Allow guest join to BigBlueButtonBN

[Nemanja Manic]

Hello everyone,

I have a problem when using Moodle + BigBlueButton.

BigBlueButton server is version 1.0.0 (1061). (Set up using HTTPS)
Moodle is 3.2+ (Build: 20161215)
and BigBlueButtonBN is 2.1.5 2016051909

I want to create a course with guest access available, and I have already set that up like in the picture attached.

When I create new BigBlueButtonBN activity, I set participants like in the other picture, and, as I see it, it should allow guests to join as viewers.

But when I try to access the activity as a guest it shows the message: "The BigBlueButtonBN is not open to guests. Would you like to log in now with a full user account?"

I must say that guests CAN access the rest of the course.

What could be the problem? Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance.

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Nemanja,

Hmm ... you might have found a bug.  We'll take a closer look at our end and let you know what we find.

Regards,... Fred

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BigBlueButton-Setup" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to bigbluebutton-setup+unsub...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to bigbluebutton-setup@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/bigbluebutton-setup.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

BigBlueButton Developer

http://bigbluebutton.org/

@bigbluebutton

[Nemanja Manic]

Thank you, I would highly appreciate that.
If I can be of any assistance, please let me know.

On Thursday, 23 February 2017 23:15:35 UTC+1, Fred Dixon wrote:

Hi Nemanja,

Hmm ... you might have found a bug.  We'll take a closer look at our end and let you know what we find.

Regards,... Fred

On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 4:24 PM, Nemanja Manic <neman...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello everyone,

I have a problem when using Moodle + BigBlueButton.

BigBlueButton server is version 1.0.0 (1061). (Set up using HTTPS)
Moodle is 3.2+ (Build: 20161215)
and BigBlueButtonBN is 2.1.5 2016051909

I want to create a course with guest access available, and I have already set that up like in the picture attached.

When I create new BigBlueButtonBN activity, I set participants like in the other picture, and, as I see it, it should allow guests to join as viewers.

But when I try to access the activity as a guest it shows the message: "The BigBlueButtonBN is not open to guests. Would you like to log in now with a full user account?"

I must say that guests CAN access the rest of the course.

What could be the problem? Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BigBlueButton-Setup" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to bigbluebutton-setup+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to bigbluebu...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/bigbluebutton-setup.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Jesus Federico]

Hi Nemanja,

I am the develper of the BigBlueButton integration with Moodle. Unfortunately the BigBlueButtonBN plugin doesn't have support for guest users. As for version 2.1.5 (2016051909) It is required for the users to be authenticated for accessing the activity/room, and this has been the case since the very fist version that run on Moodle 1.8.

The bug may be that the role guest should not be listed in the participant-role list. That is making people to think that guest users are supported.

The good new is that as the feaure has been requested quite a few times in the last year and was added to the roadmap during the summer 2016, it will be included in the next version that is in development right now.

You can follow the progress in the github repository https://github.com/blindsidenetworks/moodle-mod_bigbluebuttonbn/commits/v2.2-dev 

Keep in mind that it is an alpha version. I won't recommend you to use it for production

Funny fact. Just today after completing the merge of the two plugins (from now on users will only need BigBlueButtonBN for everything!) I started looking to the implementation of that feature :)

Thanks for your interest in BigBlueButton and stay tunned.

Regards,

Jesus Federico

[Nemanja Manic]

Hi Jesus,

Thank you for your reply, and thank you for clarifying that.
I look forward to the update :)

[Jesus Federico]

Hi Nemanja,

Quick update on this matter.

Turns out that an adjustment I did a while back to the validation of authenticated users (~v2.1.2) partially fixed this issue. So yes, in v2.1.5 which is the one you have, the feature is supported. You are just missing something. You need to authorize the role Guest for being able to join a session. See attached screen caps. And I can confirm, it works on 2.1.5

One detail though. There is a bug that is preventing the matching roles Moodle Guest / BBB Moderator to work properly, so in this version Guest users will always join as viewers.

As this is a minor bug, the fix will be included in the next revision 2.1.6 to be released the next week. If you want, you can find this new version right now in the github repository: https://github.com/blindsidenetworks/moodle-mod_bigbluebuttonbn/commits/v2.1-stable

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Jesus Federico

[Nemanja Manic]

Thank you Jesus.

This has actually helped me, I just had to redefine the Guest to allow joining to a meeting.
Now it's working properly.

For me it's not a problem that guests can join only as viewers, as it kind of looks like only logical scenario. I wouldn't like to have guests moderating my meetings anyway :)

I'm fairly new to Moodle (and BBB) so please forgive me for asking questions that may seem trivial. I think your answer will be very valuable to new Moodle and BBB users having this problem.

[Nemanja Manic]

Now I have another problem. 

I have a course that allows guests, but I want to create a BBB meeting in that course that will not be available to guests. 

I set up participants as shown, but guests are still allowed to join the meeting and see the recording. What could be the problem now?

[Jesus Federico]

Ah!, interesting use case. But I am afraid it is not covered. We may consider to include it for a further release though.

I have a course that allows guests, but I want to create a BBB meeting in that course that will not be available to guests. 

I may be wrong but my understanding is that when you allow guest access to a course you are opening all the resources in it. What about other activities for instance? Can you allow access to guest to instances of Assignment, Forum or Chat while denied access to others? I don;t think that is possible at all. In fact doesn't even allows guests to participate. IT has the same problem BigBlueButtonBN had. The access is allowed only to enrolled users.

 

I set up participants as shown, but guests are still allowed to join the meeting and see the recording. What could be the problem now?

Again, this is a wording issue. The "Join" capability has been there forever. We may need to rethink it (and rephrase it) as "View" to differenciate from Join, but anyways it would be a "View them all"/"Don't view them at all" approach as for any other core plugin.

The Participant list is for pairing users with a BigBlueButton role and not for granting/denying  access.

Regards,

Jesus Federico