External Users

If you would like to request access to a KUDOgov account, please review the requirements below then contact your dedicated CSM or CSR and copy support@kudoway.com on the request.

Internal Users

Before an account can be created, it must be formally requested. KUDO’s DevOps is responsible for the entire account lifecycle, from the time that the account is provisioned and access is granted to the time that the account is disabled/removed. 

Requesting Access: Contact DevOps and use the form that was created for this purpose by DevOps. Be prepared to provide detailed explanation, including at minimum:

• Solid business justification for requesting access
• Intended usage and level of access requested
• Anticipated duration for the requested access, start and end date
• Name and the contact information of the designated approving manager
• Other attributes if requested by DevOps or InfoSec

Review of the Access Request: Every access request requires (1) the approval of the requestor’s manager, and (2) the approval of the information security department, before account is created and access is provisioned.

NOTE: The requestor and the approving manager can’t be the same individual.

Privileged Access: KUDO DevOps enforces Role-Based-Access-Control (RBAC), hence, accounts with privileged access must be reserved for only exceptional circumstances, where elevated privileges are absolutely necessary to allow the requesters to complete their job duties.

NOTE: Individuals requesting privileged access, must be ready to comply with multi-factor authentication requirements that will be imposed by DevOps. 

What is SSO?

Single sign-on (SSO) is a user authentication tool that enables users to securely access multiple applications and services using just one set of credentials. IT admins can use a single portal for controlling their employee's access. In large corporations, this is ideal because new employees that join their company often need access to multiple software services. But, having the new employee sign up for each service on their own can be cumbersome and time-consuming. SSO centralizes the process by allowing an IT admin to give access for a new employee to multiple services at once through a single login profile.

How do we support SSO?

KUDO supports SSO via SAML 2.0.

SAML lets users sign in after successfully authenticating against your SAML identity provider and will also automatically create an account upon sign-in if one doesn't exist. The most common types of SAML implementations we support are via 3rd party vendors like OneLogin or Okta, but you can also integrate Active Directory with KUDO via SAML using ADFS.

What do I need to know before I set up SSO?

• KUDO servers (EU, COM, GOV, CA) are not connected with each other.. The SSO configuration applied to one of them, would not be applied to the other server. 
• The user role will be automatically provisioned when a user gets invited to a session. By default, the user role is a participant, unless we receive another parameter from the SAML response. 
• KUDO acts as the Service Provider (SP) and offers automatic user provisioning. You do not need to register as a user on KUDO. Once KUDO receives a SAML response from the Identity Provider (IdP), KUDO checks if this user exists. If the user does not exist, KUDO creates a user account automatically with the received name ID, using the default role, participant, if we do not receive another role parameter from the SAML response.

Prerequisites

1. To get started, we will need the following information:

• Your Client Account
• Your Organization name
• Identity Provider (IDP)

2. Once we set up the Organization for you in KUDO, we will be providing you with:

• ACS URL (Consumer URL)
• Login URL
  
• Single Logout URL
• EntityID/Audience (the name of the SAML 2.0 connector, i.e kudo-sso);

3. Identity Provider (IDP)

• Login to your IDP, having Admin rights;
• Add a SAML connector
  • Add the info we've provided you at step 2.
• Create and map the below custom parameters/fields:

  Name	Value
  First Name	first_name
  Last Name	last_name
  Email	email
  Role	participant, interpreter, operator or viewer

  
  If not assigned a role in the IDP, KUDO will assign a participant role, by default
  • • once a user gets invited to a session with another role, it will be associated with the user account. Upon login, the user can select what role is he/she planning to use
• Save the configuration
• Download the SAML metadata and sent it to us at support@kudoway.com

4. Please provide us a list of the users that will be using SSO, as we need to configure the user profiles in our system to ensure they are part of the organization on our end.

5. We will get back to you with a confirmation message. Once configured, users can sign in with SSO.

Important note: This article refers to the KUDO multilingual captioning feature used during meetings supported by human interpreters. KUDO AI-powered meetings can support more captioned languages.

KUDO's multilingual captioning feature is based on speech-to-text technology. KUDO captioning feature does not operate the translation of the speaker's speech, which is being done by human professional interpreters. The feature only listens to the voice of the interpreters present in the meeting, in order to generate live captions in several languages. This makes the KUDO captioning feature a highly accurate tool for live multilingual captions.

