You can select custom layouts to use for all conference participants. To use this option:
Go to Conferences.
Click a Conference name and then click the Custom layout tab.
Click on the layout you want to use from those shown in the Available layouts. There are different numbers of panes and pane configurations to choose from.
The chosen layout is displayed enlarged to the left in the Conference custom layout section of the page and the Enabled radio button is selected.
If you want to select the participants who appear in a pane manually rather than letting the MCU make the most appropriate selection, click Pane placement.
See Using pane placement below.
To have all participants see this layout when they join the conference click Make new participants see this view.
If you also want all participants to see this view now, click Switch all participants to this view.
The following table explains the details that display.
Field
Field description
Usage tips
Conference custom layout
Current status
Whether a custom layout can be used for this participant.
When you click a new layout from the Available layouts, Enabled is automatically chosen with the most recent layout selected.
Make new participants see this view
New participants joining this conference will view the conference with this custom layout rather than one of the default views (see Customizing a participant's layout display).
To force all participants to use this layout, click Switch all participants to this view.
If a participant has chosen to use a custom conference layout (see Customizing a participant's layout display), their view will automatically update and switch to the new view.
Available layouts
Displays all the conference layouts that are available. Click a layout to select it and make it available.
You can only select one custom layout at a time.
Using pane placement
To have more control over which participant appears in which pane, you can use the Pane placement function. Pane placement works on a per conference basis.
Pane placement works on the selected custom layout in the Conference custom layout page - see Customizing layout views.
The chosen custom layout is shown with the panes numbered. The largest (and therefore most important) panes have the lowest numbers.
Because the largest number of panes in any custom layout is 20, there are twenty drop down lists, one per pane.
If the number of panes in the chosen layout is less than this, a gray line separates the panes that are used from those that do not apply to this layout.
The first time you open the pane placement page for a conference all the panes are set to <default>. The MCU decides which participant will appear in panes with this setting. See Understanding how participants display in layout views for more information.
For each pane you can select an alternative setting:
<blank>: no participant appears in this pane
<rolling>: this pane shows conference participants, automatically changing at the configured "Pane rolling interval" frequency from the Settings > Conferences page. All participants contributing video are shown in rolling panes except for any participants explicitly placed in other panes
<loudest speaker>: the participant who is speaking the loudest at any time appears in this pane
<content>: this pane is reserved for the content channel (see Content channel video support). If the content channel is not used in this conference, this pane will be blank.
<name>: the name of each pre-configured endpoint in this conference, and (if the conference is active) the names of all active participants whose endpoints were not pre-configured is displayed in the lists.
If you select a specific participant (endpoint), that participant appears in this pane at all times.
To use pane placement:
Click Enabled.
For each pane that you want to control, select an entry from the drop down list.
For panes that you no longer want to control individually, select <default>.
Click Update pane placement.
To return to the Custom layout page, click Custom layout.
More about pane placement
When you use pane placement, bear in mind that:
Pane placement only applies to conference custom layouts. If they are disabled so is pane placement
You can mix panes set to <default> with panes that have other settings
Any panes that you configure keep their setting even if you change the custom layout view. Therefore if you configure all the panes in the 20 pane layout and then move to one with only five panes, panes 1 to 5 will have the same settings as before. Panes 6 to 20 will also keep their settings, it is just that they are not used. Therefore if you subsequently move to a layout with say 10 panes, all ten panes have their settings pre-configured.
This does mean that if you have participants who need to be seen at all times, you should configure them in the lower numbered panes
You must set up pane placement for each conference that you want to use it with
You can set up pane placement before a conference starts and configure pre-configured endpoints in to particular panes. However you can only configure active participants whose endpoints are not pre-configured when the conference is running
Pane placement persists over conference repetitions. If you set pane placement once, the same placements are ready to be used when the conference next repeats
If you select a particular participant for a pane and they are disconnected for any reason, that pane appears blank
After you set up pane placement, you can still change the layout for individual participants - and they can change their layout using the far end camera controls unless you disable this for each participant individually. See Customizing a participant's layout display.
The left and right controls on a participant's far end camera control, used to select a focused participant, have no effect when pane placement is in use
Potentially, when pane placement is in use, a participant may appear in two panes at the same time. This happens for example if a pane is configured to show a particular participant and another pane is configured to show the loudest speaker; each time that participant is the loudest speaker, he will appear in both panes. There is a setting on the MCU's Settings > Conferences page to control this behavior called Loudest speaker pane placement behavior
