Video Conference

You can start a Video conference together with the alarm and provide the opportunity for the alarmed person to join the video call immediately. To participate in a video call you just need a web browser running on your computer or smartphone. 

Activate a Video conference

You can activate the Video conference option on the Alarm settings page in the Collaboration chapter. If the option is turned on, then after launching the Alarm all alarm members will get a link either via email or SMS, assuming that these devices are added to the Alarm.

Join the Video conference

Each invited person gets a unique link. Clicking on the link a browser will open and you will be able to join the Video conference. You have to enable the microphone and camera on your device to participate with voice and video in the call.

Video conference room

A Video conference is seen as a virtual room, where invited participants can see and hear each other and can discuss any topic. Multiple Video conference rooms can be opened simultaneously. You can find the list of these rooms in the Alarm Cockpit. The name of the Video conference room is identical to the name of the belonging Alarm. You can also see 

• when the Alarm was triggered 
• how many members joined the call 
• if the room is open or closed and 
• if the belonging alarm is still running.

Manage Video conference members

Clicking on the icon in the Action column you will have access to the members list of the videocall. Only those members are visible on the list who already joined the call.  

You can invite new persons to the conference by pressing the “Manage video conference members” button.  

If you would like to invite a new person to the conference, then you can easily do it by moving his name from right to left. In a pop-up window, you also need to select the communication channels through which he/she will receive the conference invitation. By closing this pop-up window the conference invitation will be sent out automatically and the person’s name will be visible on the left side. 

On this page, you can also revoke the assignment of a person by moving his/her name from the left to the right side. This means the person won’t be able to join the call anymore, but he/she won’t be kicked off from a running call. 

The user interface of the video call is straightforward and provides all standard options, like 

• turning on/off your camera 
• muting/unmuting yourself 
• sharing your screen 
• check the list of participants 
• and finish the call. 

Number of participants 

We need to differentiate between the number of persons assigned to an alarm and the number of persons participating in a video call. These 2 values are independent of each other and are defined in your license.  

The maximum number of participants in a video call is set to 60 in most product editions in 2024 April. (Please note that this value can change with time.)  

This practically means that from the many people you notify in an Alarm the first 60 will be able to join the call. If further participants try to join the call they will be informed that the conference has achieved the participant limit.  

Video conference chat

Making notes or chatting with other participants during the conference call is possible either with the Chat function of ENS+ or the Case Manager if CIM features are available in your Product Edition. Using these chats allows you to avoid redundant communications, as all Alarm-related chats will be collected at the same place, and they will be automatically part of the Alarm history.  

Close Video conference

A Video conference will be finished if all participants leave the call. However, in this case, the links are still active, and the call can be restarted by any participant. You can permanently close a conference by clicking the “Close video conference” button on the page below. In this case, the call will be finished for all participants, if somebody is still on the call and you cannot restart the call with the related link anymore. 

Video conference Security

All videoconference traffic is encrypted and goes through servers only in the European Union.  

Reliability of Video conference

The ENS+ Video conference system was designed with a high availability mindset, making sure, it’s available even in critical incidents like a cyberattack to your organization or when the major videoconference providers are not available for any reason. Therefore, the solution is completely independent of MsTeams or Zoom and runs on a redundant server farm. 

Supported Browsers 

Any browser that has built-in support for WebRTC should be able to run the Video conference without issues. All of the below browsers have full support for WebRTC and will deliver the best experience:

• Chrome 
• Firefox 
• Opera 
• Vivaldi 
• Edge 

We support the two latest versions of all of these browsers, so if you're experiencing problems, try updating your browser.  

Safari doesn't support some features like screen sharing a single tab due to their partial support for WebRTC. If you're experiencing any issues while using Safari please try switching to one of the fully supported browsers listed above. 

Users can access videoconference via the Safari browser on iOS version 13.1 or later. Chrome on iOS is also supported in iOS 14.5 or later. 

On Android devices, for the most seamless experience, we recommend using the latest version of Google Chrome.