Public-i would like to wish our Connect Remote users a very Happy New Year.
We will be updating our servers and apps over this coming weekend. Please read on to discover what improvements we have made under-the-hood.
Enhanced participant videos
You will be able to see more participant videos at the same time during a meeting (limited to 20 at the moment; we plan to increase this number gradually over time, as well as improving the quality of the video up to HD).
You can see all particpants video on screen
Tile view upgrade
The tile view is now more intelligent. It only loads videos of the participants that you see on screen (same for the thumbnails on the main view). This has allowed us to turn off some of the limitations on mobiles and laptops for large meetings, and we can now have up to 150 people in a meeting. We’ve updated our article on large meetings to reflect this as you still need to be aware of a few things.
Load and see all people’s video available on screen
App update
Tablet and mobile users will now also have access to the list of participants. They can access this by clicking the ‘People’ button. This also allows users to see that they are muted, and they can select a person (like a moderator, for example) and send them a private message.
You can access the participants list from the toolbar
View a list of all participants, their status and send private messages to them
Enhanced live stream
After some feedback from our users, we’ve improved the visibility of the live stream status. This is now red and stays put while the meeting is streamed live to the public.
Live stream icon shows now in red
Refined speakers stats
The speaker stats list now contains a search function. This lets you narrow down your speakers and see how long they have spoken for.
There is a search bar now at the top right
You can search and filter down the list
Development roadmap
Our development roadmap is really driven by our user groups and we encourage you to take part and give us your feedback. Here is a tentative calendar of our future work:
Short-term (1-2 months)
- Improved video quality (HD) [CR]
- Start/Stop live stream more prominent and making it easier to publish a meeting [CR]
- End-to-end encryption in small private meetings [CR]
Mid-term (3-4 months)
- Audio/Video moderation (moderators can block members of the public from turning on their microphone/camera) [CR]
- Free text options for voting [CR][Hybrid]
- Breakout rooms (split the meeting into other rooms and join them back together) [CR]
Future (6-8months)
- Individual login for councillors linked with profiles on Mod.Gov/CMIS for improved security with an option for single sign to avoid an extra password to remember [CR]
- Set agenda in meeting [CR]
- Simultaneous language interpretation (listen to Welsh or English) [CR]
Note: [CR] = Connect Remote, [Hybrid] = Hybrid link