The feature supports the following languages:

• English
• French
• Spanish
• German
• Portuguese
• Italian
• Korean
• Japanese
• Chinese (Mandarin)
• Cantonese
• Arabic
• Russian
• Turkish
• Bulgarian
• Estonian
• Greek
• Irish
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Maltese
• Slovak
• Slovenian

Refer to these articles to learn how to use the Captioning feature during a KUDO meeting, and how to schedule a KUDO meeting with the Captioning feature as the meeting organizer.

If you do not have access to this feature from your KUDO account, please contact your KUDO representative.

Some users find it useful to join a KUDO meeting on two different devices. Some use cases are:

• An Operator who wants to join the meeting as a Participant in order to use their mic+camera 
• An Interpreter who wants to listen to their boothmate and the relay language from another booth at the same time
• A technician who wants to join as both a Participant and Interpreter for testing purposes

Users can only log in on one device at a time using the same email address. If you try to log in on a second device using the same email you used to join the meeting on the first device, you will automatically be logged out of the first device. If you would like to join a meeting on two devices, please use a different email address on the second device.

Once your meeting has been created, you can embed the KUDO meeting on your website through the use of our Viewer widgets. You can access these widgets from your Client account. Depending on the meeting type(Small Meeting, Large Meeting, or Event), you will be presented with the following options in your meeting's Information tab.

Small Meeting

You can access the code to embed the Viewer link on your website by scrolling to the bottom of your screen on your meeting's Information tab, finding the Viewer section, and clicking Copy Widget Code. 

• This Viewer widget allows attendees to watch the session in Real Time with no delay. 
• Attendees will need to enter a Display Name and Email Address to watch the meeting
• With this option, there is a limit to the number of users who can connect to the meeting using this option. That limit can be obtained by using our System Capacity Calculator. 

The widget code looks like this: 

<div style="position:relative;"><iframe width="100%" height="80%" src="https://live.kudoway.com/br/XXXXXXXXXXXX" frameborder="0 allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen style="min-height:750px"></iframe></div>

Large Meeting

Large Meetings provide you with three options for Viewers to watch your meeting. You can access these options by scrolling to the bottom of your screen on your meeting's Information tab, finding the Viewer section, and clicking Copy Widget Code. 

Real Time Stream

The Real Time Stream widget allows you to embed the KUDO meeting directly on your website. 

• Attendees to watch the meeting in real time, with no delay. 
• Users need to enter a Display Name and Email Address to watch the meeting. 
• There is a limit to the number of users who can connect to the meeting using this option. That limit can be obtained by using our System Capacity Calculator. 

The widget code looks like this: 

<div style="position:relative;"><iframe width="100%" height="80%" src="https://live.kudoway.com/br/XXXXXXXXXXXX" frameborder="0 allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen style="min-height:750px"></iframe></div>

Broadcasting 

The Broadcasting widget allows you to stream the KUDO meeting directly to your website using HTTP Live Streaming(HLS).

• There is a delay in the audio/video signal of 15-20 seconds.
• Users do not need to enter a Display Name nor Email Address
• With this option, you can have an unlimited number of Viewers watching the meeting

The widget code looks like this: 

<div id="kudo_wrapper" class="kudo-widget"></div>
<script src="https://kudo-widget.s3.amazonaws.com/live/main.js"></script>
<script>window.mid = "XXXXXXXXXXXX"</script>

Smart Viewer Link

The Smart Viewer Link allows you to share a Viewer link with a language pre-selected for the user. For example, if you have a meeting with English, French, and Japanese speakers, a unique link will be generated for English, French, and Japanese. When a user clicks the English link and joins the meeting, their Language Selector will automatically be set to English. 

• There is a limit to the number of users who can connect to the meeting using this option. That limit can be obtained by using our System Capacity Calculator. 

The Smart Viewer Link looks like this:
https://live.kudoway.eu/k8/XXXXXXXXXXX/live?language=english

Event

You can access the code to embed the Viewer link on your website by scrolling to the bottom of your screen on your meeting's Information tab, finding the Viewer section, and clicking Copy Widget Code. 

• This Viewer widget allows attendees to watch the session in Real Time with no delay. 
• Attendees will need to enter a Display Name and Email Address to watch the meeting
• With this option, there is a limit to the number of users who can connect to the meeting using this option. That limit can be obtained by using our System Capacity Calculator. 

The widget code looks like this: 

<div style="position:relative;"><iframe width="100%" height="80%" src="https://live.kudoway.com/br/XXXXXXXXXXXX" frameborder="0 allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen style="min-height:750px"></iframe></div>

You can customize the email that your attendees receive their meeting invites from. By default, the invitation sender email is KUDO's support email address(support@kudoway.com). 

