Video or audio conferencing is a great collaboration tool to use with anyone, no matter their location. Conceptboard supports WebRTC video and audio conferencing in most modern browsers.
| Video/Audio | Screen sharing | |
| Google Chrome | ✓ | ✓ |
| Mozilla Firefox | ✓ | ✓ |
| Edge | ✓ | |
| Safari1 | ✓ | |
| Android Tablets/Phones | ✓ | |
| iPad/iPhones Safari | ✓ | |
| iPad/iPhones Firefox/Chrome |
1 available in Safari 12.1+, which ships on macOS 10.14.4 and is also available for macOS 10.13.6 and 10.12.6.
You can use the video and audio chat with Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari. Be aware that on mobile-devices conferencing is only available in Safari.
Please note: If you are using a Conceptboard Dedicated System or Conceptboard On-Premises solution the Video/Audio and Screen-sharing options might be disabled.
How to turn on video or audio chat
Any Owner or Editor (depending on the management settings) can start a conference call - except if they are students. Here is how to turn on video or audio chat: Please make sure your browser allows video and audio (see above). Click on the phone icon in the bottom right corner of the board.
The conferencing dialog will open up and show you a blue button saying 'Start conference call'. Click the button to start a conference.
After starting the conference call, you can additionally turn on your video camera or share your screen with your board participants.
You must allow Conceptboard to use your camera and microphone, and install the extension to allow screen-sharing. Additionally, if you are on a board and a conference call is in process, you have the ability to ignore the conference call and moderation to keep working on your board independently.
Join an ongoing conference
If there is already a conference call happening in the board, a red bubble next to the telephone icon in the bottom right corner will tell you so.
Click the telephone icon and the conference dialog will open up and tell you how many participants are in the call already. To see a detailed list of the participants, you can click the participants button. To join the conference, click the blue button 'Join conference' next to the participants button.
Stop other participant's video or audio streams
Depending on the management settings board owners or board owners and editors can stop audio or stop video streams of other participants. To do so, click on the participants button to show a detailed list of the participants and select the red door icon next to the participant's name.
Google Chrome video/audio chat
After clicking on the phone or video icon, a pop up window will appear on the upper left asking to use your camera and/or microphone. Click allow and your video or audio feed will turn on automatically.
To change which microphone or camera you are using, click the camera icon that appears in the upper right corner of the URL bar.
If you've blocked Conceptboard from using your microphone or camera, a small red icon will appear in the URL bar when you click audio or video chat. Click on it and then on "Always allow" or "manage camera settings". You will need to reload the board.
How to enlarge screen-sharing
Each user can hover over the screen-share and enlarge it. You can also:
- Click the fullscreen icon in the toolbar (or via the menu View>Fullscreen).
- Enlarge the screen-sharing window.
Mozilla Firefox video/audio chat
After clicking on the phone or video icon, a pop up window will appear on the upper left asking to use your camera and/or microphone. Click allow and your video or audio feed will turn on automatically. Click the dropdown and choose "Always Share" for Firefox to remember your settings.
If you've accidentally clicked outside the Permissions window, click the small microphone icon to bring up the settings dialog again.
Go back to the board tab and click "Share screen." You may have to click the small screensharing icon in the upper left if it does not pop up. Click "Share screen".
Safari for video/audio chat
After clicking on the phone or video icon, a pop up window will appear on the top asking to use your camera and/or microphone. Click allow and your video or audio feed will turn on automatically.
Hint: If you're having trouble getting video/audio to work in Safari, please make sure to whitelist Conceptboard in any ad-blocker extension you use.
I can't join a conference - what is going wrong?
Sometimes the button to join or call a conference is disabled. Here are possible reasons for this to happen:
- The Board owner doesn't have a PRO account
- Device issue - the plugin we use for conferencing does not support your browser
- You don't have allowed media access to your device
- The board you are working on is embedded in an integration or browser which does not support the video conferencing capability.
If you can't solve the problem yourself, please contact us at support@conceptboard.com.
How many people can use the conferencing at the same time?
The number of participants in each session is limited by client-side bandwidth, device, and CPU limitations for processing vast amounts of video and audio streams.
The conferencing supports up to 25 users both publishing and subscribing in the session. Please make sure everyone is wearing headphones to minimize feedback on the calls.
The limit for video streams in conferencing is 6 streams.
10 Hours of conferencing included
The video/audio conferencing and screen sharing are available to all our professional Conceptboard users.
Each of these users gets 10 hours of subscribed conferencing per month. In a Team license, the hours can be shared by the whole team. Administrators can see how many hours they've used in their Account Overview.
What is an hour of subscribed conferencing?
During a conference call on a board, conference participants publish a data stream (audio, video, etc.) to all other participants on the board. These users count as "subscribed" to the publisher's stream - they can hear them, and see them, or their screen. The amount of time that they receive the publishers stream is added up to the account of the board owner.
Example 1: Call between team members
If 2 team members spend 1 hour on a board in a video conference, each of them receives the stream of the other for 1 hour. This results in 2 times 1 hour of subscribed conferencing. Their team's conferencing budget gets decreased by 2 hours.
Example 2: Call between user and guest
If 1 users spends 1 hour of video conferencing with 1 guest, again both receive 1 hour of stream from the other. As the action happened on the user's board, the user's conferencing budget is decreased by 2 hours.
Example 3: Webinar scenario
If 1 tutor does a 1 hour webinar with 3 participants, the participants won't need to publish their own streams. Here, the tutor is the only publisher, but the stream is received by the 3 webinar participants. Therefor, the subscribed conferencing time adds up to 3 hours.
What happens when my conferencing budget is over?
Our goal is to support your collaboration, so we won't interrupt your conference call when you go over your budget. In fact, we trust our customers to stay under the 10 hours per user, but we also don't mind if they go over the limit slightly once in a while.
If you can foresee that the 10 hours are not enough, please contact us. We can offer you packages of additional hours at a price of $0.99/hour in packages of 100 hours.