BigBlueButton (BBB) is an open-source web conferencing system designed for online learning and real-time collaboration. It provides a comprehensive set of tools for distance education, including audio, video, screen sharing, chat, whiteboard, and recording capabilities.

Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware integrates seamlessly with BigBlueButton, allowing you to create and manage web conferences directly from your Tiki site. This integration enables one-click access to meetings, granular permission management through Tiki's permission system, and seamless recording management.

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Table of contents:

Key features of the Tiki & BigBlueButton integration

• One-Click Access: Users can join BigBlueButton meetings directly from Tiki pages with a single click.
• Integrated Permission System: Tiki's powerful permission system extends to BigBlueButton meetings, enabling control over who can join meetings, designation of moderators and participants, management of recording access, and setting permissions per meeting or globally.
• Recording Management: Automatic listing of recordings in Tiki with access to multiple playback formats (presentation, video, chat), recording metadata display (date, duration, formats), and admin tools for recording deletion.
• Tracker Integration: Special BigBlueButton tracker field allows you to store recording URLs in trackers, display recording metadata, and link recordings to other tracker items (meetings, courses, etc.).
• User Management: Automatic user name synchronization from Tiki, role assignment based on Tiki permissions, and anonymous user support with customizable prefixes.
• Meeting Management: Create meetings on-demand, view current attendees, manage meeting settings, and support for recurring meetings.

• Audio Conferencing: High-quality voice communication using WebRTC
• Video Conferencing: Webcam support for face-to-face interaction
• Screen Sharing: Share your entire screen or specific applications
• Chat: Real-time text messaging during meetings
• Whiteboard: Collaborative drawing and annotation tools
• Presentation: Upload and present documents (PDF, PowerPoint, etc.)
• Recording: Record meetings for later playback
• Breakout Rooms: Create separate discussion rooms (BBB 2.7+)
• Polls: Conduct polls and collect responses
• Closed Captions: Real-time transcription support (BBB 2.7+)

More info at: http://bigbluebutton.org/

Tiki provides seamless integration with BigBlueButton, allowing users to create, manage, and join web conferences directly from Tiki pages. This integration leverages Tiki's permission system, tracker fields, and wiki plugins to provide a comprehensive conferencing solution.

Tiki uses the bigbluebutton-api-php library version 2.3.1 to communicate with BigBlueButton servers. This library supports BigBlueButton server versions 2.0 and higher.

Before using BigBlueButton in Tiki, ensure the following:

• BigBlueButton Server: A BigBlueButton server (version 2.0 or higher) must be installed and accessible (e.g: https://your-bbb-server.com/api)
• Shared Secret: Obtain the shared secret key from the BigBlueButton server by running sudo bbb-conf --secret

Enable the BigBlueButton Feature

• Enable the feature by checking "BigBlueButton web conferencing" at "Admin home > Users & Community > RTC > BigBlueButton" tab.
• Enable the plugin by checking "Plugin BigBlueButton" at "Admin home > Users & Community > RTC > BigBlueButton" tab.

Configure Server Connection

• BigBlueButton server location: Enter the complete URL of the BBB server (e.g., https://your-bbb-server.com/api) at Admin home > Users & Community > RTC > BigBlueButton.
• BigBlueButton shared secret: Paste the shared secret key obtained from the BBB server to authenticate API requests.

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Select the BigBlueButton plugin from the plugin helper popup box thorugh the edit box in the wiki page:

{bigbluebutton name="77777" prefix="guest" welcome="Welcome to the BBB from our web site" logout="http://mywebsite.org/myexitpage" recording="0"}

If you want to record your meetings, change the param recording from 0 to 1.

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Last, editing permissions for that BBB room name:

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• An anonymous user would see this in a wiki page when no one is connected to the metting yet:

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Note: Ensure that you are not caching that wiki page (set cache for that wiki page to "0". Otherwise, anonymous users willing to join a meeting might experience some connection problems in some cases.

• If there is anohter guest user connected (not logged in Tiki at the time of connection, thus loged in BBB as VIEWER), the page would look like:

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• If a user logs in the page, new buttons will be seen for him, depending on his tiki permissions, but for sure the username will be taken from his tiki username, andpermissions will be transferred from Tiki to BBB. If that user connects to the BBB channel, then he will be connecting as MODERATOR.

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• Validating permissions to share microphone and webcam:

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Tiki includes a specialized tracker field for managing BigBlueButton recordings.

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Creating a BBB Tracker Field

When creating a field in a tracker, choose “BigBlueButton Recordings” from the field type dropdown.

