In today's digital age, integrating video conferencing into websites has become increasingly important. Embedding video call functionality can significantly enhance the user experience and engagement for business meetings, customer support, or virtual events.
This guide offers a detailed walkthrough on seamlessly incorporating video conferencing into your website. Learn how to harness the capabilities of Digital Samba's API and SDK to enhance your digital communication strategy.
Table of ContentsIt's also crucial to remember that you can integrate Digital Samba video conferencing into your website or app using our API for developers or their WordPress Plugin for WordPress websites. The API allows for effortless integration with a few lines of HTML code. At the same time, the WordPress Plugin offers simple GDPR-compliant video conferencing and webinars with various features such as screen sharing, text chat, closed captioning, and virtual background.
In an era where digital communication is crucial, adding video conferencing to your website goes beyond just being a mere enhancement; it's an essential tool for engagement and interaction.
As remote work, virtual meetings and online education become more mainstream, video conferencing is emerging as a critical tool. It bridges distances and enables real-time connectivity in a world that is increasingly adopting digital interactions.
For businesses, integrating video calls on websites means elevating customer interactions from impersonal exchanges to engaging, face-to-face dialogues. This human connection enhances customer satisfaction and drives conversion and retention rates, as it allows a deeper understanding of customer needs and facilitates more effective sales strategies.
In the educational sector, video conferencing enriches learning experiences, offering an interactive platform that closely mirrors traditional classroom settings.
Similarly, it enables telemedicine in healthcare, providing patients with easy access to medical consultations. By leveraging video conferencing, you can successfully add real-time video conferencing capabilities to your website, enhancing your students' or patients' engagement and interaction during online events.
Moreover, internally, video conferencing strengthens team communication, especially in remote setups, ensuring clearer and more empathetic exchanges than text-based communications.
Therefore, embedded video conferencing functionality on your website is not just about keeping up with technological trends but embracing a more connected, efficient and human-centric approach to communication across various sectors.
At the core of embedding video conferencing into a website are two crucial components: Software Development Kits (SDKs) and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
SDKs provide a set of tools, libraries, relevant documentation, code samples and guides, enabling developers to create software applications on a specific platform. In video conferencing, SDKs are used to build custom video call functionalities tailored to a website's particular needs and embed video calling on websites.
On the other hand, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are sets of libraries and methods for building software and applications. They allow different software programs to communicate with each other. In the context of video conferencing, APIs add video chat to a website or application, allowing for seamless interaction between the website's infrastructure and the video conferencing service.
Integrating (embedding) Digital Samba's video conference API into your website can be achieved through various methods, each offering different levels of customisation and control. However, you'll first need to create a Digital Samba account.
Create a Digital Samba account to access the platform and obtain your API Key, Team ID, and Developer key. These credentials authenticate your requests to the API.
You can get the API keys by logging into your account and navigating to the Team tab, as shown below.
Let's look at how you can embed Digital Samba video conferencing on your website.
The API is a versatile tool for developers, providing a programmatic interface to access and manage features like room creation, role assignment and statistics overview. This is suitable for those who require a high level of customisation and integration with other systems or third-party tools.
The simplest way to add a video conferencing room to your website is by embedding an HTML iframe snippet. This method requires minimal coding and is ideal for quick integrations. Here is an example of an iframe code snippet you can use:
This iframe embeds the video conferencing room into your website, enabling live video conferencing capabilities.
The SDK offers additional capabilities for more sophisticated integration. It allows developers to access in-room events and methods from frontend code, enabling deeper integration and customisation.
You can create a room using the REST API or directly through the dashboard. The Digital Samba REST API involves executing a POST request to the /room endpoint with your Team ID and Developer Key. Here's an example of a POST request:
This request creates a room and sets its privacy state and available roles.
The privacy settings determine who can access the video conferencing room.
Conversely, Roles define the level of access and control participants have in the room. Remember that a single moderator role is the simplest way to create a room.
The dashboard, on the other hand, provides a more visual and less technical method to accomplish the same task as illustrated below.
