Category Archives for Announcements

Now Available: Tiled Layout for Your Call Recordings

Up till now, Gruveo has supported a single layout for call recordings where the active speaker’s picture was automatically maximized to occupy most of the screen space. This has worked for a lot of our customers, but some were missing an option to have all call participants shown in pictures of about the same size, without the switching.

We are happy to announce that Gruveo now offers the option to use the “tiled” layout for call recordings that tiles the participant images on the screen. The new layout is available to all Gruveo users immediately. Check out the images below to compare the two layouts:

In the new “tiled” layout, all of the participants’ pictures are shown in about the same size on the recording.

The original “maximized” layout automatically maximizes the image of the current active speaker.

To use the tiled layout for your call recordings, go to your Call Recordings page, choose “Tiled” for the layout and click “Save Changes”. The new layout will apply to any subsequent call recordings you make. Please see our Help Center for details.

Gruveo for Developers

The tiled recording layout is available to the Gruveo Embed API users via the new optional layout parameter to the embed.toggleRecording() method. To set the layout of the recording, pass maximized (default) or tiled in the layout parameter when the recording is started. For more information, please see our JavaScript API Reference.

Support for setting the recording layout in the Gruveo SDKs for iOS and Android is underway and will be released soon.

Happy recording!

More Space for Your Call Recordings

We are happy to announce that all Gruveo subscribers now have 5 GB of recording space available in their account, up from 2 GB before. This upgrade comes at no extra cost for new as well as existing subscribers.

5 GB is roughly equivalent to 5 or more hours of HD call recordings. What’s more, Gruveo allows for quota overruns for the last recording made. This means that if you have less than 100% of your account’s recording space in use, you will always be able to record one more call – no matter how long it is.

You can learn more about our call recording feature in the Gruveo Help Center.

Gruveo Gets a Major Update for Better Compatibility, New Features

We have just rolled out an important update to the Gruveo web app that boasts compatibility improvements as well as exciting new features. Find the full scoop below.

Safari Is Now a First-Class Citizen

We have improved Safari 11 compatibility even though Safari’s WebRTC implementation remains limited. Switching from a one-on-one call to a group one or toggling call recording no longer means that the Safari users will automatically lose video. When switching to a group call, Gruveo will try to choose a video configuration suitable for most call participants, including the Safari ones. And toggling call recording will now have no negative effects for Safari users whatsoever.

Bye-Bye, Temasys WebRTC Plugin

The Temasys WebRTC plugin has served us well to enable Gruveo in the otherwise unsupported browsers (think Internet Explorer and older Safari), but the time has come to say goodbye. We dumped Internet Explorer support on the same day that plugin-less support for Safari 11 was released. And with older versions of Safari fading away, we feel that removing Temasys plugin support altogether will let us deploy our development resources more productively.

Safari Support Comes to the Embed API

In what has been a truly long wait for a lot of Gruveo developers out there, Safari support finally lands in the Gruveo Embed API. A newer version of the browser is required, namely Safari 11.1+ on macOS, or Safari on iOS 11.3+. See the Embed API documentation for the updated details on the supported browsers.

Dots in Handles and Room Names are Now Allowed

You can now use a dot (.) when registering a Gruveo handle or creating a call room. The handle or call room name cannot start or end with a dot, or have two or more dots next to each other. This change was prompted by more and more businesses looking to allocate multiple handles on Gruveo. Having the option to use the dot as a separator should give you more flexibility when getting Gruveo handles for your organization – think @acmeinc.support, @acmeinc.sales, @acmeinc.marketing etc.

A Better Call Button

We’ve listened to your feedback on the Gruveo call button, and we’ve made a couple of important changes. First of all, you can now explicitly choose whether clicking the button will start a video or a voice call. Second, we have removed the Gruveo branding and your @handle from the button, leaving the button title simply as “Video call” or “Voice call”, with a respective icon. These changes are aimed at making the button more versatile and its functionality more understandable to your website visitors.

Do you have any questions on today’s Gruveo update? Let us know in the comment section below, or get in touch with us directly!

Announcing the Gruveo Affiliate Program

We are excited to announce the launch of the Gruveo Affiliate Program! The program lets you make money by partnering with ​Gruveo as an affiliate and earning a whopping 25% recurring commission on any customers you refer.

Here is how it works: When you become an affiliate, we’ll provide you with a special affiliate link. You’ll then use that link to refer businesses in need of a​n easy-to-use video calling solution to Gruveo. When we receive a visitor through your affiliate link, we’ll associate that visitor with your affiliate account. If they then order a Gruveo subscription, you’ll receive a 25% commission on any payments they make.

The commissions are recurring, which means that you will receive income from referring a Gruveo subscriber for as long as they stay with us.

​We’ll also provide you with a special Affiliate ​Dashboard where you can monitor your affiliate account activity, as well as with text links and banners to help you successfully promote ​Gruveo.

To learn more and sign up as a Gruveo affiliate, head to our Affiliate Program page today!

Gruveo API Now Supports Uploading of Call Recordings via FTP/SFTP

Call recording is a standard feature of the Gruveo API and SDKs that allows you to obtain HD-quality recordings of your users’ conversations almost immediately after the call is over. Up till now, the API only supported uploading of the recordings to your Amazon S3 bucket, which wasn’t the most convenient choice for some users. By popular demand, we are now extending the API’s capabilities to also offer recording uploads via FTP/SFTP.

If you’d like FTP/SFTP uploading of call recordings to be set up for your API account, please contact us with the following information:

• Your API client ID (request one here)
• Protocol (FTP or SFTP)
• Hostname
• Port
• Username
• Password
• Directory (optional).

Please refer to the API/SDK documentation for details.