If you would like to change the sender email address to your own custom address, follow these steps:

1. Sign-in into your KUDO Client account
2. In the top-right corner, click the drop-down menu next to your account name. Select My Account
3. Navigate to the Mailer section in the menu on the left
   1. Toggle the Customized Sender Email button on. 
   2. Add a Sender name
   3. Add a Sender email
   4. Click Save

Note: If you would like no emails to be sent at all, you can change the Sender email  to a non-valid address (as shown in the screenshot below). These settings are applied at the account level, so we will use the chosen email address for all the meetings created under that account. 

Join the meeting as an Onsite or Online Participant

Participants can join a Hybrid Meeting as an On-site or Online Participant from a customized onboarding page. On-site Participants will rely on the meeting venue's microphone, camera, and interpretation distribution systems, and will not have access to the microphone/camera buttons or Language Selector on their Kudo Meeting Console.  Online Participants will experience Hybrid meetings just like any normal Kudo meeting, and will have full access to the microphone/camera buttons and interpretation Language Selector. 

To join a Hybrid meeting:

• Click the meeting link and enter your Name & Email address on the meeting's landing page.  
  • Select I’m an on-site Participant to join as On-site 
  • Select I’m an online Participant to join as Online

Request-to-Speak as an Onsite Participant

While On-site Participants do not have a Mic On button to use their device's built-in microphone, they can still utilize Kudo's Request-to-Speak function in conjunction with the venue's microphone system. 

• Click on Request to Speak. The Operator and Host will see the request in the Request-to-Speak List
• The Operator or Host will accept the request. The On-site Participant's Request-to-Speak button will change to Done Speaking and the On-site Participant is listed in the Request-to-Speak List list as accepted. 
• The On-Site Participant can now speak into the venue's microphone system.

Access meeting documents

Just like Online Participants, On-site Participants are able to access all meeting documents. 

• Click on Documents tab to access all documents available for Participants in the Hybrid meeting 

Switching Participants from Online to On-site, and vice versa as an Operator or Host

An Operator or Host can switch a Participant from Online to On-site or vice versa from the Meeting Console.

• Go to the Users List → Click on the "…" menu next to the Participant's name
  • Click on (On-Site) Change to Online to switch a Participant from On-site to Online. The Participant will receive a pop-up informing them of the switch.
  • Click on (Online) Change to On-site to switch a Participant from Online to On-Site. The Participant will receive a pop-up informing them of the switch.

With KUDO, you can stream your meeting directly to your Youtube, Facebook, or IBM page using the Large Meeting format. For more about KUDO's built-in streaming capabilities, click here. 

If you do not wish to use the Large Meeting format, but still want to stream your meeting, you can stream to all of the above platforms and more using OBS (Open Broadcaster Software). 

This tutorial is made for Youtube Streaming, however, it can be applied to other platforms as well

Get your YouTube stream key

You can not livestream on YouTube until you verify the account with a linked mobile number. Head to the verification page, log in to your account, and follow the on-screen instructions. Also, note that it takes 24 hours until your Youtube account is approved for streaming.

1. Once verified, head to the YouTube Studio dashboard. Next, click the red camera Create icon located in the top right corner. After that, click Go Live in the small drop-down menu, as shown below.
2. On the following screen, select the Stream tab from the left side of the screen. A form appears to enter the stream’s name and set its privacy mode, description, and category. Be sure to select an age limit (if any), and then click Create Stream to continue.

3. With your stream created, a control panel will provide a preview window and tabs for stream settings, analytics, and stream health.

   The Stream Settings tab is open by default. Look directly under the label to find the stream key you need for OBS. Click Copy to send the 16-character string to the clipboard. You can also click the Reveal eye button to expose the string for 10 seconds and enter them manually in OBS.

   Whatever you do, keep this number secret. You don’t want anyone else to have it since they could stream on your account without your permission.

