How to Integrate Video Conferencing Into Your Website & Mobile App?

Video conferencing apps have suddenly seen a massive boom amidst the coronavirus pandemic. Many companies have already implemented their video conferencing system instead of relying on any third-party tool. Now, you should also make your company equipped with the in-house or third-party video conferencing tool either in your app or on your website.

Is video call so crucial to your business that you must integrate it into your website and mobile app? Does video chat enhance communication and collaboration in the organization? How can you add these features to your website and mobile app development? How difficult is this feature to embed so that it works well on any mobile device? Why have internal stakeholders and clients begun to see the benefit of video conferencing?

Abstract

Gone are the days of Audio-only conference calls. Voice conference calls are being replaced by more engaging, productive, and true-to-life video conferencing solutions. Meetings and stand-up gatherings now are not confined to specific places or rooms, since many companies started Work-from-home policy. Companies have critical team members located in different cities or countries, and such employees’ presence is crucial in the meetings. This is where Video conferencing technology comes into sight.  

Introduction

To stand out from other competitors and meet the increasingly fluid, dispersed, and impromptu demands of rapidly changing workforces, business leaders need to integrate video conferencing technology on their mobile app and website that is easy, simple, efficient, and reliable.  Video conferencing and meeting management technology can help office employees and their remote participants to hold a face-to-face virtual meeting, when in need. 

If you want to grow your business globally, it is necessary to build and maintain a quality relationship with internal teams, suppliers, partners, and customers. With the aid of video conferencing technology, you can strengthen relations by keeping everyone engaged. It saves time and money, enhances workforce collaboration, improves productivity, manages suppliers, and adds a little personal touch to the customer support service. Benefits of integrating Video conferencing software for your business.

Challenges of Building the Video Conferencing Web Application From Scratch

1. Long Delivery Times

It’s quite challenging to estimate the time that it will take to create, test, and launch a video call solution, especially one that is tailored to your business needs. Often, it may take a longer delivery time, which in turn, increases production costs and adds expenditure on temporary apps.

2. Operational Complexity

To build a video conferencing solution from scratch, the ensuing operational complexity has the potential to put core business projects on hold. Companies will need to manage the entire infrastructure to build, test, and launch the application. Due to this, they put other services on a back-burner, thereby hurting regular operations.

3. Cross-Service Security

It’s critical to build the video calling app with top-notch security, especially in confidential meetings and information transfer. You will have to ensure that the application is fully encrypted and secured at user and database levels. 

Looking at these potential challenges, we can say that a ready-made video conferencing solution might be the best way to go for small businesses. However, installing a third-party app poses some serious challenges, in security challenges remain the top reason why companies build their custom solution. 

Here are some recent security and performance challenges that are in controversy in the media:

1. Bombings

This refers to the phenomenon of unauthorized individuals joining supposedly private video calls. 

2. Data thefts & leaks

Yes! Recently, some video conferencing app was questioned for having leaked users personal information.  

3. Privacy shortcomings 

As we all know end-to-end encryption is one of the most popular security demands of today. But, still, some popular third-party video conferencing apps hasn’t integrated E2E encryption into their app. Therefore, this leads to privacy and security shortcomings. 

The Problems Associated With the Custom Technology Stack to Build Video Conferencing App 

 1. Customizing features 

When building a video chat app, it is quite difficult for developers to create customizable features. Developers need to customize the elements according to the team’s requirements while ensuring the app functions seamlessly without taking any extra time to load or posing any critical bugs. 

2. Costs can be increased

The expense of creating and managing custom-built video calling apps will mount up over time and time, unlike most apps that include SDKs and APIs at one-time costs. The incremental expenses with new functionality and enhancements will often be far more onerous for tax expenditures than if businesses had to incur a one-time fee. 

3. Maintaining cross-platform apps is challenging 

As we know, developing apps on cross-platforms, including- Android and iOS is a lot different from each other. It is difficult for a company to manage and maintain iOS, Android, and website apps. Right from designing and coding to hosting, managing all levels of development is difficult for companies. 

Integrating video conferencing technology into your website and mobile app

You can incorporate a video calling facility in your app or website. You just have to follow these three steps

1. Get the video SDK account credentials-

A service account that allows you to use the SDK and its service that you want to integrate into your client app and website. It also allows the admin to assign the roles & permissions for each client or user.

2. A server application to run the conferencing app- 

The video SDK will run on your application server. This uses passwords from your third-party account credentials to grant access to video services.

3. A client application for executing the RTC (Real-Time Communication) information

The client app runs on a mobile or Web client. It uses third-party SDKs for posting, collecting, subscribing, and executing information concerning RTC (Real-Time Communication).

How to create a room for video conferencing on your website and mobile app? 

Create a Room

1. Create a meeting room using Video SDK. Server Application permits Video SDK to create room.
2. Video SKD checks credentials and creates a room.
3. In the end, a Room SID is returned, which can be used to make API requests.

Connecting to the room

The meeting host can get an access token to communicate with the session and control the users. It means only the host can allow certain people or groups to join the session.

1. The host can get the token from the application server bypassing the credentials to the create session API. 
2. The application server checks the Video SDK credentials and generates an access token.
3. After verifying credentials, the host gets access, and a connection bridge is established between the meeting room session and the host.

Guests are welcomed

1. Hosts send an invitation to the guest, which includes the access token and the meeting room information.
2. After clicking or visiting the room with the token, the Authentication server verifies the token’s validity. 
3. After the verification only, the guest will be connected to the session and will be added as a participant.

Popular Video SDK’s

Here is the curated list of the popular video SDKs ‘s that are efficient, reliable, and security compliant to choose from – Amazon Chime SDK, MirroFly’s SDK, and Sinch. Using these SDKs will ensure top performance and reliability whenever you want to integrate the video conferencing tool in your web app development or upgrade an existing one.

Benefits of integrating Video conferencing software for your business 

Empower the Digital Workforce

Video conferencing technology creates a more collaborative meeting culture in your organization, but it’s also a foundation for ongoing digital transformation and the future of work. Video conference meetings help team members maintain human connections, regardless of physical location. This will speed up the entire process, right from decision making and boost collaboration abilities and visibility for employees globally. 

More engaging than voice conference calls- 

In voice-call meetings, usually, participants don’t feel connected with the other team members of the meeting. Thus, they tend to zone out themselves and start doing multi-tasking. However, With Video call meetings, workforce employees and the remote worker is visible, and it will increase engagement level with better visuals and connections among participants.  

It saves travel expenses

Traveling not only adds to the business expenditures but also is time-consuming. Often, we have seen people going to various locations to attend conferences and business meetings, which can be avoided with the use of video conferencing tools. Businesses can save money that they spend on business travel and use it on other business priorities.  

Improves Communication

According to the research, humans process more quickly with visual information than texts and audio. Therefore, when you hold a business meeting via video, your attendees will understand it more effectively and accurately than via audio conferencing sessions. For example, while demonstrating or speaking about the product, it will be more effective if it can at least be seen.

 Boosts Productivity

Instead of sending an email to your business partners colleagues or support team, you can hold a quick video conference call with them when you need quick answers, and you don’t wait for their reply! Just get connected via video conference and use a screen-sharing function to go ahead with resolving the issues.

Concluding Words

Integrating video conferencing technology into existing applications and websites has countless benefits, including decreased operational costs, enhanced structure, improved flexibility, and enabling the digital workforce in the organization. While this pandemic is still blooming globally, the video conferencing system is embraced by many businesses and companies in their organization.