Embedding Webex Teams Meetings with the JavaScript SDK
We’ve brought Webex Teams video conferencing to an open source JavaScript SDK, using Cisco and open source technologies, allowing developers to create and customize their own media applications in the web rapidly.
Vibrant Ecosystem
As the line between the browser and the operating system continues to blur, JavaScript-accessible technologies are becoming more powerful. WebRTC is one of the most dominant examples of this paradigm shift, minimizing the barrier to entry for media development, and it’s on your everyday average web browser.
Since 2016, an estimated two billion browsers were installed that support WebRTC. Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all support WebRTC standards, with Edge support on its way. This has empowered developers all over the world to build complex media related applications in the browser of their choice. It is clear the future direction of video conferencing applications, media exchange, and the like will be built here, right in your web browser.
Leveraging and Expanding
We, at Cisco, are utilizing this burgeoning technology stack to create solutions in Webex Teams for high quality, secure meeting collaboration. In our environment, we see over 90,000 Webex Teams meetings using WebRTC per month.
Meetings via the browser makes it possible to engage in real time video communication in Cisco’s powerful media network and with no installations, no browser plugins, and a familiar native app proficiency. In fact, Webex Teams extends basic WebRTC calling to improve quality of service and adapt to network inconsistencies in order to provide the best quality web conferencing experience possible.
Now we are taking this a step further, bringing Webex Meetings to an open source JavaScript SDK. In a collaborative effort, we’ve combined the knowledge of our teams and over the course of a few months have released an open source tool that has all the capabilities of the Webex Teams Web Client today, in a flexible API format. It is built to be platform independent, and is supported wherever WebRTC runs, even mobile browsers such as Chrome on Android, and Safari on iOS. Some example features are joining a Webex meeting, recording meetings in the cloud, sharing your screen, managing a roster, and accessing meeting statistics. Groups inside of Cisco have already started to bring these custom capabilities to new applications.
Endless Possibilities
Developers can now customize and integrate video conferencing into their applications rapidly. The wealth of use cases to create for is endless. Imagine applications that enabled single use calls such as a doctor taking an ad hoc patient call, coordinating meetings with external vendors using just a link, or bringing thousands of people to a simulcast in an instant. What if we brought meetings to the billions of IoT devices and had collaboration from a refrigerator or a car in an instant? The combined power of the SDK and the Webex web clients will make all this possible.
What’s Next
We believe WebRTC is an important tool in the present and future of real time media. We are investing in building higher quality audio/video, more flexible and powerful APIs through the SDK, and more unified experiences in the clients through actively developing solutions for these everyday problems.
We Want You To
Read the documentation, pull the code, start making applications, or contribute! Everything is available through the developer portal today!
If you’re not currently using Webex Meetings, you can try the free offer, here.
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