Oftentimes you have colleagues working on different sites, even different countries and time zones have gotten more and more common in todays world of work.
You can easily keep connected by multiple means like Chat, Email, landline, mobile phones, messaging apps, social networks, VoIP… You get my point.
Most of these means have several disadvantages to consider:
- no video functionality
- no sovereignty about the transmitted data
- no availability of thorough debugging
- need of dedicated client application
These topics can be tackled by an OpenSource VideoChat Application: jitsi-meet
There is a quick installation guide available, (yes, there are docker images)and you can also try it via a demo system.
The package installs several components: jitsi-videobridge (WebRTC), jitisi-meet (JavaScript), nginx (http access), prosody (XMPP), OpenJDK7 (JRE)
While setting up the system, you’re prompted to configure the domain name respectively the $IP of the host. In a second step, you’re asked to set a certificate for SSL-encryption.
You’re allowed to use your own certificate or jitsi-meet creates a self-signed certificate for you (this might be handy for having just a quick glance at jitsi-meet)
jitsi-meet then provides an easily accessible chat room for many concurrent user who can (voice)chat, share screens and video chat.
To set up a chat room, simply point your browser (Chrome worked best in our environment) to https://$IP:443 and enter a name for the room into the dialogue box.
You’ll be then redirected to the room and can start setting a password for the room and share the link to your room with others.
This is just a short overview about the possibilities of jitsi-meet, give it a try and have fun!
10-14 September was a week of videos and developer musings.
