BigBlueButton Screenshare Chrome Extension

By default Google Chrome does not allow sharing of your computer screen. In order for the WebRTC Screenshare to work in BigBlueButton on Google Chrome, you need to whitelist your domain(s). This way Google Chrome will permit sharing your screen.

Everyone who is planning on sharing their screen in Google Chrome on BigBlueButton 2.0 using WebRTC will need to have an extension added. This set of instructions indicates how to whitelist your [institution's] domain(s) and publish the resulting extension to Google's extensions store.

In most use cases, a presenter will only need to add the extension from the Google Chrome store once. BigBlueButton administrators will need to create such

Instructions for presenters

Just add the Google Chrome extension provided from your institution to your browser. It should look like https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bigbluebutton-screenshare/

Instructions for administrators for pushing a [newer] version of the Chrome Extension to the Google Store:

Download a copy of the files in this reposiory. Add the correct domain(s) for your institution in manifest.json.

"externally_connectable": {
   "matches": [
       "*://*.bigbluebutton.org/*",
       "*://*.YOUR_DOMAIN.com/*"
     ]

Bump up the version of the extension in manifest.json and save all files.

Navigate to chrome://extensions/ in Google Chrome. Enable 'Developer Mode' via the checkmark. Remove any existing versions of this extension. Select Load unpacked extension... and navigate to the folder containing manifest.json

If you are able to use this unpacked extension and it is working correctly, it is now safe to upload it to the Chrome WebStore.

Create a ZIP archive of the files in this directory (you can omit README.md)

screenshare-chrome-extension
├── background-script.js
├── icon.png
└── manifest.json

Sign in https://chrome.google.com/webstore/developer/ with Google developer user id and upload the ZIP archive

After about 30-60 minutes the version of the application will be increased, indicating that the publishing of a new version was successful. Remove the unpacked version of the extension in your browser and install the packed version from the WebStore:

LINK = https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bigbluebutton-screenshare/

Now you should have a link to your extension and a key. Next you need to configure your server to use those for screensharing.

To configure your HTML5 client:

If you installed the client as a package bbb-html5, edit /usr/share/meteor/bundle/programs/server/assets/app/config/settings-production.json Alternatively, if you are running a the client in development environment, edit ~/dev/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton-html5/private/config/settings-development.json

Populate the kurento section of the settings for screensharing with

"chromeExtensionKey": "YOUR_KEY",
"chromeExtensionLink": "YOUR_LINK"

Save the file and restart the client sudo systemctl restart bbb-html5 in the case of packaged client.

To configure your Flash client:

Populate the key and link into /var/www/bigbluebutton/client/conf/config.xml

<module name="ScreenshareModule"
                        (...)
                        offerWebRTC="true"
                        chromeExtensionLink="YOUR_LINK"
                        chromeExtensionKey="YOUR_KEY"
                        (...)
                />

Make sure the property offerWebRTC is set to true as above. Save the file and restart BigBlueButton via sudo bbb-conf --restart

You should be able to share your screen from a BigBlueButton meeting now using Google Chrome.

Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bigbluebutton-screenshare/akgoaoikmbmhcopjgakkcepdgdgkjfbc