Video Chat applications are an essential place where meetings happen in the present day. It is not just true for remote companies, but video chat interaction apps are the meeting space for hybrid companies and physical offices too. Not just the offices, video chat apps are use for all sorts of meetings, whether family, friends, teammates, or businesses. In this guide, we will discuss the development of a Video chat API for Android and what features make for a good Video Application.
Incorporating Video Conferencing Options and Related features
Best Chat APIs engage the users and help them feel more connected. But the app should have the best features to get the most out of it. A feature-rich video app can empower the users to be dynamic and fruitful, irrespective of their location. To develop an effective app, these are the different video conferencing options to choose from:
Face-to-face calls
One-to-one calls make it easier for the employees to work with colleagues. It makes the operations of your business smoother and effective. This is a standard capability that most of the video chat APIs offer and you may want to have all the vital features at your convenience. One-to-one calls are imperative to all remotely working companies. Not having such a basic feature incorporated into your video chat app would increase the task, not just for yourself but for the one at the other end.
Video Tele-conference
Conference calling is a significant meeting tool of these times. Since the pandemic has pushed in the remote work culture, conferencing has turned into an essential capability of any video chat app. The feature endows the users with better collaborating and problem-solving capabilities, making them more productive remotely. It creates more opportunities for the employees as they get better control in internal and external meetings.
In-house& External Meetings
While the internal meetings on video chat apps and build video calling app to keep the employees in the loop, especially in the case of remote working; the external video call feature works well for call centers, customer services, automated call distributor systems, and importantly for customers meetings and outside vendors. Capabilities and external meetings in an app can support a business at a global scale as globalization has set in the climate for global business unity. The feature opens up a whole new world of possibilities for the users. This gives you options to pool multiple employees with the clients while maintaining professionalism and keeping the security of your firm intact.
Who Can Use Video Cat Applications?
Video Chats are helping people maintain valuable connections in these pandemic times. It is the best instrument to stay socially active, even after the time when the world decides to open up. There are many workgroups and social groups that have been leveraging the technology to the best. But here are a few segments that are benefitting the most from the video chat apps.
Schools and Other Coaching Groups
During the pandemics, video application development for android, iOS and more such platforms proved to be a valuable educational aid. Both teachers and students benefited from this technology by sustaining quality classroom learning. Even the teachers could easily adapt to the online teaching techniques, and collaborative learning did not take a back seat. Classroom activities and engagements need not be compromised as the teachers could communicate, coordinate and accept/assign work online with these apps.
Hospitals, Clinics and Medical Research Centers
Video chat apps are used for medical research, training and patient care. The doctors are able to help more patients in less time. Patients and doctors both get cost benefits through video consultations. Having a video conferencing app ascertains an advantageous edge for healthcare providers. The consultations over video apps are much well-ordered due to the convenient availability of digital records of patients. This makes it advantageous to do medical consultations.
Key Features in a Video Chat App That Cannot Be Ignored
Here are a few features to optimize your app with the most suitable features and give it a competitive advantage.
Sign up and User Identification at Login
Proper login is important for the security of users. Login pages must include “Login”, “Sign Up”, “Remember Me” and “Forgot Password” functionality for the convenience of users.
Contact Group List
A contact list is very important for chat interaction APIs. Contact lists assist users to manage and access their network easily. There must be options to add, delete, block and edit contacts along with other user’s presence status to make the app more functional.
Chat Messages
Messaging facility for groups and individual conversations expands the user’s reach. Message delivery notifications, read/unread status, and quality exchange of photos and videos over chat are the prerequisites in the message feature today.
Video or Voice Calls
Both voice and video call features must be end-to-end encrypted and should allow video conferencing.
Online/Offline Status
This feature informs when employees are on break or are busy with some work and do not want to be disturb.
Notification Alerts
Recent messages and call notifications can be timely communicated to the users with the push notification feature.
Features to Include, To Make Your Video Chat App Competitive
Here are a few such must-haves for video chat APIs for android, iOS, web, and other platforms, to make it useful.
- Registering- It requires users to enter their phone numbers and names. To tender any other information, should be optional and left at the discretion of the user.
- Profile – Functions to set profile pictures, configure notifications and adjust privacy settings should be included in the profile management feature.
- Friend Contacts– It is important to let users incorporate their contact details like phone numbers in their profile, to make the app appropriate for use.
- Chats and messages- A chat feature is a requisite. You can choose to inculcate chat as an additional or the main way of communication for your app.
- File sharing –Sharing photos, documents, audio, and video is imperative for a complete chat experience.
- Face-to-Face private video calls – Make sure to include high-quality video and audio transmissions to build an efficacious app.
- Notification Alerts – This feature is used to make users alert about the activities in chats. But users should be allow to mute notifications when they want.
- Automated chat backups–For chats from mobile apps and other platforms, chat history backups help users in more than one way but still they should have the option to turn off automatic backup options as and when they require.
- Encryption and Security- Security must never be secondary to any priority. Implement encryption protocols for secure communications.
Advanced Features to Make Your App More Functional and Fun
Additional features are call for, in order to build a favorable demand and value around your app. Make a worthy choice based on your target audience and niche market. We are listing a few of them here:
- Teleconference video calls- This allows participants to include hundreds and thousands of more participants in one video chat.
- Free stickers -Free to use stickers and emoticons make the chats more interactive. They add proper character to the conversations.
- Masks and Filters lets users change their appearance during video calls making it more fun.
- Geo-positioning allows users to share a current location or a specific location is a feature that is being prevalently used by many famous video chatting APIs.
Wrapping up Thoughts
It takes effort and time to build applications, but if appropriately planned, one can come up with a widely accepted formula and create the best video chat API. We believe that the above information will be of value to you in building a successful Video Chat Application.