Settings for network, notifications and federation

In this section you can adjust some network settings for your TrueConf Server instance:

• connecting client applications and third-party devices (SIP, H.323, etc.)

• sending email notifications for users and administrator

• connecting to other TrueConf Server instances.

Network Settings

In this section you can specify IP addresses and ports which will be used by TrueConf client applications to connect to TrueConf Server. IP address of the computer where TrueConf Server is installed is used by default.

Client applications always connect to TrueConf Server over the only TCP port (4307is used by default). It is the only port used for signalling, sending authentification data and audio or video streams. An HTTPS port (443 selected by default) is used for displaying the scheduler, accessing real-time meeting management and for API calls. To learn more about this topic, check out the article in our knowledge base.

You can specify a different port when editing the list of IP addresses.

No UDP port can be used for communication between TrueConf Server and a client application.

In the Internal addresses list, one will find the addresses and ports that the server will listen to for connections from client applications. These should be the addresses of the network interfaces on the machine where TrueConf Server is installed, or its internal DNS name, which resolves to one of the network interfaces by IP. When the box Listen on all IP addresses is checked (the default option), the list will be automatically created and will contain all such addresses, including virtual ones.

To edit the Internal addresses list, you will need to:

1. Uncheck the Listen on all IP addresses box.

2. To change the parameters for the specific connection, just click on the line with the selected address.

3. Use the buttons at the end of the list to add a new address and to save or discard changes.

Addresses from the External addresses list are added in an encrypted form to the installer name of TrueConf for Windows client application and will be used during the first launch of the application. If the list does not include addresses accessible to all TrueConf for Windows users (both external and internal), they will not be able to connect to the server until they specify a correct address in the application settings. So, we suggest that in this section, you should specify the addresses accessible to all users both within the corporate network and from outside. This list can include addresses configured for forwarding to internal addresses, the IP address of your NAT, DNS name, or addresses to which you plan to migrate TrueConf Server in the future (so that the applications which were downloaded before, could connect to the new address). If the server will be used only within a local network, this list will not be needed.

To edit the External addresses list, mark the Specify checkbox.

If you plan to migrate the server to another IP address, all you need to do is to add the new IP address to the External addresses list beforehand. This will help client apps to store the new address right after the next connection to the server in advance.

When the external address is adopted, go to the Web → Settings section section in the control panel and change the external address of the web page to a public IP (indicated in the External addresses list). Then restart the server so that external users can connect to it from outside.

This guide does not cover TCP port forwarding or DNS names. You can learn more about these topics in your network equipment manuals.

SMTP

Although TrueConf Server doesn't have a built-in mail server, it can use an external SMTP server or service to deliver email notifications, invitations and other important messages to your users. You can change the templates used for these messages in this section as well.

The email address that has already been used or may be used in a user profile should not be specified in the settings of the mail server for sending notifications from TrueConf Server. A separate mailbox should be created for the server.

To configure an SMTP connection:

1. Specify the host (the address of the mail server).

2. Select a secure connection type: SSL, STARTTLS, or none.

3. Specify the port for your connection type if it is not default.

4. Select authentication mode (simple password or no authorization). If you have chosen password-protected authentication mode, please enter login and password to connect your TrueConf Server instance to the SMTP server.

5. Fill in the email address fields (full mailbox address, including login, @ and domain) and sender's name in the SMTP From field. In this case, the address should match the login and host specified above.

6. Check your settings using the Check connection button. The current status of your connection to the mail server is displayed in the Status: field: successfully connected in case of successful connection to the SMTP server and invalid server if the connection can not be established.

7. Enter your TrueConf Server administrator email to be displayed in the outgoing emails. Enable the checkbox below the input field so that the administrator is notified when TrueConf Server restarts due to internal errors.

8. Click Apply at the bottom of the page to save changes.

Email template settings

Below the parameters for connecting to an SMTP server, you can set the templates for different email notifications.

To restore default templates for all emails, click the Set default button in the User mails section. In this case, the language of the templates will match the language selected in the preferences by the current administrator.

Notifications about missed calls

To receive missed call notifications, enable the Notify users about missed calls checkbox. If any of the users is offline during the call or conference invitation, TrueConf Server will send an email notification at the email address specified in the E-mail field in the user account settings or in the corresponding field imported via LDAP synchronization.

Notifications about missed calls are sent to those unregistered users who were called by a user from your video conferencing server: he/she did not know their TrueConf ID and tried to call them by email. Such calls must be made with the #mailto: prefix, for example, #mailto:user123@example.com. This issue occurs because TrueConf ID format coincides with an email address; so, a special prefix in the call string is required to distinguish between them.

When participants are invited to a public conference (webinar) via email , the #mailto: prefix will be added automatically, no additional actions will be needed.

