Azure Communication Services January 2024 Feature Updates

The Azure Communication Services team is excited to share several new product and feature updates released in December 2023. (You can view previous blog articles here.)  

This month’s update describes the features below:

• Call Diagnostics
• Updates for WebJS Calling SDK
  • Media Calling Statistics
  • Video Constraints
  • Data Channel

Call Diagnostics

Azure Communication Services Call Diagnostics is now available in public preview. Call Diagnostics is an Azure Monitor experience that delivers tailored insight through specialized telemetry and diagnostic pages in the Azure portal.

End-users can face a variety of issues in their voice & video calling experience such as poor internet connectivity, software compatibility issues, and technical difficulties with devices. These issues can be disruptive for call participants, whether they're a patient joining a doctor’s call, or a student taking a lesson with their teacher. For developers, diagnosing and fixing these issues can be time-consuming and frustrating.

Call Diagnostics acts as an investigator for calls. When a developer encounters an end-user reported issue, Call Diagnostics gives them the data to quickly understand what occurred and how the issue can be mitigated in the future. Call Diagnostics not only provides raw access to data through Azure Monitor patterns, but visualizations, detailed timeline views, and troubleshooting insights that give developers command over their application.

Call Diagnostics pairs with our existing UI SDK calling composites to provide developers reliable video calling experiences that are easy to develop and incorporate best practices to provide a UX for end-users to avoid or self-remediate issues (e.g. pre-call flows).

Learn more in our documentation and see how Azure can help you make every call a successful one.

WebJS Calling Updates

We’re happy to share that several of the features for WebJS Calling including, Media Quality Statics, Video Constraints, and Data Channel have moved to general availability.

Media Quality Statistics

Developers can leverage the Media Quality Statistics API to better understand their video calling quality and reliability experience real time from within the calling SDK. By giving developers the ability to understand from the client side what their end customers are experiencing they can delve deeper into understanding and mitigating any issues that arise for their end users.

Media Quality Statistics

Video Constraints

With Video Constraints developers can better manage the overall quality of their calls. For example, if a developer knows that a participant will join with a poor internet connection the developer can limit video resolution size on the sender side to smaller value so that there will be less bandwidth needed. The result of this is an improved calling experience for the end user.

Improve your calling experience with Video Constraints

Data Channel

The Data Channel API enables real-time messaging during audio and video calls. This functionality will enable developers their own data pipeline and vehicle that will allow them to send their own unique messages to remote participants on a call. This enhances communication capabilities and allows users to connect directly to remote participants when the scenario requires.

Get started with Data Channel today

You can find out more about these Azure Communication Services updates and more in our documentation.