Link OBS to YouTube

1. Download OBS from the official website and install it as you would any other program. Run it as an administrator, and head into the Settings panel using the relevant button located in the bottom right corner
2. OPTIONAL: On the following pop-up screen, use the Video and Output tabs to select your chosen frame rates, resolution, and bit rate — they control your audio quality. To see the ideal settings for YouTube, check out Google’s relevant support page.
3.  Go to the Stream tab using the left-hand menu and select YouTube/YouTube Gaming from the Service drop-down menu.
4. In the Stream Key field, type or paste your YouTube stream key. That links OBS with YouTube so the software streams straight to your channel.
5. Click Audio on the left-hand menu. Each device on that page represents one potential audio source in your livestream. If you want viewers to hear the meeting or desktop audio, set one of the Desktop Audio settings to your system’s audio output. If you want your viewers to hear you, select your microphone from the drop-down next to Mix/Auxiliary Audio.
6. Exit the settings panel by clicking Apply > OK.
7. In the main window, click the Plus icon under the Sources heading toward the bottom.Then select the source of your video the pop-up menu (Game Capture will capture full screen).You have a few different options for capturing your footage. You can capture any full-screen application, a specific window, or a foreground window. You can also force scaling, capture third-party overlays, and more. Click OK to complete.
8. Want to add your headshot using an external camera? Click the Plus icon under Sources again, but this time, select Video Capture Device. Select your camera from the list of options under the Device drop-down and decide on its quality and FPS. When finished, click OK.

Start streaming

With all of the settings above in place and your YouTube channel configured to accept your stream, there’s only one thing to do: Start streaming! If you want to start right away, click the Start Streaming button located in the bottom right corner.

On your YouTube stream’s dashboard, click the Go Live button in the top left corner. Once YouTube receives the OBS broadcast, video and audio appear in the dashboard’s preview pane. The feed then moves over to its public page 10 to 20 seconds thereafter due to a slight delay.

When you’re finished streaming, say goodbye to anyone watching and click the Stop Streaming button in OBS.

Limitations

• Since OBS will stream what is opened on your desktop (a browser window), it will not stream the KUDO language channels. It will only stream what is opened on your browser (for example the Original Audio).
• Make sure to adjust OBS to stream just the video content, and not messages, polls, or documents. 
• Stopping a meeting on KUDO, will not stop the stream using OBS. The stream will need to be stopped manually within OBS. 

These are the technical components to achieve a dedicated hybrid configuration where presenters, attendees, and interpreters can attend the meeting on-site or via KUDO. Users can gather in the meeting space using their mobile devices and headphones to access the KUDO Meeting App. 

Firewall Restrictions

KUDO Meeting requires specific domains, HTTPS certificate verification, ports, and IP ranges allowed to connect to the multilingual meeting. For the technical specifications on Network Firewall Settings, you can click here.

On-site Computer

One computer (per room) must provide audio, video, and slide presentations from the meeting space to KUDO for remote participants and interpreters. We recommend adding another computer and internet connection for redundancy or a separate slide presentation input for interpreters.

Minimum specifications:

• Windows 7+ or MacOS 10.11+
• Intel Core i7+, 16GB+ RAM
• Video ports for the on-site display
• Chrome (preferred) or Firefox browser
• 20 Mbps down / 10 Mbps up (minimum)
• High-priority bandwidth
• Open TCP port 443 for SSL
• Open UDP Port 3478 for A/V stream
• Firewall or Endpoint Security software to allow the above ports

Audio 

• Minimum, a two-channel  USB audio interface is required to upstream the on-site program audio to KUDO; and downstream the KUDO Meeting audio to on-site. We recommend using professional microphones and choosing from brands like Focusrite, Shure, and Behringer.

Video

• A single input USB video capture card is required to upstream the on-site program video to KUDO. The same device of converter needed depends on the video format to be captured, like HDMI or SDI. We recommend choosing from brands like BlackMagic, Magwell, and AJA. 
• Video input is not required for KUDO AI Meetings.

Attendee WiFi

Attendees will follow the meeting on the KUDO Meeting App on their smartphones using their headphones. For a reliable mobile connection to the KUDO Meeting App on-site:

• 802.11ac/ax with isolated 5Ghz
• 1 Mbps downstream
• AC1750 to AC3200 with Wave2 or better
• 3x3 MU-MIMO I/O Antennas or better
• Open UDP port

KUDO Meeting Configuration

To optimize the meeting for the in-person attendees by saving battery and bandwidth on their mobile, please make the following adjustments in the Mobile Settings section in Advanced Settings while creating the KUDO Meeting.

• Turn OFF - Camera Access
• Turn OFF - Live Video Stream

We recommend creating the meeting in Request to Speak mode for the Host and Operator to control the speaking queue if hosting in-person and remote participants. 

KUDO Links

KUDO will produce a set of URLs for the various roles supporting the meeting. 

