release-notes
Latest release notes
Starting with BigBlueButton 2.2.1 we publish our Release Notes in GitHub's BigBlueButton page
Release 2.2
Released: November 6, 2019 (Installation Instructions)
We made it!
After months of testing with the community, millions of sessions hosted by commercial companies using BigBlueButton, and interacting with hundreds of people on our mailing lists that help us find and fix any issues, we are announcing the releae of BigBlueButton 2.2.
Enjoy!
Release 2.2-beta
Released: March 19, 2019 (Installation Instructions)
This release completes the development of the new HTML5 client. BigBlueButton 2.2 supports real-time sharing of audio/video/screen using the browser's (recommend FireFox and Chrome) built-in web real-time communication (WebRTC) libraries.
This means there is no Flash, no Java, no downloads, no app to install. Compared with the previous version, the new BigBlueButton 2.2 client is a third in download size and launches twice as fast. It also runs on iPhones and iPads (iOS 12.2+) and Android devices (6.0+). Both Safari Mobile (iOS) and Google Chrome (Android) support WebRTC out-of-the-box (no mobile app to install).
Major features in this release include:
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Platform - A new HTML5 that is a third in download size, launches twice as fast, and is easier to use.
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Features - The HTML5 client imaplements all the core features you would expect in a commercial web conferencing system -- real-time sharing of audio, video, slides, and screen -- with tools to engage your remote users: public/private chat, emojis, shared notes, multi-user whiteboard, polling, and breakout rooms.
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Increased engagement - The presenter can now share YouTube videos live in the session.
This release is under active development: see BigBlueButton 2.2 Project Board.
Release 2.0
Released: March 28, 2019 (Installation Instructions)
Major features in this release include:
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UI Improvements - Multiple UI improvements that include enable users to choose a breakout room, restrict viewers to only seeing the moderator's webcams, enabling download of presentation, and smoothing of whiteboard strokes.
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Multi-user Whiteboard - The presenter can now let all users write on the whitebaord at the same time.
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Shared Notes - Added a new layout that enables all users to collaborate together on shared notes.
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HTML5 mobile client - Users on Android and iOS 11+ devices can participate in online sessions. The HTML5 client enables two-way sharing of audio, chat, viewing presentation, responding to polls, sharing emoji, and viewing WebRTC screen sharing.
There were a lot of smaller updates to improve existing features and fix issues. See detailed list of new features and issues fixed in BigBlueButton 2.0.
Release 1.1
Released: May 24, 2017 (Installation Instructions)
Major features in this release include:
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Breakout Rooms - Instructors can now group students into breakout rooms for increased collaboration. Instructors can monitor activity in the breakout rooms set a time limit for collaboration (see video).
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Closed Captioning - BigBlueButton now enables a stenographer to provide live closed captions in multiple languages during a session. After the session finishes, the captions will appear as subtitles in the recording (see video).
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Faster Screen Sharing - Screen sharing now is faster, works across all browsers (using a Java application that launches outside the browser), and captures the cursor (see video).
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Greenlight - Administrators can install a new front-end, called Greenlight, that makes it easy for users to quickly creating meetings, invite others, and manage recordings on a BigBlueButton server. Using Docker, administrators can install on the BigBlueButton server itself (no need for a separate server). Greenlight is written in Rails 5 and can be easily customized by any rails developer (see source on GitHub).
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Ubuntu 16.04 packages - This release installs on Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit (the most recent long-term support release from Canonical) and uses
systemd
for new start/stop scripts for individual components.
For more information on this release see detailed list of new features and issues fixed in BigBlueButton 1.1.
Release 1.0
Released: May 15, 2016 (Installation Instructions)
This release focused on increasing the interactivity between instructors and students.
Major Features
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Polling - Presenters can now poll students for immediate feedback. The BigBlueButton client includes a feature that can automatically suggest the proper polling choices based on the content of the slide (we call this Smart Polling).
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Improved video dock - The video dock now shows the webcams without boarders to give more visibility.
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Emoji - Students can now use emoji icons (happy, neutral, sad, confused, and away) to give feedback in addition current raise hand.
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Puffin Browser support - BigBlueButton detects Puffin Browser version 4.6 (or later) and enables the user to broadcast their microphone and/or webcam in a BigBlueButton session on a mobile device.
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Automatic Reconnect - BigBlueButton detects when the network connection has dropped and will attempt to automatically reconnect.
For details of these updates see issues fixed in BigBlueButton 1.0.
Release 0.9.1
Released: June 29, 2015
This was a maintenance release to 0.9 to fix issue 2701 with FireFox and Desktop Sharing.
