Understanding Jabber: Part 4 –Jabber Guest Brief Introduction

I was going to wait until the released version was available but I just couldn’t wait any longer. Because Jabber Guest is not FCS I am limited on the details so I will include a follow up post that goes a little deeper into the design and inner workings at a later date.

As a non-developer ( I have some basic HTML skills but they are not great) this is a super exciting area because of the ability of someone with like me to be able to add voice and video to a Web/Mobile application easily. Of course this works in well with WebRTC but as we all know WebRTC is hardly a perfect world today but it is improving. For more commentary on WebRTC I really like Dave Michels post on No Jitter. It has some great comments on where peoples expectations were and the reality of where we are today.

How is Jabber Guest different from other Jabber SDK’s?

With the more traditional Jabber SDK’s the user is a authenticated user within the Enterprise. With Jabber Guest the target is an anonymous user. So the user/guest accessing collaboration into your environment does not need an account. One of the best demo’s I have pout together so far is to have a video guest page that allows a user to enter the video bridge identifier and then have a web browser call into a enterprise video bridge environment. Cool stuff.

The guest has the potential to be able to access the following types of calls:

• Point-to-point video
• Point-to-many video (videoconference)
• The ability to see themselves before going live on video
• In-call control through a keypad
• The ability to mute video, audio, or both
• The ability to see themselves as well as your employee(s)
• The choice of camera and audio device
• The choice of clicking on your website from a tablet or PC or clicking on an app from a mobile device

Difference between Jabber SDK and Jabber Guest SDK

 

 

I have listed as many publicly available resources for Jabber Guest as possible but as of right now the best way to learn more about Jabber Guest is to sign up for the Early Adopter Program. All the information I have in my post is publicly available.

Jabber Guest, yes there is a plugin……

As previously mentioned the wheels at the various standard bodies for what ever reason sometimes turn slower than everyone would like. So today while Jabber Guest does make use of some of the capabilities of WebRTC it still requires a plugin. In time this requirement will fade but today it is what it is. It’s a small plugin that takes only a few seconds to download and install.

Where can I get a demo of Jabber Guest?

I have setup  a simple demo’s of Jabber Guest on my blog:

http://voipnorm.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Feel free to hit the call button. You will see the splash page of my personal bridge. This should help give a good idea of what the experience is like without going to over the top.The demo on my blog basically launches the Jabber Guest Widget in an iframe on the page your viewing. There are a number ways to launch the video sessions from a HTML point of view but the real beauty of Jabber Guest is the web designer need not know much about programing video or voice to include it in their site. The real work with including something like Jabber Guest in a site is really the work flow that you are trying to incorporate it into. I have built quite a few demo’s with Jabber Guest now where all the heavy lifting was really in the Javascript to control the workflow of the page not the fact that Jabber Guest was included on it.

Enjoy the demo.

References

Jabber Guest

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6789/ps5745/ps13410/solution-overview-c22-729963.html

Jabber Guest On DevNet

https://developer.cisco.com/site/tech/communication-collaboration/jabber/overview.gsp#jabber_guest

https://developer.cisco.com/site/tech/communication-collaboration/jabber/overview.gsp#jabber_sdk_web_ios

Signup for the Early Adopter Program

https://communities.cisco.com/community/technology/collaboration/usergroups/collaboration/cug_trials

Jabber Guest video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-USuvpNC6c

VoIPNorm