What the Greenlight Dashboard Does for BigBlueButton

BigBlueButton offers a powerful API for building virtual classrooms, but it doesn't include a ready-made user interface for day-to-day operations. Greenlight fills that gap. It's a separate, open-source application from the same team that provides a clean web dashboard for managing rooms, users, and recordings.

What Greenlight provides

Greenlight transforms BigBlueButton's API into a functional UI that everyday users and administrators can navigate without writing code. If your plan is to run BigBlueButton as a standalone conferencing or classroom platform, Greenlight is the fastest way to get a workable interface in front of users.

Authentication and single sign-on

Greenlight includes local user accounts and can hook into external identity providers via LDAP, Google, or Microsoft. This lets users sign in with credentials they already have, reducing the need to maintain a separate directory.

User management and roles

Administrators can add, edit, or remove accounts and assign roles to control who can create rooms or manage recordings. The interface is simple enough for a non-technical trainer to handle without IT support.

Permanent meeting rooms

Each user can create a room that persists across sessions, with its own URL and optional access code. This avoids the friction of generating new links for every class or meeting. The room owner can set preferences like whether guests need a moderator to join.

Recording management

Recorded sessions appear in the Greenlight dashboard, where users can view and share them. Administrators see a platform-wide list, making it easier to prune old recordings or control access at scale.

How Greenlight coexists with other integrations

Greenlight is optional. If you already connect BigBlueButton to an LMS like Moodle or Canvas, the LMS handles user authentication and meeting creation directly through the same REST API. Greenlight can run alongside those integrations without conflict. You might offer it as a fallback for users who don't need the LMS features, or for quick ad-hoc meetings.

Managed hosting providers often deploy Greenlight by default, so you get both a built-in dashboard and full API access for external tools.

Installation and scope

Greenlight installs alongside BigBlueButton on the same server and communicates through the API. It's a separate Docker-based application, but the setup is straightforward for anyone comfortable with the command line. Because it's maintained by the BigBlueButton project, it stays in sync with API changes.

If you're evaluating BigBlueButton for a standalone online classroom, Greenlight is the path of least resistance to a functional user interface. It's not an LMS, but it covers the essentials: get users in, get meetings running, and keep recordings accessible.