Release 0.9.0
Released: April 30, 2015 (Installation Instructions)
This release of BigBlueButton 0.9.0 represents a significant upgrade on the ability to deliver remote students a high-quality on-line learning experience.
Major Features
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WebRTC Audio - BigBlueButton now uses web real-time communications (WebRTC) audio for users of FireFox and Chrome. WebRTC audio is sampled at 48 Khz, encoded in OPUS codec, uses UDP for transport, and communicates directly with FreeSWITCH on the BigBlueButton server –- all this combines to give users high quality, low latency audio.
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Audio Check - To ensure users have a functioning microphone when joining a session, BigBlueButton now provides a microphone check for users before they join the session.
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Listen Only Audio - To quickly join the conference as a listener only (no microphone check), BigBlueButton offers a Listen Only mode. Under the hood, Listen Only users share a single, one-way audio channel from FreeSWITCH, which means they require less overall CPU resources on the BigBlueButton server compared with users joining with a microphone. The Listen Only mode brings BigBlueButton closer to supporting webinar-type sessions.
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Start/Stop Button for Recording - Moderators can now mark segments of the recorded session for later publishing using a new Start/Stop Recording button in the toolbar. After the session is over, the BigBlueButton server extracts the marked segments for publishing the recording.
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Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit - BigBlueButton now installs on Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit.
For details of the new features (with screen shots) see 0.9.0 overview.
Fixed Issues
See issues fixed in BigBlueButton 0.9.0.
Release 0.81
Released: November 7, 2013
This is our eleventh release of BigBlueButton. For a quick summary of what's new since the previous release, see this overview video.
Major Features
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Usability Improvements - BigBlueButton now has a consolidated Users window for easier session management and a more consistent user interface (including updated skin and icons) to help new users get started quickly. For a closer look, see moderator/presenter tutorial and for viewer tutorial.
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Recording - BigBlueButton now records all activity in the session (audio, video, presentation, chat, and desktop sharing) for playback. Playback of recording is supported in Chrome and FireFox.
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Layout Manager - BigBlueButton now enables users to choose from a number of preset layouts to quickly adapt to different modes of learning.
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Text tool for whiteboard - Presenters can now annotate their slides with text.
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New APIs - The BigBlueButton API now includes the ability to dynamically configure each client on a per-user bases, thus enabling developers to configure the skin, layout, modules, etc. for each user. There is also a JavaScript interface to control the client.
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Accessiblity for screen readers - BigBlueButton adds accessibility by supporting screen readers such as JAWS (version 11+) and NVDA. A list of keyboard shortcuts have been added to make it easier to navigate through the interface using the keyboard.
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LTI Support - BigBlueButton is IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) 1.0 compliant. This means any LTI consumer can integrate with BigBlueButton without requiring custom plug-ins (see BigBlueButton LTI certification and video).
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Mozilla Persona - The API demos now demonstrate how to sign into a BigBlueButton session using Mozilla Persona.
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Support for LibreOffice 4.0 - BigBlueButton now uses LibreOffice 4.0 for conversion of of MS Office documents (upload of PDF is still recommend to provide best results).
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Updated components - We've updated BigBlueButton packaging to use red5 1.0.2, FreeSWITCH (1.5.x), and grails 1.3.6.
Fixed Issues
See issues fixed in BigBlueButton 0.81.
Release 0.8: Bailetti
Code named in honor of Tony Bailetti, head of the Technology Information Management program (Carleton University) who inspired the creation of BigBlueButton. For more information, see History of the BigBlueButton Project.
Released: June 18, 2012
Major Features
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Reduced latency in audio - The BigBlueButton server sets the audio codec for Flash to speex and passes through the packets to FreeSWITCH for processing.
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Recording of a session - BigBlueButton now record events (join, leave, who's talking, chat) and media (audio, webcam, presentations, and desktop sharing) for later playback. After the session ends, the BigBlueButton server will run one (or more) ingest and processing scripts to convert the recorded events + media into playback formats (see Record and Playback Specification).
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Playback of recordings in HTML 5 - The default playback format will playback synchronized slides, audio, and chat. Playback uses popcorn.js for playback within an HTML5 browser. Current supported browsers are Chrome, Firefox, and IE using the Google Chrome Frame. Playback of desktop sharing and webcam is supported through the Matterhorn integration.
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New API calls - The API now includes calls for recording a meeting (pass record=true to the 'create' API call) and for accessing recordings: getRecordings, publishRecordings, deleteRecordings.
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Matterhorn integration - When integrated with Matterhorn, BigBlueButton can capture and process the desktop and webcam for automatic submission to a Matterhorn server.