TrueConf Server Admin Guide

# Initial setup

# Control panel access settings

By default TrueConf Server can be administered from any computer in the same local network where it was installed. In other words, by default access is limited to the following ranges of IP addresses: 10.*, 192.168.*, 172.16-172.31, 127.*.

Access settings are discussed more closely in the description of the Web → Security section.

To get remote access to the TrueConf Server control panel, you need to sign in with an admin account. The admin is a member of one of the following groups:

  • TrueConf Server Admin for Windows (tcadmins for Linux) to manage TrueConf Server

  • TrueConf Server Security Admin for Windows (tcsecadmins for Linux) to view logs and conference recordings.

When the server is installed on Windows, the current user account is added to the first group. On Linux, users who are manually specified during the installation process are added to the tcadmins group. To grant another user access to the control panel, the administrator has to add this user’s account to one of the groups.

You can learn how to create a new user account on different operating systems and add it to the desired group on the example of TrueConf Server Security Admin in our documentation.

TrueConf Server does not impose any restrictions on the number of administrators of each type.

If an administrator wants to manage TrueConf Server from a remote computer, they need to make sure that the firewall allows incoming connections over the control panel access port (80 by default) and that this option has been enabled in the Security section of the TrueConf Server control panel.

Learn how to administer TrueConf Server outside your local network in our article.

# Server status

Server status is shown in the Server status field in green (if the server is working) or in red (if it has stopped) in top right corner of the control panel:

/docs/server/media/status/en.png

What to do if server is not running?

Stopped status is displayed in the Server status string.

There are three possible reasons for this:

# Server log

If you encounter any issues with TrueConf Server, TrueConf support team will be able to help you troubleshoot them more efficiently if you provide your server log files. To access the main log, go to System → Server log located in the top right corner of the control panel.

/docs/server/media/journal_menu_button/en.png

Check Enable detailed logging in Dashboard → Settings section of the control panel to collect more detailed information in your server logs. Our technical support managers may ask you to do it to ease the troubleshooting process.

A range of additional log files is saved in the TrueConf Server working directory. Learn more about additional log files in our article.

# Configuring preferences

Some settings can be set up personally for each TrueConf Server administrator. e.g., control panel interface language, time zone, and reports export parameters.

/docs/server/media/preferences/en.png

  1. Proceed to System → Preferences... in the upper right corner of the control panel.

  2. Select your language and time zone. Please note that the time zone will be applied to your meetings in all server logs and during the scheduling process. You can use the time zone of the computer where your TrueConf Server is installed by checking the corresponding box.

  3. You can set report export parameters (encoding and field delimiter to convert the table string to text format) in the Export to CSV section.

After making any changes make sure to click Apply button.

# Adding users

# Where can I find client applications

Send out the link to the guest page to your users to allow them to connect to your video conferencing system. They will be able to download client applications for any supported platform on the guest page.

The guest page is available at http[s]://<server>[:<port>] where:

  • <server> - address of the PC with TrueConf Server installed

  • <port> - port used to access the control panel (if you are using default 80 port, you don't need to specify it)

For example:

  • https://videoserver.company.com

  • http://100.120.12.12:7777

You can configure the guest page URL in the Web → Settings section of the control panel.

# How to connect client application to the video conferencing server

You need to specify the server address in the network settings of your client application so that your client application can connect to your TrueConf Server instance and your users can authorize. You can either do it manually or let your client application find the server automatically via DNS.

Once connected to the server user will be prompted to authenticate on this TrueConf Server instance with username and password.

# Client application manual setting

Users can configure connection to TrueConf Server manually. In order to do it, you need to specify the TrueConf Server address and connection port manually in the application network settings menu (or upon the first application launch). You can find detailed instructions on how to connect an application to the server on the guest page.

# Client application automatic settings

Desktop client applications can automatically search for local TrueConf Server instance. To make this possible administrator needs to specify the address of the server in primary DNS suffix by creating a new SRV record for vcs2 service.

The following example shows how to do this using DNS utility in Microsoft Windows 2012 Server:

  • Choose Other New Records… in a right-click menu

  • Choose type «Service Location (SRV)»

  • Set the following parameters.

/docs/server/media/dns/en.png

In this example the TrueConf Server instance has videoserver.your.domain.com address and port 4307. Please make sure that protocol name (tcp) does not contain underscores.