You will then be presented with the Create a new room window, where you can customise your room according to your preference.
The Digital Samba SDK offers a more sophisticated and flexible approach to embedding video conferencing than the basic HTML iframe embed. While the simple HTML embed is excellent for quick integrations, the SDK provides enhanced control and customisation options, allowing for a deeper integration into your website or application.
For more detailed information and comprehensive documentation on using the Digital Samba SDK, please refer to our SDK Documentation.
Customising the video call experience using the Digital Samba SDK involves a series of steps that allow you to tailor video conferencing to your specific needs. Let's have a look at them.
The customisation process begins with initialising the DigitalSambaEmbedded class, which is the main component of the SDK. This class can be initialised using either a constructor for immediate room loading or the createControl factory method for more controlled loading.
InitOptions determines how the video conference room is set up and displayed. Some of the options include:
roomSettings is a JSON object configuring the room's initial settings. These settings include:
Here is a JSON code example of how to achieve this:
These settings allow for a highly customised and user-friendly video conferencing experience.
After setting the InitOptions and roomSettings, the room is loaded using the load method. This final step embeds the custom video conference room into your website, providing a tailored user experience.
Here's a basic example to illustrate the customisation process:
This example demonstrates how to use the Digital Samba SDK to embed a video conferencing room into a specific element on your website, enhancing customisation and user experience. The initOptions are crucial for defining the exact location on the webpage where the video conference will appear.
For more detailed examples and information on the possible initOptions combinations, please refer to the Digital Samba SDK Documentation.
The Digital Samba SDK provides a robust set of events and methods, enabling real-time management and interaction during video conferences. Let's explore some examples:
You can subscribe to various events to monitor different activities within a video conferencing room. The SDK offers a range of events such as userJoined, userLeft, handRaised, handLowered, audioEnabled, audioDisabled and many others.
You can use the on() method to subscribe to an event and off() to unsubscribe. The once() method is also available for one-time subscriptions. Here's a template for subscribing and unsubscribing to an event:
For instance, to handle a user leaving the meeting, you could subscribe to the userLeft event:
To manage audio controls, you can use audioEnabled and audioDisabled events:
A special event named '*' can be used for debugging purposes to log all incoming events and their data:
By utilising these events and methods, you can create a dynamic and responsive video conferencing environment, adapting in real-time to the actions and needs of the participants. This allows for a more controlled and interactive experience during your Digital Samba video conferences.
The Digital Samba SDK also offers a variety of methods that allow you to control different aspects of a video call, enhancing the user experience and providing greater functionality.
However, before using any methods, you must initialise the SDK and load the room. It is important to subscribe to the userJoined event to ensure the user is present in the room before calling other methods.
Once the room is initialised and the SDK is loaded, you can utilise various SDK methods to manage the video call. Here's a look at some key methods:
Let's look at a code example of the above SDK methods.
These methods provide significant control over the video conferencing experience, allowing for dynamic interaction and management of the call. They are essential for creating a custom and responsive video conferencing environment using Digital Samba's SDK.
The Digital Samba embedded WordPress plugin offers a seamless, no-code solution for integrating GDPR-compliant video conferencing and webinars into your website. With features like screen sharing, text chat, closed captioning and virtual backgrounds, this plugin empowers you to enhance your online presence effortlessly.
In this article, we have explored how to unlock the seamless integration of Digital Samba Video Conferencing into your website with this comprehensive guide. We have looked at two versatile approaches: using the Digital Samba API and SDK and using the WordPress Plugin for effortless embedding.
We have also explored a step-by-step process for leveraging the powerful features, from screen sharing to closed captioning, ensuring GDPR compliance every step of the way. Using this, you can elevate your users' experience and engagement with expert tips on harnessing the API for developers and the intuitive WordPress Plugin for amateurs.
Whether you are a tech enthusiast or a seasoned developer, this guide empowers you to transform your website into a dynamic hub of interactive communication. Get started today.