What is PILOS
PILOS (Platform for Interactive Live-Online Seminars) is a front end for BigBlueButton, developed at TH Mittelhessen (THM). It includes user and room management, load balancing for multiple BigBlueButton servers, and various tools for administrators. PILOS also creates and archives recordings. Access is via this URL: https://pilos.hnee.de/ and by logging in with your username and password.
Links:
- THM quick guide: https://thm-health.github.io/PILOS-Docs/user/intro
- Admin documentation: https://thm-health.github.io/PILOS/
- Github source code: https://github.com/THM-Health/PILOS/
- Community: https://matrix.to/#/#pilos-de:matrix.org
PILOS uses the current version (3.x) of the BigBlueButton server in the background.
What is the difference to the previous BBB server?
What you know as the BBB server https://bbb.hnee.de/ was actually an alternative front end for BigBlueButton servers: Greenlight. This took care of room and user management. Another piece of software, Scalelite, was responsible for load balancing and also managed the recordings.
Comparison between Greenlight and PILOS: https://thm-health.github.io/PILOS/docs/administration/greenlight
With the switch from Greenlight version 2.x to 3.x, it became impossible to continue using our previous Windows Active Directory (LDAP) for user logins, which is why we continue to use version 2.x. This version only uses older BigBlueButton servers of version 2.x. Updating the Greenlight version, which has been specially adapted to our needs (download, etc.), would only be possible at extremely high cost. We have therefore decided to run the old ‘BBB version’ in parallel with PILOS and phase it out.
Please note:
- Except for the server name, the room URLs are identical between the systems, as they were taken over from the old BBB:
Previously: https://bbb.hnee.de/b/abo-def-abc -> now also works: https://pilos.hnee.de/b/abo-def-abc - Content and recordings remain on the respective system where they were created. They are not transferred!
- Rooms that you can still create in the old BBB will be transferred to the new PILOS system (without content!). But not the other way around!
- If you want to record online seminars, you must enable this in the room settings before (!) starting a room.