into the main room and move that person to a breakout room.
- Speakers can use the "Move to Breakout Room" option in the participants menu to easily move a audience user to a breakout room while a breakout session is active.
- Audience users can invite speakers to join their breakout room.
- Breakout room permissions model allows users to enter the breakout rooms with elevated permissions, and the various UI elements have been modified to reflect that.
- A room bandwidth cap feature was implemented where the publisher's bitrate dynamically changes according to how many publishers are in the room.
- The Content Share area dimensions have been updated. Files will now occupy the maximum possible space in the content area.
- Breadcrumbs navigation has been added in the Media Library.
- When the Live Streaming feature is active, and the user closes then opens the popup, the Live Streaming dropdown will now autoselect the currently chosen live stream method.
- Minor change in the Media Library UI to standardize the hover menus.
- We now allow users to define a custom Live Streaming endpoint via the API.
- The background color when playing video/audio files and youtube has been changed to white, to make the icons more visible.
Fixed
- Fixed issue where the whiteboard trash feature was not deleting all elements from the whiteboard.
- Resolved issue where layout engine was not working properly causing inconsistencies with elements going full screen when they should have been thumbnails- and vice versa.
- Fixed issue where the active speaker highlight was not visible when the user was in audio-only mode.
- Fixed issue where the timestamp was truncated when the submitted message was just 1 character long.
- Fixed issue where selecting an option in the dial-in popup and then canceling the chosen option, did not reset the selected choice the next time you opened the popup again.
- Fixed issue where the camera light stays on for a user when that user is given broadcast permission and that permission is then revoked before they have a chance to accept.
- Fixed a layout engine issue where the whiteboard was not opened correctly in full screen mode.
- Resolved issues where the camera and mic buttons could get "stuck" when pressed on/off to quickly.
- Fixed issue where sometimes the camera and microphone dropdowns were empty in the Settings panel.
- Fixed issue where users could get stuck at the "You are already connected" dialog.
- Resolved issue where the Q&A checkbox was still visible and checked even when it has been turned off in the Service Plan.
- Long user names are now displaying correctly in the live answer popup.
- Resolved issue where Q&A panel did not update automatically when the user was promoted/demoted while panel is opened.
- Resolved issue where Youtube audio kept on playing even when the user already closed the Youtube video in Content Share.
- Resolved issue where both audio/video streams started for an audio-only broadcast.
- Users will no longer receive chat notifications when the chat panel is already open.
- Resolved issue where the Speaker's avatar was appearing for late joiners even after the speaker's video/audio was turned off.
- Resolved issue where Audio and Video didn't start after an audience clicked the 'Broadcast Audio & Video' button in the 'Request to broadcast accepted' popup.
- Fixed issue where when a user clicked too quickly, the mic and camera left bar buttons became unresponsive.
- Resolved issue where when broadcasting audio-video, the stream freezes when a user changes his device (either microphone or camera) in the Settings panel Video and Audio tab.
- Resolved issue where incorrect options in the audience user's menu were showing for promoted speaker.
- When 2 speakers are sharing screens, screen share of the first speaker will now stop automatically when the second speaker starts screen sharing.
- Resolved issue where the phone user was inaudible to web users.
- Resolved issue where streaming did not start when user clicked the "Start Stream" button using Facebook or Samba.live.
- Resolved issue where video and audio stream was not showing for a promoted user (as a consequence of load balancing).
- Resolved issue where video and audio stream did not start after clicking 'Try again' button in the 'bandwidth problems' popup (as a consequence of load balancing).
- Fixed issue where an audience user with presentation permission could not start screen sharing.
Mobile
New Features
- The session link input field now uses the iOS URL keyboard.
- The size of the buttons on the log in screens have been increased.
- When there are no contents being displayed during screen sharing, videos will now open in full screen automatically.
- A gray line has been added above the chat input field, to make the input field more visible.
- The font size of the chat input field has been increased.
- The spacing between chat messages has been decreased so users can see as many messages as possible.
Fixed
- Fixed issue where the screen share dimensions were distorted.
- Fixed issue where the chat keyboard did not disappear when leaving the chat view.
- First letters of sentences will now default to capital.
- Added contrast to the user avatars in the chat.
- Added a textual hint to the session link field to make it clear we expect a full URL.
- Fixed issue where the Whiteboard wasn't showing any content for an audience using iOS.
- Resolved issue where an error ''The opened file type is not supported' was showing when iOS user opened the chat view while viewing a shared content.
- Resolved issue where the chat icons got associated with the wrong user/avatar.
- The Samba Live logo on the entering screen has been updated to a higher resolution.
- Resolved issue where Youtube did not play for late joiners.
- Device auto-lock are now enabled when users are on the login screens but are not actually logged in and connected to the room.
- The "Room owner is offline" dialog and buttons have been updated with a more intuitive behavior.
- Headphone detection issues have been fixed. When a user plugs in a headphone, the sound will now directly go to the headphones, and not the speakers.
Hotfixes
New Feature
- In the footer section of the invitation email, the "Join Discussion Here' text color has been changed from blue to black to avoid being mistaken as a link.
Fixed
- Resolved issue where the 'Broadcast audio only' and 'Broadcast audio&video' buttons were displayed in the 'Request to broadcast accepted' popup in phone-only sessions.
- Resolved issue where an abnormal noise was appearing when the phone user joined a session the second time.
- Fixed issue where a black background appeared on the entering screen after a user turned off the camera.
- Resolved issue in the Settings Panel where the Camera and microphone dropdowns were empty when the user switched to another tab.
- Fixed issue in the Content Switcher view where documents were not aligned properly.
- Resolved issue where a 'speakerShowVideo' popup is showing after sharing an mp4 video.
- Fixed issue where video and audio files in the content library did not play for other users.
- Resolved issue where the 'Answer privately' and 'Ask anonymously' checkboxes and labels in the Q&A panel were not in the right place.
- Resolved issue in the Q&A Panel where the unanswered questions were not showing when a user filters the questions.
- Resolved issue where the 'Try again' button did not work on the 'Bandwidth problems' popup.
- Fixed issue where the '100%' button did not work correctly in Content Share.
- Fixed issue where the 'Clear filter' was not aligned correctly on the Polls panel in the Content library.
- Resolved issue where screen share was showing instead of the video stream when a user clicked the "try again" button in the 'Bandwidth problems' popup.
- Fixed issue where an incorrect User ID was showing for a user waiting in the lobby.
- Resolved issue where the profile image was out of borders on the 'Update profile image' popup.
- Facebook live stream is now working correctly again.
- Resolved issue where the scheduled sessions were not appearing in the schedule list when a user changes the time zone.
- Resolved issue where mute/unmute menu items were not showing for merged users.
- Resolved issue where a phone user's audio was out of sync in the recording.
- Resolved issue where an incorrect duration was shown for a breakout room in Usage statistics.
- Resolved issue where the 'Use child friendly emoji set in the chat panel in HTML5 sessions', 'Total Room Publisher Bitrate Limit', 'Live Streaming', 'Enable hand-raise by default in HTML5 sessions' settings were missing for a company account.
- Resolved issue where HTML5 only/Flash only settings were not hidden for company account when changing Available room types from 'Flash&HTML5' to 'Flash only' or 'HTML5 only'.
- Fixed issue where 'Browser not supported' warning displayed in Safari Mac when a user entered Samba Live.
- Resolved issue where the Restreamer stopped randomly.