# PDF file import settings

With TrueConf Server (both free and paid license), users can enjoy a number of collaboration tools: share screen or separate application windows, show slides, control desktops remotely, etc. However, you need to set up additional third-party software to display slides created from PDF files in TrueConf for Windows client applications.

To create a slideshow from a PDF file and to view PDF documents directly in TrueConf for Windows, the open-source Ghostscript library is used. It will be automatically downloaded from TrueConf Server and installed on a user's PC when the first PDF file is imported. However, since this library is not integrated into the TrueConf software, it must be manually pre-configured on the server side.

TrueConf client applications for Linux and macOS use system libraries for working with PDF files. The import of these files will be available when connecting to TrueConf Server for Linux and TrueConf Server for Windows. Please contact our technical support if you have any problems or additional questions about this feature.

# For Windows

  1. Please contact TrueConf technical support to request the archive with compiled Ghostscript libraries. The archive will include four files: gsdll86.lib, gsdll64.lib, gsdll86.dll, gsdll64.dll.

  2. Create a third_party_extensions directory in the TrueConf Server working folder (C:\TrueConf\ by default).

  3. Unpack the archive from step 1.

  4. Open the registry (for example, by running the regedit command from your console).

  5. Go to the registry branch

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\TrueConf\Server\AppProperties

and create a string parameter pdflibrary_url with the value https://[server_address]/third-party-extensions/gsdll.dll, where [server_address] is the FQDN (domain name) or IP address of your TrueConf Server instance. This address will be used for connecting to the server from client applications.

6. Open the file [installation_path]\httpconf\opt\redirects.conf, where [installation_path] is the server installation path and add the following text starting from a new line (all other line should be commented out):

RewriteEngine On

Include opt/work_dir.conf
<IfDefine work_dir>
  RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  ^\/third-party-extensions\/gsdll.dll$
  RewriteCond  %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.+&)?(arch=x(64|86))(.+)?
  RewriteRule  ^(.*)$ "${work_dir}/third_party_extensions/gsdll%3.dll" [L,QSA]
</IfDefine>

<IfDefine work_dir>
    AliasMatch  ^/third-party-extensions/(.+).(.+) "${work_dir}/third_party_extensions/$1.$2"
</IfDefine>

7. Restart TrueConf Server and TrueConf Web Manager services from your Task Manager. TrueConf Web Manager service will not be affected if you restart TrueConf Server from the control panel.

# For Linux

The commands listed below need to be executed with superuser privileges or using sudo (e.g., sudo command). Please note that sudo may be unavailable by default in your operating system. You can check its availability using the sudo -V command.

  1. Please contact TrueConf technical support to request the archive with compiled Ghostscript libraries. The archive will include four files: gsdll86.lib, gsdll64.lib, gsdll86.dll, gsdll64.dll.

  2. Create the redirect configuration file, e.g., with nano editor in the terminal:

nano /opt/trueconf/server/etc/webmanager/opt/redirects.conf

3. Write the following lines to the configuration file and save it:

RewriteEngine On
Include /opt/trueconf/server/etc/webmanager/opt/work_dir.conf
<IfDefine work_dir>
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^\/third-party-extensions\/gsdll.dll$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.+&)?(arch=x(64|86))(.+)?
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ "${work_dir}/third_party_extensions/gsdll%3.dll" [L,QSA]
</IfDefine>
<IfDefine work_dir>
AliasMatch ^/third-party-extensions/(.+)\.(.+) "${work_dir}/third_party_extensions/$1.$2"
</IfDefine>

4. Add a parameter with a link for loading the necessary libraries in the application by running this command:

/opt/trueconf/server/bin/vcs/tc_regkey set "AppProperties" "pdflibrary_url" str "https://[server_address]/third-party-extensions/gsdll.dll"

where [server_address] is the FQDN (domain name) or IP address of TrueConf Server that will be used for connecting to the server from client applications.

5. Create a directory for libraries:

mkdir /opt/trueconf/server/var/lib/third_party_extensions

6. Unpack all files from the archive (received at Step 1) to the third_party_extensions directory.

7. Restart the web server services and the main TrueConf Server service:

systemctl restart trueconf-web

systemctl restart trueconf

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