Conferencing “coach” mode

Support for selectively sending audio to a subset of conference participants

The conferencing feature supports a coaching feature whereby designated participants can hear the full conference audio but their own audio is only heard by a subset of the conference participants.

The classic example of this is a manager listening in on a call between an agent and a customer and being able to “whisper” to the agent without the customer hearing. This feature is not limited to a single participant receiving the audio, it could be any subset of the conference participants.

Enabling coach mode

To enable coach mode, you must assign a member tag to the participants that you may want to selectively send the audio to.

For instance, when an agent joins the conference you might assign them a memberTag of agent:

1app.conference({
2  name: 'support-conference-23',
3  startConferenceOnEnter: true,
4  endConferenceOnExit: true,
5  memberTag: 'agent'
6})

Later, when the manager joins, you could use the speakOnlyTo tag to indicate their audio input should only be heard by agents:

1app.conference({
2  name: 'support-conference-23',
3  speakOnlyTo: 'agent'
4})

Dynamically modifying flows

During the conference, you can dynamically change these settings, and the conference audio flows will be immediately updated accordingly. This can be done using the REST API as show below:

$# change a participant's member tag value
>curl --location -g --request PUT '{{base_url}}/v1/Accounts/{{account_sid}}/Calls/{{call_sid}}' \
>--data '{
>    "conferenceParticipantAction": {
>      "action": "tag",
>      "tag": "customer"
>    }
>}'
>
># remove a participant's member tag
>curl --location -g --request PUT '{{base_url}}/v1/Accounts/{{account_sid}}/Calls/{{call_sid}}' \
>--data '{
>    "conferenceParticipantAction": {
>      "action": "untag"
>    }
>}'
>
># make manager's audio heard by everyone
>curl --location -g --request PUT '{{base_url}}/v1/Accounts/{{account_sid}}/Calls/{{call_sid}}' \
>--data '{
>    "conferenceParticipantAction": {
>      "action": "uncoach"
>    }
>}'
>
># put a participant into coach mode
>curl --location -g --request PUT '{{base_url}}/v1/Accounts/{{account_sid}}/Calls/{{call_sid}}' \
>--data '{
>    "conferenceParticipantAction": {
>      "action": "coach",
>      "tag": "agent"
>    }
>}'

The same can be accomplished via the websocket api:

1// change a participant's member tag
2session.injectCommand('conf:participant-action', {
3  action: 'tag',
4  tag: 'customer'
5});
6
7// remove a particpant's member tag
8session.injectCommand('conf:participant-action', {
9  action: 'untag'
10});
11
12// make manager's audio heard by everyone
13session.injectCommand('conf:participant-action', {
14  action: 'uncoach'
15});
16
17// put a participant into coach mode
18session.injectCommand('conf:participant-action', {
19  action: 'coach', tag: 'agent'
20});
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