April 2023 Summaries

Daily's new Prebuilt Integrations API allows developers to easily embed third-party services into their Daily-powered video applications with just a few lines of code. The API provides a flexible way to integrate various services, such as Miro virtual whiteboards and CometChat chat widgets, into Daily calls. The API can be used to enable integrations before or after the user joins a call, and it supports custom tray buttons and sidebar views. Developers can use the API's `customIntegrations` property to configure integrations with specific settings, such as icon URLs, labels, and locations. The API also provides a way to set up custom button handlers for integration toggling, allowing developers to create unique experiences within their Daily-powered video applications.

This beta release of Daily Prebuilt's Prebuilt Integrations API allows developers to easily integrate third-party applications into the UI of Daily Prebuilt, a fully-working video call that can be embedded in an app in minutes. With just a few lines of code, developers can add features such as whiteboarding via Miro, collaboration on documents via Google Docs or Notion, watching a video on YouTube, communicating in long-form chat via CometChat, and adding any hosted application they've built themselves. The API provides complete flexibility in the features available to users, allowing developers to integrate users' favorite apps and those key to their use case. This beta release expands what developers can create with Daily Prebuilt, offering a new set of customization possibilities and further enabling a variety of use cases.

Daily React is a helper library for building Daily applications in React, providing hooks, components, and utilities to help developers build faster with less code. It was created based on the experience of developing Daily Prebuilt and supporting customers at scale, focusing on overcoming challenges such as client performance and browser quirks. The library offers best practices for managing state mutations, optimizing client performance, and working with WebRTC specifications. By using Daily React, developers can reduce their exposure to common pitfalls and breaking changes, improve the aesthetics of their code, and simplify the process of building excellent video and audio apps.

At Daily, they prioritize releasing with minimal issues and continuously improve their testing processes as a test engineer. They focus on shift-left testing practices, which involve shifting testing activities earlier in the software development life cycle to shorten the feedback loop. This approach helps in identifying and addressing issues faster, improving efficiency, quality, and reducing costs. By communicating earlier and more often, writing testable code and automation, running tests regularly, and using automated tooling to find non-functional issues, companies can adopt a shift-left approach that leads to better software development outcomes.

In this article, we learned how to add keyboard shortcuts for call controls in a Daily-powered video app built with Vue.js using the VueUse utility library and the Composition API hook setup. We covered two possible implementations of this feature: The setup composition API hook and the more recent and standard `<script setup>` syntax. We also discussed the library we intend to use for this feature, which is the VueUse package. Additionally, we learned how to make our demo compatible with VueUse by modifying the `<script>` section. We then added the functionality for toggling the audio or video inside the setup hook using combinations and whenever. Finally, we notified users about the keyboard shortcuts for call controls by providing awareness of this feature through the `title` html attribute for each of the call control buttons.

Today, we're excited to announce our partnership with Krisp, the world's leading AI-powered Voice Productivity solution, to enhance our audio capabilities. This partnership will provide Daily's customers plug & play access to world-class noise cancellation capabilities, helping them build immersive live video experiences with crystal clear audio. Krisp's advanced noise cancellation technology uses AI to eliminate background noise, making it easier for users to have clear conversations, especially in noisy environments where background noise can be a significant distraction and impediment to productivity. By integrating Krisp's Voice AI technology into Daily's platform, customers and partners can ensure their users can enjoy uninterrupted communication, whether they are on a call in a crowded room or recording a podcast in a noisy environment. The partnership aims to provide high-quality audio that is key to unlocking productivity and interactivity, reducing the need for artificial workarounds like "muting" that hamper interactivity and productivity. With Krisp's noise cancellation enabled, users can enjoy seamless communication with reduced cognitive burden on participants. Daily customers can enable Krisp within their calls through various methods, including updating input settings or using the prebuilt video call UI. The technology is currently supported on desktop browsers and will be rolled out to mobile platforms soon. As part of the partnership, Daily customers will receive 100,000 free Krisp-enabled minutes per month starting July 1st, 2023, with usage in excess charged at $0.0002 per minute.

The use of Builder classes can simplify the interaction between Kotlin and Java by providing a clear way for users to build objects step-by-step, making the code more readable and reducing the likelihood of mix-ups. Default arguments on methods can be used to make functions more convenient for Java developers, while @JvmOverloads can generate multiple versions of a function for each combination of parameters. Companion verbosity in Kotlin can be avoided by using @JvmStatic or @JvmField annotations, which allow for more direct access to static fields and functions from Java. Specifying where checked exceptions are thrown is essential when calling Kotlin APIs from Java, as Kotlin does not share this concept with Java. Finally, generating default interface methods for Java interfaces can help bridge the gap between Kotlin and Java, while avoiding internal visibility modifier in API design is recommended to prevent accidental usage.