What's New in BigBlueButton 3.0.16

This iteration focuses on performance improvements to the backend components of BigBlueButton, most notably synchronizing data between clients. Presentation conversion and slide exporting with annotations have also been improved. Various client-side bugs have been resolved too.

Backend Performance Improvements

Several performance enhancements have been made to the GraphQL server and middleware. New database indexes improve GraphQL query performance. Notification streaming and chat message streaming have been shifted from Hasura to the bbb-graphql-middleware for better efficiency. The default Hasura refetch interval has been increased, and a pre-populated field tracks total unread chat messages. Simplified views for current user joins and improved performance of the query to calculate user connections also contribute to a faster backend.

Presentation and Annotation Export Fixes

Presentation conversion has been improved by reworking SVG dimension parsing using ImageMagick identify, and reading presentation text content from local files instead of page URLs. For annotation export, text wrapping has been fixed and the fonts have been updated to use Tldraw v2 fonts.

HTML5 Client Fixes

A number of client-side bugs have been resolved. Notable fixes include adding an event required by the BBB App when sharing a screen, implementing a client sound alert for mute/unmute when LiveKit is active, indicating user has left audio in the user list and camera containers, and fixing the sidekick content title not updating. Whiteboard improvements include adding the ability to limit the history stack size, removing duplicate annotation subscriptions, and avoiding useless mutation calls. The multi-user whiteboard participant count display issue has been corrected. An error notification bar that appeared when a presentation was removed has been fixed. Additionally, a min version check before loading the bundle shows an error banner if the client is outdated. An option to create only one breakout room has been added.

Plugin Related Updates

Plugin logic has been refactored to reduce load on the backend, and the log level for payload coming as null in the data channel has been changed to reduce noise.

Packaging and Configuration

The webpack minifier has been changed to preserve class and function names for better debugging. The LiveKit server has been updated to v1.9.1 (up from v1.9.0) and the LiveKit CLI to v2.15.7 (up from v2.14.0). A fix prevents cron jobs from printing to standard output.

Testing and CI

A playback recording test suite and error logs monitoring tests have been added. Tests for auto-hiding the whiteboard toolbar and dragging and dropping webcams are now included. CI has been refactored to avoid generating APT cache for every new pull request.