[asterisk-dev] [Code Review] Add mute all participants; play participant count to ConfBridge

[David Vossel]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tony Mountifield" softins.co.uk>
> To: asterisk-dev at lists.digium.com
> Sent: Thursday, November 3, 2011 12:22:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-dev] [Code Review] Add mute all participants; play participant count to ConfBridge
> In article <20111103170127.22261.77525 at hotblack.digium.com>,
> David Vossel <reviewboard at asterisk.org> wrote:
> > /trunk/apps/app_confbridge.c
> > <https://reviewboard.asterisk.org/r/1518/#comment8861>
> >
> >     Umm, if we don't mute the admin, the admin will still hear the
> >     sound file that they are
> > muted, but they won't actually be muted. Then when the admin starts
> > making fun of people in
> > the conference everyone will hear them even though the admin was
> > told the line is muted.
> > This may or may not be the expected behavior.
> >
> >     It might be better to go ahead and make this function mute
> >     everyone and make the admins
> > explicitly unmute themselves after mute all is used. If we don't do
> > it this way, we should
> > make sure to comment in the documentation that the admin will not be
> > affected by this
> > action.
> 
> Since the status of being muted is an attribute of an individual
> conference member, it should be announced separately to each user on
> their channel. Even if there is a command to mute all, they should
> still be told individually, rather than in a conference announcement.
> Then if the command doesn't mute admins, it still works correctly,
> without misleading anyone!
> 
> I have custom modifications to Meetme that work exactly like this.
> 
> Just my 2p
> 
> Cheers
> Tony
> --
> Tony Mountifield
> Work: tony at softins.co.uk - http://www.softins.co.uk
> Play: tony at mountifield.org - http://tony.mountifield.org
> 

Architecturally playing each sound file individually to each participant is a problem.  Because of the way things are done right now, whatever sound files we play block the channel that is issuing the mute all action and must be played in sequence rather than at the same time.  If we have 100 participants it could take 3 minutes just to tell them they are all muted.  In order to do the playback independently of one another, we'd have to figure out a way to signal each participants channel thread to break them out of the conference and play the sound file, then put them back in.  The synchronization required to do that would be invasive.

-- 
David Vossel
Digium, Inc. | Software Developer, Open Source Software
445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
Check us out at: www.digium.com & www.asterisk.org
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