Improving Supervisor Behavior in Conferences

We're updating how supervisor roles interact with mute and hold operations on Call Control Conferences.

Currently, participants can join conferences with certain supervisor roles, using the supervisor_role parameter of the join command. If a participant joins as a monitor, that participant is automatically muted and they cannot be heard by other participants on the call. If a participant joins as a whisper, that participant is only audible to specific other participants on the call.

Currently, supervisor behavior is coupled to the mute, unmute, hold, and unhold commands, such that unmuting or unholding a conference supervisor causes them to lose their supervisor role and the associated muting characteristics.

With this change, supervisor behavior will be separate from, and independent of, mute, unmute, hold, and unhold commands.

Here is an example to illustrate this new conferencing behavior:

Example - Muting and Unmuting Conference Monitors

1. A participant joins a conference with "supervisor_role" : "monitor". This supervisor role means that the participant is automatically, implicitly muted and cannot be heard by other participants on the call. The unmute command will have no effect on this participant under these circumstances, because the muting behavior is handled in the participant's supervisor_role property.

2. The mute command is used on this participant. This introduces another, separate, explicit mute, independent of the participant's supervisor role. The participant is now muted by two separate properties: their supervisor role, and the mute command.

3. The participant is updated using the update command with "supervisor_role" : "barge". Barges are normal conference participants and can be heard by all other participants. However, this participant is still explicitly muted by the mute command which was used in Step 2, so they cannot be heard by other participants on this conference.

4. The unmute command is used on this participant. The participant can now be heard by all other participants in the conference.

In this example, there are two separate muting behaviors observed:

• An implicit mute, brought upon by the participant's supervisor role.
• An explicit mute, brought upon by the mute command.

Both of these mutes must be removed to make the participant audible to others in the conference.

The muting introduced by using a hold command to place the participant on hold can also be viewed as an explicit mute, separate from the implicit muting associated with a participant's supervisor role. As such, un-holding a monitor or whisper participant will allow them to hear others, but they will still be muted by their supervisor role.

This change will take effect on Monday, April 26, 2021.

If you have questions relating to this change, contact our development team on Slack or by chat in the Mission Control Portal.