Repost from the Developer Preview Kickoff
A good question from our Developer Preview Kickoff session was about how and when RTMS can be triggered — specifically:
Is it possible to receive a stream without the user actually joining the call?
Let’s walk through the host vs. participant behavior, permission requirements, and the best practices you need to know during the developer preview phase.
It is possible to receive a stream without the user joining the call, but only under certain conditions.
- The meeting must be owned by the host
- The app can then be triggered when the meeting starts — no one needs to join the call for the stream to begin
If the user trying to trigger the stream is not the host, then they must join the meeting for the RTMS event to fire. The host’s ownership is critical for automatic behavior. So, for third-party or participant-only use cases, you’ll need to build your logic accordingly as this will not happen in the background automatically.
If a participant has the RTMS app installed and joins a meeting, does the host still need the app for this to work?
The host does not need to have the app installed. The participant can still trigger the stream by joining, and the app will begin capturing data.
However, the host may see a consent prompt, depending on their app access settings. This is something to factor into production workflows
What if the host and participant didn’t join the meeting — who can give permission in that case?
If there’s no one in the meeting to approve the app, the RTMS session cannot start. The process depends on someone with the necessary permissions being present — usually the host — to authorize the app if it hasn’t been pre-approved at the account or group level.
So just to confirm, this won’t cover the use case where a participant wants to analyze the meeting but the host didn’t join?
Yes. That use case isn’t supported in the developer preview
Best Practices
- Auto-start only applies to hosts
- Participants can trigger a stream when joining the meeting
- No host + no participant = no stream. Someone needs to be there to trigger or approve the app