The most important configuration option is the Input Mode, which determines how users will enter recording URLs. After creating the field, you can change the Input Mode by editing the field and adjusting the setting in the "Options for BigBlueButton recordings" section.

• local: Users can only select from recordings available on your configured BBB server. This is the default setting.
• external: Users can only enter recording URLs manually.
• both: Users can either select from the local server or enter a URL manually.

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The Tiki community Dogfoods BigBlueButton at tiki.org/live.

The Tiki community has been testing BigBlueButton for this type of live collaboration and members of the community have decided to enter in a long-term integration partnership to maintain it as a Tiki feature.

Similar to Kaltura, BigBlueButton needs to be installed alongside Tiki (can be on a different physical server). Each project remains standalone, and we'll collaborate to continuously improve the glueware between the two.

At first, Single Sign On, but over time, we expect that many features will meld. The Tiki community will DogFood extensively. Tiki integrated the new record and playback features from BigBlueButton 0.8

Before setting up the tiki integration, the BigBlueButton server stack must be installed. Detailed instructions are provided for multiple platforms. However, using the provided virtual machine is the easiest way to go. Also note that there are heavy bandwidth requirements.

To enable the integration in tiki, you need the following information:

• The BigBlueButton server location.
• The server salt — a secret token used to generate call signatures. This value is located inside the bigbluebutton.properties file on the BigBlueButton server.
  • you can also have BBB report to you that server salt key with the command on the server:
    
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    bbb-conf --salt

The user interface for BigBlueButton goes through a wiki plugin. You can use it in wiki pages or most wiki-parsed text areas. To schedule meetings on a calendar, you can use the calendar feature.

{bigbluebutton name=My Meeting Room}

If the server location was configured successfully, the BigBlueButton logo will appear. A create button will be proposed to create the new room (a permission is required, but administrators have all permissions). If the salt was set-up correctly, you will be redirected to the meeting room.

Going back to the plugin, you can set-up the permissions to select who can join the meeting room or moderate it.

More info at PluginBigBlueButton

To use the voip feature when using a room name instead of a number:

open the config:
sudo nano /etc/asterisk/bbb_extensions.conf
then replace:
exten => _XXXX.,1,Playback(conf-placeintoconf)
with:
exten => _.,1,Playback(conf-placeintoconf)
and replace:
exten = _XXXX.,n,Konference(${EXTEN},H)
with:
exten = _.,n,Konference(${EXTEN},H)

Than reboot the Big Blue Button server with bbb-conf --restart.

note: if you don't have nano installed use sudo apt-get install nano

This will help with several related but slightly different uses.

Scheduled, live, interactive, one to many delivery of knowledge. The session could be one time (webinar) or an ongoing course with a regular schedule. This is BigBlueButton's core objective "our focus is to make the best web conferencing system for distance education."

A visitor clicks a link on a brochure website and is put in contact with a representative of the organization. This is similar to Tiki's Live Support feature (ad hoc 1 on 1 chat help support), but with BigBlueButton's feature set, there are way more possibilities (screen sharing, co-browsing, etc.)

Useful for Teams to meet & coordinate. These are typically scheduled (for instance with PluginConvene and Tiki Calendar) and have an agenda (presumably in a wiki page). Ideally, decisions are recorded (presumably in a wiki page). Everyone can be on audio & webcam. Headsets are recommended.

This will be useful during TikiFests. A projector can be setup at the live event so all participants can see everyone and follow the discussion on the chat. Typically, remote participants can listen in, but will respond in the text chat. (Just because of logistics and ambient noise).

• An alternative is http://www.ustream.tv/user/tikiwiki
• An example: TikiFestBigBlueButton

This is the place to go to hang out with "everyone". It's on 24/7 and can be idle for long whiles. It should be logged as a lot of knowledge, answers and links are shared there. Quick "decisions" are often taken there as well (ask a quick question and if everyone seems ok with it, it must be ok). Even if some users may be identified with special rights (ex.: ops), the room is very p2p. It's possible to break out of the room into a smaller one for a short, focused or private discussion. Historically, we use irc.tiki.org but we could eventually develop an IRC to BigBlueButton gateway.

Typically a video stream which can be monitored and recorded.

• http://bigbluebutton-blog.blogspot.com/2010/08/pictures-from-tikifestbigbluebutton.html
• http://bigbluebutton-blog.blogspot.com/2010/04/tiki-wiki-looking-closely-at.html
• dev:BigBlueButton
• http://hostbbb.com/ which is known to work with Tiki
• https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=272890

  
  

• BBB
• Big Blue Button