Digital Samba opens the door to a realm of interactive collaboration. With its versatile Rooms and Sessions, you can seamlessly connect, communicate, and engage with teams, clients, and partners.
Table of Contents
This guide delves into the endless possibilities of Rooms and Sessions, providing you with the essential knowledge to harness the full potential of Digital Samba.
To get started with Digital Samba, follow these steps:
1. Visit the Digital Samba sign-up page at: https://dashboard.digitalsamba.com/signupFill in the required information to create your account. This will include your work email address and password.
2. During the sign-up process, you'll have the opportunity to create your subdomain. Choose a unique and memorable subdomain name that represents your organisation or purpose for using Digital Samba.
Once you have completed the sign-up process, you will land on your dashboard.
This is where you can manage your Digital Samba account and access the various features and settings.
In Digital Samba, it's crucial to understand the concepts of ‘sessions’ and ‘rooms.’ Let's clarify what these terms mean:
To get a feel of the video conferencing experience and test out the HD quality and UI of Digital Samba, follow the steps below:
To add participants to your video conference, simply copy the session link and share it with anyone you desire, regardless of whether they belong to your team or organisation.
Before joining a session, Digital Samba will prompt you to test your camera, speakers, microphone, and virtual background settings to ensure they are set up and functioning properly.
However, keep in mind that the virtual background feature is not available on any mobile device and on the Safari browser.
Please note that the Demo room is a preset room designed for your team's use. However, Digital Samba offers greater flexibility for customising rooms according to your specific requirements. We will explore room customisation in the following sections.
Before diving into video conferences, it is crucial to ensure the seamless operation of your camera, speakers and microphone for several reasons, including:
To ensure everything is functioning properly, conduct an audio and video test before joining any video conference, as illustrated by the video below.
This will provide reassurance and allow you to address any potential issues beforehand.
Before joining a session, Digital Samba allows you to choose the camera, speaker and microphone you want to use in a video conference. To do so, simply,
Once you are in a session and inside a room in Digital Samba, you can start exploring and testing the various features and capabilities.
Here are some key elements to focus on:
1.1. Hosting multiple participants
You can effortlessly accommodate up to 100 concurrent participants in our low-tier plans. So whether you're hosting a small team meeting or a large-scale conference, our robust infrastructure ensures smooth and uninterrupted collaboration for all attendees.
1.2. Viewing multiple participant tiles
Digital Samba Embedded sessions display a maximum of 49 streamer tiles on a single page, allowing you to see up to 49 faces or participant tiles/screens at once.
You can then navigate to the next page to view more tiles, enabling a seamless experience with up to 100 participants in total (as of July 2023).
1.3. Mute and unmute participants
You also have the power to directly mute and turn off users’ microphones and cameras, giving you control over audio and video settings. What’s more, for every participant you can also conveniently request other participants to unmute their microphones and turn on their cameras.
1.4. Screen share
Explore the ability to share your screen and present documents, slideshows, or any other content to the participants. This feature is also accessible in the free version of Digital Samba.
1.5. Chat
Chat with participants using the text messages in the chat function. Share important links, ask questions, or provide additional information during the session.
While using a specialised chat application like Slack can be beneficial, having access to an in-room chat is always valuable as it helps us maintain focus during the video conference.
1.6. Hand raise
Test the hand raise feature to signal your desire to speak or ask a question. This helps in maintaining orderly discussions and allows the moderator to manage participant engagement effectively.
1.7. Additional features
If you are using a paid plan, explore extra features such as cloud recordings that allow you to save your video conferences for future reference or sharing.
You can also experience the differences between the two layout modes offered by Digital Samba.
Familiarise yourself with the participant's panel, which allows you to remotely manage participants through:
3.1. Camera control
You can take control of other participants’ cameras by easily turning them off to prevent any distractions.
Moreover, you can silently request participants to unmute their microphones and turn on their cameras to maintain focus during sessions. The same applies to turning off their camera or microphone.
3.2. Remove participants
In certain situations, you may need to remove a participant from the video conference. Use this function carefully and judiciously.
From the settings panel, you can personalize your session by setting your preferred language for the user interface, configuring virtual background settings, and selecting your preferred camera, microphone and speaker device according to your preferences.
To create and configure a new room in Digital Samba, follow these steps:
Digital Samba provides extensive customisation options for each room, organised into five subsections. Also, keep in mind that features and functionality come with a well-detailed description of their capabilities next to the feature.
In the general settings, you can:
Customise the visual branding of your room by:
Configure the availability of various components within the room. These include:
Customise settings related to room recordings. You can:
Configure settings for participants joining the room.
Once you have completed the configuration, save your changes. Your newly created room will be listed in the ‘Rooms’ section, allowing you to join it directly or copy the room link to invite others.
Please note that this option is only available for rooms with a privacy level set to public. It is not applicable to private rooms.
Let’s say you want to create a room that will have around 40 participants. As the moderator, you want your room to have the following settings
From the example video above, you can now view how your personalised settings have been implemented in the room. In addition to setting your brand’s colour, your participants can share their screen, chat, access the participant’s panel as well as pin the participants they want to view on a larger tile.
Once you are satisfied with your room settings, you can now copy and send the invite link to your participants. As mentioned before, please note that this option is only available for rooms with a privacy level set to the public. It is not applicable to private rooms.
Congratulations!
You have now successfully created and configured a room in the Digital Samba dashboard, empowering you to integrate it into your workflow. Stay tuned for our upcoming topics on how to make the most of Digital Samba's different features.