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A deeper dive into what makes VCL specialIntegrated Streaming
VCL integrates robust third-party API’s which provide unique live and on-demand video streaming and processing features. The VCL team integrated these APIs by writing a custom wrapper, allowing the APIs to communicate with VCL’s .NET framework, without reliance on NuGet packages. Additionally, the implementation of this wrapper allows VCL to use webhooks to provide vital streaming data such as stream status and asset readiness.
Chat & Moderation
VCL boasts extensive Chat Moderation capabilities as part of its live-event management features. For example, one person can moderate multiple chat rooms or sessions. Alternatively, you can have multiple moderators in a single session, such as during a keynote or for a large session.
The Moderator User Interface (UI) enables moderators to select multiple channels in a single view – useful for sending mass-messages to all channels, creating rules for multiple channels at once, or filtering messages and users from a combination of channels.
The moderator UI also allows moderators to create a “split screen” – a feature that grants moderators the ability to oversee multiple channels on individual screens, in case a moderator needs to send different messages to different channels, or simply wants a more granular view of each channel.
Further, moderators can selectively restrict chat activity when needed, by activating “Slow Mode,” a feature that only allows users to send messages after a certain (moderator selected) number of seconds has elapsed since their last message, or by banning users outright. When banning users, moderators can choose a specific time period, or ban users indefinitely. Chat activity can be further restricted by activating “Approval Mode” – which requires a moderator to approve each chat message before it is displayed to other users in the channel. VCL also includes classic chat moderation features, such as a profanity filter, and the ability to delete inappropriate messages from the channel.
User Registration
The end user’s first step in joining any large-scale live virtual event is user registration. To handle this, VCL integrates a third party user registration platform which allows event management to create a static web page specifically for handling user registration. Event attendees register via this web page and have their data sent to the VCL system, which automatically creates a user with the needed credentials for the selected event.
Integration required the VCL team to write another custom wrapper to communicate with the third party APIs. In this case, webhooks are called as soon as a user completes the registration process, and their data is sent directly to VCL.
Bulk-Import scripts were also written to allow users to register for the event prior to the event being set up. These scripts were designed to run recursively to account for the call limits of the API, which limits users to a specific number of API calls within a given time period. This allowed active users to register without the risk of failure.
Other scripts were written to handle the unorthodox token authentication protocols employed by the event registration platform. These protocols required API clients to request a token to initialize the API, but required a second, unique token in order to make the necessary API calls. With this in mind, the VCL team wrote scripts to handle access token retrieval in parallel with making API calls for transactions that have already been authenticated, as well as retrying failed requests, resulting in a seamless user experience.
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