Enhanced Messaging And Softphones

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Asterisk Users 5 Comments

Hello,

I’ve just read in [1] about SIP MESSAGE addition to both chan_pjsip and ConfBridge. It seems very interesting addition as it brings the capability to mix voice, video and text in conferencing.

On an other hand, there are some softphones (Zoiper, Bria, …) that tout voice, video and chat capability. Though Enhanced Messaging solution described in [1] seems more attractive to me in the long run, I wonder if it could easier to quickly set a demo using softphone instead of a web application.

In this case, was I’m failing to understand is is there anything missing in Confbridge for chat conferencing with softphones. May I add I read [2] which mentions sending of “custom JSON message”.

My questions are:

1. Do such softphones use compatible SIP MESSAGE to implement chat feature ?
If negative, what is the missing block that should be present along Asterisk ?

2. Is there a different class of clients (I’m think of Riot clients) as opposed to softphones that support Confbridge voice, video and test features ?

Best regards

[1]

Enrich Your Conference App with Asterisk Enhanced Messaging – Part 1


[2] https://community.asterisk.org/t/conference-participant-messaging/77755

5 thoughts on - Enhanced Messaging And Softphones

  • I’m not aware of any softphone that supports the functionality. From a video perspective it has to support multiple video streams and displaying them (Asterisk doesn’t do video transcoding or mixing). From a messaging perspective it has to support the JSON payload that Asterisk is using in ConfBridge. This conveys additional information that a straight up chat message wouldn’t.

    —
    Joshua C. Colp Digium – A Sangoma Company | Senior Software Developer
    445 Jan Davis Drive NW – Huntsville, AL 35806 – US
    Check us out at: http://www.digium.com & http://www.asterisk.org

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  • Thanks for your (fast) reply !

    Le ven. 18 janv. 2019 à 16:32, Joshua C. Colp a écrit :

    You mean with a softphone you can’t select a single (or several) video among those available, can you ?
    Even with DTMF sequence and some features.conf magic, a user cannot ask to receive a specific video stream ?

    (forgive me if my question seems naive or irrelevant but I didn’t dare to try or install anything yet)

    Do you mean Asterisk receives and send SIP messages with embeded JSON
    Payload ?
    Is there a specific name for such behaviour (something that could help to check if a SIP library or client supports this) ?

  • This is not currently supported in any video mode in ConfBridge.

    There’s not really a name or anything, except for our content type that we came up with. It’s not defined as a standard or an RFC. Within ConfBridge the messages are exchanged using JSON between Asterisk and client.

    —
    Joshua C. Colp Digium – A Sangoma Company | Senior Software Developer
    445 Jan Davis Drive NW – Huntsville, AL 35806 – US
    Check us out at: http://www.digium.com & http://www.asterisk.org

    —

  • Le ven. 18 janv. 2019 à 17:30, Joshua C. Colp a écrit :

    So currently, any incoming video flux is forwarded to all ConfBridge participants (except if forwarding is cobntrolled/tuned by an external app)
    ?

    This is now very clear, for me. Thanks again

  • There are different available video modes[1] which control the behavior. “sfu” attempts to negotiate additional video streams with each participant to carry the other people in the conference.

    [1] https://wiki.asterisk.org/wiki/display/AST/Asterisk+16+Configuration_app_confbridge#Asterisk16Configuration_app_confbridge-bridge_profile_video_mode

    —
    Joshua C. Colp Digium – A Sangoma Company | Senior Software Developer
    445 Jan Davis Drive NW – Huntsville, AL 35806 – US
    Check us out at: http://www.digium.com & http://www.asterisk.org

    —