Obtaining Credentials from Twilio for BBB Dial-in Setup

The built-in WebRTC-based audio in BigBlueButton is generally very high quality, but you may still want students to be able to dial into the conference bridge using a telephone number.

For example, some students might have poor connectivity and face crackling or delayed audio during an online class. Or, some online classes are just lectures that students only need to listen to.

If you have been running BigBlueButton servers for a while, you might have received complaints from your users about poor audio quality. Integrating a phone number into your online classes is a great way to mitigate such audio issues.

Creating a Twilio Account

If you don't have an existing Twilio account, you may Sign Up with this Referral Link to get $10 Free Credit.

If you are a non-profit organisation, you may get credit worth $500 from Twilio.

Setting up Your Twilio Elastic SIP Trunk

Login to your Twilio account and navigate to the Dashboard. Go to Elastic SIP Trunking from the dropdown menu on the left side. Click on Trunks to provision an Elastic SIP Trunk.

Key steps to perform:

1. Termination URL — Give a unique identifier (e.g. your project name) to identify your Termination SIP URI. This URI will be used to set up FreeSWITCH in BigBlueButton later.

2. Originating URI — Give the public IP of your BigBlueButton server in the format: sip:BBB_PUBLIC_IP (if you can't find this, you can ask us for your BBB Server IP).

3. IP Access Control Lists — Go to Elastic SIP Trunking > Authentication > IP / CIDR Access Control Lists and add the public IP of your BigBlueButton server in the format: BBB_PUBLIC_IP/32.

4. Credential Lists — Add a credential. Enter a name and use your Twilio username and password.

That's all you need to set up a phone number for your BigBlueButton classes. For additional information, check out the getting started guide on Elastic SIP Trunking.

After the above steps, create a Credential by following the link.

Credentials Needed for BBB Configuration

You should now have the following credentials. These are needed to configure your BBB server with your Twilio number for the dial-in feature:

MY_TWILIO_NO
NO_EXTENSION
MY_TWILIO_TERMINATION_URI
MY_TWILIO_USERNAME
MY_TWILIO_PASSWORD

If you face any problem, feel free to connect with your Personal Support Manager over WhatsApp or Email — or if you are new to our site, just drop an email at info@bigbluebutton.host.