Conference

The Conference tab for an alert displays information about active and completed conference bridge sessions for the alert. This page also allows you to manage the conference bridge, including muting (and un-muting) users and removing users from the call.

The Conference tab displays instructions on how to join the conference bridge, which you can copy and send to participants who were not directly notified by xMatters. It also displays information about the alerts associated with the conference bridge, including the name and description of the alert, its status, the user who initiated it, and the time it was initiated. You can also use this report to quickly look up information about call participants, such as their contact information and the groups they belong to. This enables you to confirm that representatives of the required groups are present on the call.

The Conference tab displays information about conference bridge sessions that are hosted by xMatters. Externally-hosted conference bridges are not displayed on this page.

View and edit conference bridge details

You can edit details of the conference bridge directly on the Conference tab.

To edit the conference name or description, click the item you want to edit.

The conference history displays a list of when callers have joined and left the conference bridge.

  1. Click View Conference History to view the Conference History dialog.
  2. Click the Export button to download this report as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

You can view a list of the alerts that share the conference bridge, including each alert's name, ID, status, initiator, and start time.

  1. Click View Related Alerts to view the Related Alerts dialog.
  2. Click the name of an alert to view its detailed alert information.

The name of an alert in the Related Alerts dialog includes its email subject alert ID.

The user's identity card displays the groups they belong to and information about their devices. (You can only view this information if you have permission to do so). For more information about profile cards, see View user contact details.

To view a participant's contact card:

  1. Click the name of a user. Their contact card is displayed.
  2. Click the Groups tabs to view which groups the user belongs to.
  3. Click the Devices tab to view the user's device details.

Manage the conference bridge

The Participants list displays the users who are connected to the call, including those who have joined the call by responding to voice notifications and those who have manually called in to the conference. When a user joins the call by connecting directly from a voice notification, xMatters displays their user name in the Participants list. If the user was targeted for the call as part of one or more groups, the groups will be listed next to the user's name.

A conference bridge becomes active only when two or more participants join the call. If the first user to join the call leaves before a second user joins the call, the conference does not end because it has not been made active. An active conference ends when the participants leave the call or the conference is manually ended. Once a conference has ended, participants cannot join the call.

When a user dials in to the conference manually, xMatters attempts to determine their user name from the call-in phone number. If xMatters cannot identify a call-in user, such as when the phone number is not recognized or when it belongs to more than one user, xMatters displays the call-in phone number instead of a user name. You can edit the call-in phone numbers and replace them with the user's name or another meaningful description.

When a user manually calls in to a conference bridge from a phone that uses an extension, xMatters can identify the incoming phone number but cannot determine the extension. If there are multiple users in the system that have the same phone number but use different extensions, xMatters cannot determine which of these users is calling in by inspecting the incoming phone number. In this case, the participants list displays the phone number instead of a user name.

The conferences tab lists the users that are currently speaking at the top of the participants list. It also uses an active speaker icon next to a user's name to indicate that the user is speaking. It may take from three to ten seconds for a user's name to appear or be removed from the speaking list.

To mute or unmute a caller:

Click the mute button (microphone icon) next to the caller's name.

To mute or unmute all participants:

Click Mute All or Unmute All at the top of the Participants section. When new participants join the conference they respect this setting. For large conference bridges, the system may take up to ten to fifteen seconds to mute or unmute every 100 participants.

To remove a caller from the conference, click the X next to the caller's name.

To end the conference bridge and disconnect all callers:

  1. Click End Conference.
  2. Click OK in the Confirm End Conference dialog box.

To edit the display name of a dial-in caller, click the caller's phone number and type a new name in the editable area.

  • You can only edit dial-in caller phone numbers that have not been matched to an xMatters user.

When a conference bridge is in progress a beep is played to indicate that a new participant has joined the call. If you would like to disable this beep for all xMatters conference bridges used by your company, contact your xMatters representative or make a support request at http://support.xmatters.com.