Xroom app does not require registration and payment for video connect. Why did they make it, and what is available to users?
Why SaaS project have created the video conferencing service with no registration or instalation, and what do users get?
The original post has been written by xroom app founder which is full-stack Developer Vladimir Osipov, and here we copy the point of his experience.
The pain
A year or so ago a CEO of a company I am working with revealed a nice online conference tool for me. I started using it everywhere for every suitable purpose. No more logins, downloads, I could share my screen to fellow developers. Oh, that experience felt great! For a while.
One day I needed to share my screen to another remote developer. He just had to see my screen and hear me, no cameras, as he wanted. However the tool we were using immediately brought him into the conference and only after that asked for an obligatory camera permission. Wait, wait, what? Why? The guy uttered: “Can we switch to ***?”
“Hmm, OK, let’s do it.” At that moment I only smirked, thinking the guy was too hikikomori. And the life went on. Until one more incident happened that made me think something was definitely wrong.
That day I wanted to help an engineer from our team with debugging. And pair programming felt like a good way to do it. I was looking at the shared screen when suddenly… “You forgot to bind the context!”, said I. “Really? Where?”. And there was no way to point that out, not mentioning there was no way to quickly and in an easy manner fix it myself.
People had a pain, even pains, and I could help them. I started pondering, what did I personally dislike in that tool. And it turned out there existed such things.
I was looking for people having problems similar to ours, discussed that with them and at the end offered a solution. I didn’t take only one aspect, but many of them, everything that the tool was able to help with.
A few years ago I started working remotely.
And I still love this style, no more wasting two hours per day on commuting, no more sitting in the office. But it didn’t come that free. One of the major problems arising when you switch onto a fully remote work is how do you cooperate with your colleagues. An answer may feel pretty simple — just use any audio/video online communication tool. But wait a second it is not that straightforward.
The prototype
I do not want to brag much here, but I know quite some stuff about web-based real time communication, how it works, how to use it and how to build a product with it; as well as about the web development in general. I started small.
My personal requirements were:
- no obligatory logins or downloads
- support observer mode (with no cam or mic on)
- be able to share an exact window in Firefox
- work on a phone without installs*
- be able to assist remotely with mouse and keyboard
*) Only Android, because iOS has documented problems unfortunately. Although that part is not critical, since the tool is aimed on primarily desktop users.
The plans
- collect initial feedback
- add planned features
- promote remote work by creating great tools
What are those planned features, one may ask. A highly prioritized one that will help me in my daily life is of course an ability to assist the remote party actively, with a mouse and a keyboard. Another one requested just yesterday by a friend of mine who is going to test XROOM app in production with his company is screen recording. He often runs sales with demos through a video conference and wants to be able to analyze afterwards what went right and wrong. Of course there are tools for such a task out there, but here we can have it without downloads which may be important for people you are contacting. They only need a browser.