• PARTICIPANT LINK: For the on-site technical team to upstream the audio and video to KUDO via the on-site computer, and remote Participants join virtually. Participants can listen to interpretation, request to speak, and use the chat.
• VIEWER LINK: To join the meeting, in-person and remote attendees. Viewers can listen to interpretation but cannot request to speak or use the chat.

Additional Resources

For further assistance with KUDO's audio and video room integration, check out KUDO's help center for detailed instructions and troubleshooting tips. You can also contact KUDO's support team for personalized assistance.

VPNs will always decrease your internet speed due to the processes involved when your internet traffic is tunneled through a remote server.

This article covers:

What is a VPN?

How using a VPN affects internet speed?

• Latency

• Encryption

• VPN Server Load

What is a VPN ?

Simply put, a VPN stands between your computer and the internet. Imagine that you're on your computer and the cloud is the internet. Normally, your computer accesses the cloud directly  ("internet") via your internet service provider. 

When using a VPN, your internet traffic is routed through the VPN server (which can be in a different city/country/continent), so the VPN server is accessing the internet on your behalf.

How using a VPN affects internet speed?

A VPN will always decrease your internet speed, as it adds a number of steps that were not initially present in your connection to KUDO. The main reasons for a decrease in internet speed are:

Latency

Latency represents the amount of time between a user action and the resulting response. For example, the delay between when a meeting attendee clicks on a different language option during a meeting, and the time the audio reaches the attendee. 

The main cause of latency when using a VPN is the physical distance between locations where the data is accessed and delivered. When a user makes an Internet request, the farther the request and subsequent response have to travel, the more delay the meeting attendee will experience. 

Suppose Cecilia is based in Spain, and she uses a VPN server from Greece to connect to one of the meetings. Every time her computer communicates over the internet, it must send the request all the way to Greece, and then her VPN service will decrypt the request and forward it to KUDO. KUDO will then send a response back to the VPN server in Greece, and finally, the VPN will encrypt this response and send it to Cecilia in Spain.

Encryption

Different VPN's might be using different level of encryption and different implementation processes. The encryption/decryption process takes time, and it could add noticeable latency to your KUDO meeting.

VPN Server Load

When there are too many users connected to one VPN server (VPN customers choosing the same VPN server location as you do), the connection speed drops. 

Suppose Nils is connecting to a VPN server at the same time as 1,000 other users, and the server only has enough capacity to handle 300 requests at a time. The server will likely get overloaded and start queueing or dropping requests, slowing load times for Nils and many of the VPN’s other users. This experience is especially common with free and discount VPN services.

If you are running macOS Catalina or a later version, you must grant access to the Screen Recording Permission in order to share your screen during a KUDO call.

How to enable screen sharing for KUDO

1. When you first join a KUDO meeting on macOS, you’ll be asked to enable the Screen Recording permission for your browser.

This can also be done manually from the Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Security & Privacy.

2. Select the Privacy tab, then Screen Recording;

3. Select the tickbox next to the browser you use to allow it to record your screen.

4. In order for the changes to take effect, you will need to quit the selected browser.

5. Open your browser and rejoin your video call. You should be able to screen share.

This article covers the bandwidth requirements for using KUDO. In order to check the WebRTC bandwidth output of your network, you can take one of these tests:

• For US-based users; 
• For EU based users;

General Meeting Video Quality

During a KUDO meeting, the video quality dynamically adjusts based on the strength of a user's network bandwidth. This is done by sending feedback data packets to the people on the Floor (participants that have shared their video) informing them about your network bandwidth and what video quality it's able to support. 

The video bit-rate of the participants sharing their camera will be automatically adjusted based on the other participants' network conditions. The network stability and speed of the latter ones directly affect the quality of the video that will be shown on the Floor.

Note: By default, when creating a meeting the settings video and audio settings are set to Adaptive. While these can be changed, we suggest keeping them as such, for a better overall experience.

Bandwidth requirements for different meeting qualities

For various resolutions and quality combinations, the bandwidth requirements are outlined below.

• Excellent - None or imperceptible impairments in media
• Acceptable - Some impairments in media, leading to some momentary disruptions

Audio and Video Streams for PC (Active Participants)

For the given qualities and resolutions, all the following conditions must met.

Audio only streams (Interpreters)

For the given qualities, the following conditions must be met.  

Audio and Video Streams resolution

• PC: The default video setting is of 640x480 pixels @ 30 fps;
• Android: The default video setting is of 352x288 @ 30 fps in Android;
• iOS: The default video setting is of 640x480 pixels @ 30 fps for iOS;