Weird behvaiour when calling from a homeserver without element call

[strifel]

Steps to reproduce

1. