BigBlueButton API

Name: BigBlueButton API API
Brand: BigBlueButton API
Availability: InStock

★ Only Publicly Available OpenAPI DocumentCommunicationsVideo ConferencingapiKey14 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Create and manage BigBlueButton web conferences, query meeting state, and publish or delete session recordings on a self-hosted BigBlueButton server.

Quickstart

Get started with BigBlueButton API in minutes using your preferred integration method.

# Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf)
{
  "jentic": {
    "url": "https://api.jentic.com/mcp",
    "auth": "oauth"
  }
}

# Then ask your agent:
"create a web conference"

# → Jentic returns the GET /events tool with parameter schema, agent executes.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with BigBlueButton API API.

Create a BigBlueButton meeting with a moderator and attendee password via the create endpoint

Generate join URLs that drop a named participant straight into a running session

Insert PDF or Office documents into a live meeting for slide presentation

Send a chat message into an active conference programmatically

GET STARTED

Start building with BigBlueButton API API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI document for BigBlueButton API, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for BigBlueButton API, keeping it validated and agent-ready. BigBlueButton is an open-source web conferencing platform built for online learning and virtual classrooms, exposing a checksum-authenticated REST API to create meetings, manage participants, capture recordings, and post chat messages. The API runs on a self-hosted server, so the base URL contains a configurable host variable and every request must carry a SHA checksum derived from the call name, query string, and a shared secret. Endpoints cover the full meeting lifecycle from create and join through end and recording publication.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use BigBlueButton API API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Virtual Classroom Provisioning

Universities and training providers spin up BigBlueButton meetings on demand for each scheduled class, generating distinct moderator and attendee URLs that the LMS hands to instructors and students. The create endpoint accepts the meeting ID, welcome message, and password pair, and join produces a signed URL that bypasses any login flow. Because BigBlueButton is self-hosted, the integration scales with the institution's own server fleet and avoids per-seat conferencing fees.

Call /create with meetingID 'CS101-W3', moderatorPW and attendeePW, then call /join with fullName 'Dr Lopez' and the moderator password to return a launch URL

Recording Lifecycle Management

Education and corporate teams need to surface session recordings to absent attendees while keeping older content private. BigBlueButton exposes getRecordings to enumerate captured sessions and publishRecordings, deleteRecordings, and updateRecordings to control visibility and metadata. A scheduled job can publish all recordings tagged with a specific meta field, then purge anything older than the retention window.

Call /getRecordings filtered by meta_course=CS101, then call /publishRecordings with the returned recordIDs and publish=true

In-Meeting Automation

Operations teams trigger in-session events from external tooling, for example pushing a fresh slide deck when a presenter swaps topics or posting a chat reminder five minutes before break. The insertDocument endpoint accepts a URL or base64 payload that BigBlueButton renders as a slide, and sendChatMessage delivers a message into the meeting chat panel. Both are useful for building bots that augment live classes without modifying the BigBlueButton client.

Call /insertDocument with meetingID 'CS101-W3' and a URL pointing to lecture-3.pdf, then call /sendChatMessage with text 'Slides updated'

Agent-Driven Conference Operations via Jentic

An AI agent connected through Jentic searches for 'create a web conference', loads the BigBlueButton create operation schema, and chains it with join to deliver a one-click launch link to the requesting user. The Jentic vault holds the BigBlueButton shared secret and computes the per-call checksum, so the agent never sees the raw secret. This is how a scheduling assistant can stand up classrooms without bespoke server-side glue code.

Search Jentic for 'create a web conference', load BigBlueButton create, execute with meetingID and passwords, then load join and execute to return the moderator launch URL

Key Endpoints

14 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for bigbluebutton api, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/create

Create a new BigBlueButton meeting

GET

/join

Generate a join URL for a participant

GET

/end

End a running meeting

GET

/getMeetings

List all active meetings on the server

GET

/getMeetingInfo

Retrieve details and participants for a meeting

GET

/getRecordings

List recorded sessions with optional filters

GET

/publishRecordings

Publish or unpublish recordings

POST

/insertDocument

Insert a presentation document into a live meeting

GET

/create

Create a new BigBlueButton meeting

GET

/join

Generate a join URL for a participant

GET

/end

End a running meeting

GET

/getMeetings

List all active meetings on the server

GET

/getMeetingInfo

Retrieve details and participants for a meeting

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

BigBlueButton's shared secret is stored encrypted in the Jentic vault. Per-call SHA checksums are computed inside Jentic so the raw secret never appears in the agent's context or logs.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic by intent (e.g., 'create a web conference', 'list meeting recordings') and Jentic returns the matching BigBlueButton operation with its parameter schema, so the agent calls the correct endpoint without parsing the docs site.

Time to first call

Direct BigBlueButton integration: 1-2 days handling checksum computation, host variable substitution, and recording polling. Through Jentic: under 1 hour — search, load schema, execute.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Alternative

Zoom Meetings API

Hosted commercial conferencing platform — Zoom runs the infrastructure, BigBlueButton is self-hosted and open source

Choose Zoom Meetings when the user wants a managed SaaS conferencing service with broad client support; choose BigBlueButton when self-hosting, classroom features, and full data control matter

Alternative

Whereby API

Embeddable browser-based meeting rooms — managed SaaS instead of self-hosted

Choose Whereby for embedding video rooms inside another product without infrastructure; choose BigBlueButton for full control of the conferencing server and recordings

Complementary

SendGrid Mail Send API

Email join links and recording URLs around BigBlueButton meetings

Pair with BigBlueButton when classroom invitations, calendar holds, or post-session recording emails need to be delivered transactionally

FAQs

Specific to using BigBlueButton API API through Jentic.

Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for BigBlueButton API?

BigBlueButton does not publish an OpenAPI specification — its REST API is documented in narrative form on docs.bigbluebutton.org. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call BigBlueButton API via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started at https://app.jentic.com/sign-up.

What authentication does the BigBlueButton API use?

Every BigBlueButton call is authenticated with a SHA checksum passed as the query parameter named `checksum`. The checksum is computed from the API call name, the query string, and the server's shared secret. Through Jentic, the shared secret is stored encrypted in the vault and the checksum is computed per call, so the secret never enters the agent's context.

Can I record meetings with the BigBlueButton API?

Yes. Pass record=true to /create when starting the meeting, then use /getRecordings to enumerate captured sessions once they finish processing. Publish them with /publishRecordings, delete them with /deleteRecordings, or change titles and custom metadata with /updateRecordings.

What are the rate limits for the BigBlueButton API?

BigBlueButton itself does not impose API rate limits — it runs on your own server, so throughput is bounded by the host's CPU, memory, and network capacity. Most administrators put nginx or HAProxy in front of the bigbluebutton/api endpoint to apply per-IP throttling for abuse protection.

How do I create a meeting through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'create a web conference', load the BigBlueButton /create operation, and execute it with meetingID, attendeePW, and moderatorPW. Then load /join and execute it with the meetingID and the moderator password to return a launch URL the user can click. The full flow is `pip install jentic` then await client.search, client.load, client.execute.

Can I send chat messages or upload slides into a running meeting?

Yes. /sendChatMessage delivers a string into the meeting's chat panel, and /insertDocument accepts a URL or base64-encoded payload that BigBlueButton renders as a presentation slide. Both target an existing meetingID and are commonly used by scheduling bots and lecture automations.