Test Drive Gruveo with Zapier

We have been working on developing Gruveo to work with Zapier and invite you to take it for a test drive. Zapier is an online automation tool that connects hundreds of apps, such as Slack, MailChimp, Calendly, and now Gruveo. You can automate repetitive tasks without coding or developers and it’s easy enough that anyone can build their own app workflows with just a few clicks.

The new integration provides you with a Zapier action to create a new Gruveo call room and get its name and URL. While very simple, this integration makes truly powerful workflows possible – for example, automatically creating a Gruveo room for your Calendly appointments and emailing the link to the invitee.

Zapier requires all new integrations to start in an invite-only test mode. To get your invite for Gruveo, simply shoot us a message:

Developer Alert: Updating the Static Embed Code for Chrome 64

The recently released Chrome 64 brought an important change whereby by default, camera and microphone permissions cannot be requested in cross-origin iframes such as the Gruveo embed. If you are using static HTML <iframe> code to embed Gruveo on your website, it is important to make sure that it includes the allow="microphone; camera" attribute as specified in our developer documentation. Otherwise, the Gruveo embed will be failing with the “Cannot access camera and/or microphone” message.

If you embed Gruveo using JavaScript, you don’t need to do anything because our JavaScript API inserts the allow attribute automatically.

We recommend using JavaScript to embed Gruveo to ensure that the latest compatible code is always used. If you are still using the static HTML method, now may be a good time to switch to the JavaScript approach instead. You can find the details in our API docs.

Gruveo Subscription Is Now 40% Off, Important Changes Coming on January 25

We have prepared some important changes to the Gruveo subscription pricing as well as to how free Gruveo calls are handled.

The Gruveo Subscription Is Now 40% Off

Over the past several weeks, we have been hard at work optimizing our server infrastructure to bring the costs down. This work is finally bearing fruit and we are happy to be able to pass the savings on to our subscribers. Effective immediately, we are slashing 40% off the Gruveo monthly subscription price.

If you already are a Gruveo subscriber, you can take advantage of the new pricing while keeping your Gruveo account. All you need to do is cancel your existing subscription and then reactivate it after the end of your billing cycle at the new price. See this article for details.

New Rules for Free Calls Starting January 25

Along with making the subscription even more affordable, we are also introducing important changes to the free usage of Gruveo.

Up till now, all one-on-one calls on Gruveo have been free and unlimited. At the same time, group calls have been automatically disconnected after 10 minutes unless a Gruveo subscriber joined the call. To reduce the confusion and let users experience Gruveo’s high-quality group calling better, we are introducing a unified 20-minute limit to all free calls. (A free call is a call with no logged in Gruveo subscribers on it.) The new limit will kick in on January 25.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• The new approach means that you will be able to enjoy Gruveo calls up to 20 minutes long with up to 12 people absolutely free of charge and without the need for an account.
• After your free call is automatically disconnected, you will be able to recreate it immediately for an unlimited number of times.
• If you are a Gruveo subscriber, just make sure you are logged in while joining your calls. That will lift the 20-minute free call limit as well as enable your other premium features.
• If you have been relying on Gruveo’s free calling to connect your website’s or app’s users, take a look at the Gruveo API, which we have available specifically for such integration cases.

We believe that the new subscription pricing as well as the free calling rules will make Gruveo more understandable and affordable. To start your free 14-day Gruveo trial, click here.

Announcing Caller Blocking and Chat History Emailing

We are excited to announce two new features that have just been added to Gruveo: caller blocking and chat history emailing.

Caller Blocking

Caller blocking is a new feature that lets you block callers from specific countries. One piece of feedback that we regularly hear from our users is that they sometimes get unwanted or mistaken calls from abroad. The issue is especially pronounced for owners of popular and easy-to-guess @handles.

With the new caller blocking feature, you can now block callers from unwanted countries with a couple of clicks. Here’s how:

1. Head to the new Caller Blocking page in your account on the Gruveo website.
2. Choose a country to block from the drop-down list and click “Add”.
3. Repeat for any other countries that you want to block calls from.
4. Click “Save changes”.

Done! You will no longer receive rings or missed call notifications for calls from the selected countries. Note that the callers will still be able to leave you a message if you have the Text Mail feature enabled.

Caller blocking lets you easily block unwanted calls from specific countries.

Chat History Emailing

Another piece of user feedback that we are addressing with the latest update is the ability to preserve the history of your in-call text chats. With this feature, the chat history is emailed to you immediately after each Gruveo call. No more worrying about losing that link or piece of important text pasted into the text chat!

For privacy reasons, chat history emailing is not enabled by default. Here is how to enable it:

1. Go to your account’s Notifications and Messages section on the Gruveo website.
2. Check the checkbox that says “Receive chat history for every call via email”.
3. Click “Save changes”.

Chat history emailing lets you receive chat logs for your Gruveo calls straight to your email inbox.

We hope you are as excited about caller blocking and chat history emailing as we are. These new features are available to all Gruveo subscribers immediately. If you are not yet a subscriber, start your free 14-day trial today:

Improvements to the Gruveo Experience on iOS

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been really busy improving the Gruveo call experience on iOS – both in Safari as well as the Gruveo app.

The Gruveo app for iOS now supports automatic call reconnection. If your Internet connection drops mid-call, the app will now try really hard to reconnect the call instead of ending it. We first introduced this advanced reconnection functionality in our web app, and now it’s present in all of the Gruveo apps out there, including the Android one.

The Gruveo web application has seen a nasty bug fixed where the whole device would freeze during a video call in Safari on iOS 11. Now the Gruveo experience in iOS 11 Safari is as smooth as ever.

Stay tuned for more updates!