Conference invitations

To enable email invitations for all new scheduled conferences, enable the Send invitations to participants of the group conference checkbox. In this case, when scheduling a meeting, all invited users will receive email invitations where date and time of the meeting (if any) is specified.

You can enable or disable email invitations for each meeting individually in the Advanced tab when creating or editing the conference.

Reminders about the upcoming conference

You can send automatic reminders about upcoming events. In this case all participants added to a scheduled conference will receive an email reminder before the start of this meeting. The reminder template can be set below in the Reminder about upcoming conference section.

In the Reminders list one can select when email reminders should be sent to participants. If the box is checked, but no option is selected in the list, the administrator or owner can manually select the period when scheduling a meeting. If a period has already been selected, for example, 1 day and 5 minutes before the meeting, email reminders will be sent according to the existing settings if a conference is created.

If the administrator checks the box Send users reminders about upcoming conference and selects a period in the Reminders section, automatic reminders with the specified time periods will be added for the scheduled conferences that were initially created without reminders.

Confirmations of registration for a public conference

To send confirmations of a successful webinar registration (available if corresponding settings have been adjusted), use the Conference registration notification template.

Notifications about removal from a conference

To notify users when they are removed from the list of invited participants, mark the Notify users if they are removed from the participant list checkbox. These settings will be applied to all conference modes. If registration settings have been configured for the webinar, the notification will be received by the participants who signed up for the webinar and those users who were invited to the list of participants when the conference was created.

Parameters used in email templates

Use the following syntactic structures to customize the templates of emails sent by TrueConf Server:

• For notifying users about missed calls:

  • %caller_display_name — display name of the caller

  • %сaller_call_id — ID of the user who made the call (e.g. user@server.trueconf.name)

  • %recipient_display_name — display name of the caller (the user who missed the call)

  • %missed_call_time — time and date of the call.

• additional variables for missed call notifications sent to unregistered users:

  • %recipient_call_id` is the ID of a user who missed the call.

  • %tcs_guest_page_url is the guest page URL of your TrueConf Server.

• For inviting to a conference:

  • %conf_name — name of the conference

  • %conf_id — ID of the conference, e.g. \c\df0a2adebe

  • %owner_name — display name of the conference owner

  • %user_display_name — display name of the user who is invited to the conference

  • %start_time is the time and date of the conference start. The time corresponds to the server time zone which will be specified in the email. Participants should take into account time zone differences to join the conference at the correct time.

  • %conf_description — conference description specified in the Advanced → Description section when the conference is being created.

  • %conf_url — the link to the conference page, e.g.,:

    https://example.com/c/CID

• For notifications about webinar registration:

  • %conf_unique_link — the unique conference link provided to each participant.

Server administrator contacts parameters:

• %admin_name — display name

• %admin_email — email address

• %admin_phone — phone number.

Federation

The federation mode allows TrueConf Server users to make calls and join conferences with users from other TrueConf Server instances. Federation is only available in the full version of TrueConf Server (for example, when purchasing additional licenses of any type). There is no limit on the number of servers that can be joined through federation. The restrictions on holding group conferences will correspond to the limits set in the TrueConf Server instance that initiated connection.

The federation has to be configured for both servers so that they could be accessible to each other according to the rules specified below. To configure federation, you will need to:

1. In the drop-down list, select the federation mode:

   • Disabled

   • Allowed for whitelisted servers. In this mode, only TrueConf Server instances specified in the whitelist can be federated

   • Allowed for all but blacklisted servers. In this mode, all TrueConf Server instances can be federated except for those specified in the blacklist.

2. Enter the IP addresses or domain names (FQDNs) of the required servers into one of the lists (depending on the federation mode) and click Add.

IP addresses do not have to be specified for federation; only DNS (FQDN) names are needed. Besides, the masks containing an asterisk * are supported, for example, *.example.com, v*.example.com, example.*, *.example.*.

3. Click the Apply button to restart TrueConf Server and save changes.

To be able to operate in federation, your TrueConf Server instance should be available to other servers and client applications by its DNS (FQDN) name indicated during the registration process. The server should be registered either under an existing DNS name or a server address using SRV DNS records.

If you would like to learn more, proceed to the client application automatic settings section.

Let us take a look at some examples.

Case 1

To configure federation with a different TrueConf Server instance, e.g., videoserver.company.com, you will need to:

1. Add videoserver.company.com to the white list

2. Activate federation on the side of videoserver.company.com in one of the following ways:

   • Add the domain name of your server to the its white list

   • Allow federation with all the servers that have not been added to the black list (make sure that your server is not added to the black list).

3. Make sure that both servers and TrueConf client applications connected to these servers are accessible to each other via their domain names.

Case 2

If the videoserver.company.com server was added to the black list, the users from your server and all the users with id@videoserver.company.com ID will not be able to make calls to each other.

Connection to a conference in federation mode

Connection to a conference (including the cases when federation is used) is fully described in the "Conference page" section.