au_bbb is a simple Elgg 1.8 plugin that provides an optional webinar for each group via BigBlueButton, using the BigBlueButton API.

IMPORTANT: You will need an open source BigBlueButton server  - see http://docs.bigbluebutton.org/ for details of how to obtain and set up the system. If this looks intimidating (there's a lot to configure) the folks that lead the project provide consultancy at very reasonable prices and will sort out hosting for you, if you pay them, or you can host it yourself if you have some fair technical skills and a lot of bandwidth.

BBB is, arguably, the best open source webmeeting software available, offering most of the main features you would find on expensive commercial offerings, including slide-shows, whiteboards, (not very reliable) screen sharing, text chat, video conferencing and best-in-class audio. Currently mostly limited to Flash though HTML5 clients are in the offing.

Features:

• Single webinar per group - no individual webinars. Defaults to showing the webinar on the group menu - group owners will need to disable it if they do not want it.
• Group admins and site admins automatically given moderator role in webinars - standard user role for everyone else.
• Simple admin config via plugin settings
• Group owners can enable/disable the webinar in group settings
• Group owners/admins can make the webinar group-only or for all logged in users. There is no option for public guest access nor any richer permissions: this is meant primarily as a group-only tool.
• Webinar appears in an iframe with optional break-out link
• Elgg user names and group names are passed on to BBB and re-used. In principle it should also show avatars but this is as yet untested.

This is a very simple plugin designed to support a very simple explicit need: a persistent webinar for groups to support real-time dialogue. It does not integrate telephones, does not support recordings and does not allow meetings to be ended: meetings are always available. If you have a feature request that asks for more than that, it is unlikely that I will have the time to implement it but feel free to modify it yourself!

To install:

Place in the mod folder as usual (must be named au_bbb)

Configure settings via admin page: this will not work at all unless you have a server, salt, admin and user passwords configured. Instructions for finding the server salt are provided on the admin page.

Produced for and with the support of Athabasca University