StarLeaf 9.0

Introduction

These release notes provide you with information about the latest upgrade to the StarLeaf platform and endpoints. This is a feature release and is effective from July 2019.

All upgrades take place outside of normal office hours for all regions. Endpoints automatically restart and reconnect to StarLeaf after the upgrade.

StarLeaf operates a system of rolling upgrades across our data centers, which are distributed globally. New features may be enabled separately.

New features

StarLeaf 9.0 provides the following new features:

• Smart Layouts
• Spotlight meetings
• Meeting details
• Pre-meeting audio and video options
• Meeting scheduler policy option (for admins)
• StarLeaf integrations updates
  • StarLeaf for Microsoft Teams
  • StarLeaf Scheduler for Google Calendar
  • StarLeaf Scheduler for Outlook Exchange Server and StarLeaf Scheduler for Outlook Office 365
  • StarLeaf Azure Active Directory integration

StarLeaf room systems

Smart Layouts

Smart Layouts improve the video and content display of single-screen StarLeaf room systems.

When a room system shares or receives content, the display changes to a layout that promotes content while providing a video strip of the most recent speakers. This allows users to focus on the content while maintaining eye to eye contact with other meeting participants. There is no overlapping of content and video.

Admin information

To enable Smart Layouts for your organization, in the StarLeaf Portal go to Edit organization > Advanced settings.

You can also enable Smart Layouts on an individual room basis. Go to Room systems > Edit > Advanced settings.

StarLeaf on Windows and macOS

Spotlight meetings

In a Spotlight meeting, a chosen participant (or participants) is added to spotlight by the meeting organizer as shown in the participants panel below.

Only the participants in spotlight are visible and audible by default in the meeting. Audience participants are muted.

This feature is useful for large meetings where only one or a few people will be talking or presenting but where there are many participants who want to view and listen. For more information, go to Spotlight meetings

StarLeaf on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android

Meeting details

On the Meetings tab, when you select an upcoming meeting you can see more detailed information than before. For example, the meeting details tell you:

• if it is a Spotlight meeting
• if it is a recurring meeting
• whether invitees accepted the meeting invite, declined it, or have not responded

Pre-meeting audio and video options

Before you enter a meeting, you now see a screen that gives you time to check your audio and video settings before you select join now. On this screen you can:

• switch between computer audio and phone audio
• mute your microphone (so no one in the meeting can hear you)
• mute your camera (so no one in the meeting can see you)
• change the microphone, camera, and/or speakers that you use

 

Meeting scheduler policy option (for admins)

In the StarLeaf Portal, admins can now choose which scheduler all users in the organization must use to schedule meetings. When users select New meeting in the StarLeaf app, they will be directed to the appropriate scheduler. The options are:

• StarLeaf Scheduler for Office 365
• StarLeaf Scheduler for Outlook Exchange Server
• StarLeaf Scheduler for Google Calendar
• StarLeaf Portal and schedulers

This is an organization-level setting and can be found in the Portal in Edit organization > Advanced settings > Meeting scheduler.

If users go to schedule a meeting in the Portal when the policy option does now allow this, they will receive instructions on which scheduler to proceed with as shown below.

StarLeaf integrations updates

StarLeaf for Microsoft Teams

StarLeaf for Microsoft Teams is now available to download from Microsoft Appsource.

The StarLeaf for Microsoft Teams integration can be installed on individual teams in your client. When StarLeaf for Teams is installed on a team, you can type the command @StarLeaf create in a team channel. This creates a StarLeaf meeting and everyone in the channel receives a message which contains information on the different ways to join the meeting, for example, with the StarLeaf app, from a StarLeaf room system, with Skype for Business, or on a telephone.

For more information about installing and using the integration, go to StarLeaf for Microsoft Teams.

StarLeaf Scheduler for Google Calendar

When you schedule an event in your Google Calendar, there is now an option to Schedule with StarLeaf as shown below. This makes the event a StarLeaf meeting and adds joining details to the event invite text.

StarLeaf Scheduler for Google Calendar is an integration that allows you to schedule video meetings directly from your Google Calendar. It can be used to invite anyone to a meeting, even if they are not a Google Calendar user.

StarLeaf Scheduler for Outlook Exchange Server and StarLeaf Scheduler for Outlook Office 365

When you schedule a StarLeaf meeting using either the Scheduler for Outlook Exchange Server or Scheduler for Outlook Office 365, you now have new options to:

• make it a Spotlight meeting
• choose to keep people on hold until the second person joins or the meeting owner joins

StarLeaf Azure Active Directory integration

StarLeaf integration with Azure Active Directory user provisioning (Azure AD) can now be added from the Azure AD Marketplace (in preview mode).

Organizations that use Azure AD for user management can integrate it with their StarLeaf account. Azure AD integration is an additional option on your StarLeaf Enterprise account. For more information, go to Azure Active Directory.

Issues resolved

Select a release below to display the bug fixes and improvements effective in that release.

Versions

Select a release below to display the component version numbers for that release.

Known limitations

For per-vendor interoperability information, refer here.

Reference ID	Description
10858	Internet Explorer 11: When you access a user page on the Portal using Internet Explorer 11, the time zone selection box automatically opens
11755	There is a BFCP interoperability issue between Cisco VCS and the StarLeaf Cloud which can cause screen share to be disabled mid call
12040	Using Click-to-Call (WebRTC) in the Safari browser on OSX sometimes results in difficulties receiving shared content and dropped calls when the Safari tab is minimized for longer than 10 seconds. This is due to the AppNap feature on OSX that puts background applications to sleep if they are not in the foreground Click-to-Call is not supported on Safari from version 11.2 onwards. This is due to changes in Safari that mean the browser no longer supports plugins. For more information on browser support and compatibility, refer to Click-to-Call
12067	In some circumstances, when a Skype for Business client attempts to add video or content into a StarLeaf meeting with no other video participants there can be unexpected call failure