Customizing Jitsi To Automate Meeting Recording And Enhance Moderator Control For Just-A-Start

In today’s fast-paced virtual collaboration environment, Just-A-Start required a sophisticated enhancement to their existing Jitsi setup. Their goal was to automate meeting recordings from start to finish while empowering moderators with flexible control over meeting flow and recording preferences. Ensuring these features worked impeccably on both web and mobile was critical for their scalability and user experience. Our team stepped in to deliver a custom solution tailored specifically to meet these evolving requirements.

The Challenge

Just-A-Start faced several complex hurdles: automating the start and stop of meeting recordings based on participant presence, enabling recording specifically in tile view mode, and providing a powerful yet intuitive moderator management system. Additionally, these features had to be parameterized so moderators could dynamically choose their recording preferences. Ensuring continuity of recordings even if the moderator leaves and integrating co-moderator functionality added to the challenge. Maintaining seamless operation across web and mobile platforms further compounded these needs.

Our Approach

To tackle these specific requirements, we designed and implemented a multi-layered technical solution:

1. Automatic Recording Plugin: Developed a prosody backend plugin that detects when more than one participant joins a meeting and automatically initiates recording, stopping only when the meeting ends. This automation works reliably on both web and mobile clients.

2. Tile View Recording Mode: Modified server-side code to pass the tile view as the default recording layout to Jibri, and updated mobile codebases to reflect this default tile view, ensuring consistent recording presentation across devices.

3. Flexible Moderator Management: Built token-based authentication to allow the client to designate who is the moderator at meeting creation. Enabled dynamic re-assignment of the moderator or co-host role mid-meeting via right-click options, maintaining recording and meeting flow even if the moderator leaves without assigning a replacement.

4. Waiting Room for Early Participants: Integrated a waiting room feature that holds participants until the moderator starts the meeting, ensuring controlled access aligned with moderator permissions.

5. Parameterization of Features: Enabled all key functionalities—the automatic recording toggle, tile view selection, and moderator designation—to be passed as parameters, providing moderators with granular control tailored to each meeting’s needs.

The Result

By integrating tailored prosody plugins, modifying server and mobile code, and incorporating token-based authentication controls, we delivered an advanced Jitsi customization that streamlined Just-A-Start’s virtual meetings. The solution ensured effortless automatic recording in preferred layouts while empowering moderators with flexible, real-time control over their sessions. The seamless cross-platform experience and enhanced moderator capabilities significantly elevated the client’s conferencing efficiency and user satisfaction across all devices.