Video Conferences with Jitsi

The University’s Jitsi conference tool is available at meetings.uni-greifswald.de .

Ideally, in order to hold and take part in a web conference you need:

• modern PC / laptop or mobile device (smartphone or tablet)
• internet connection (with a good quality connection)
• webcam (if you want to share your video)
• microphone/headset (if you want to say and/ or hear anything)

• The Jitsi tool being used establishes a connection between the participants of a web conference.
• The name of a conference room can be chosen freely . The first person to take part on behalf of the University manages the room.
• All of the information (text chat, room password, participants) only existuntil the last person has left the conference room .
• ‘Conference rooms’ should really be understood as ‘meetings’.
• The quality of the conference depends on the speed of the ‘weakest’ connection in the conference.
• The ‘tile view ’ displays the video of the last two active speakers .
• You can always focus in on the videos of individual participants (select tile).
• You can change the volume of individual participants separately (by clicking on ‘⋮’ in the tile).

In the settings of the smartphone app, you will need to enter the following server URL under conference: ’https://meetings.uni-greifswald.de/’ .

You will then be asked to enter your central login details when entering a room. Enter your username - not as asked - without the domain name extension (WITHOUT @uni-greifswald.de).

1. Open the page meetings.uni-greifswald.de in the Chrome browser or in the app
2. Enter a name for the conference (only letters, numbers, dashes and dots are allowed, no spaces or umlauts/special characters) in the box underneath ‘Create new room’.
3. Click on ‘go’.
4. Log in with your central login details from the URZ (only use your account name, not your email address).
5. The browser (not the app) will now ask you for permission to access your microphone and/or camera, which you must allow!

You can change the display language in the settings by clicking on the cogwheel icon (top right) and selecting the desired language under the tab ‘More’ / ‘Mehr’.

In order to invite participants to your conference room, you will need to provide them with the full address of the conference room (e.g. -meetings.uni-greifswald.de/Abteilungstreffen) and the password - if you have set one. You can also use the share function (‘i’ icon on the bottom right).

When entering the room, the participants will be prompted to grant access to their microphones and cameras, which they must allow!

The participants should of course also use the Chrome browser or apps .

After creating a conference room, you can activate the Lobby function in the security settings menu. This means, that new participants will be set on a waiting list and the moderator makes the decision, who enters the room.

If you have set a conference passwords, further participants can directly enter the room when they know the password.

There is the option for dial-in to jitsi web conferences. This makes sense if you, e.g., do not have a microphone/headset for your computer. The dial-in information can be found by pressing the invite button. For dialing-in, there is as well a german as an english menu guide.

The dial-in can be combined with lobby/waiting rooms. If you have set a password for protecting your web conference, the dial-in is not possible.

You can use your smartphone to participate in existing conferences. To do so, install the Jitsi app on your smartphone and enter the address of the conference room.

• Jitsi download page with links to the apps

You can determine an individual graphic for your tile in Jitsi by using a Gravatar (globally recognised avatar).

This can be done by registering an email address of your choice with Gravatar.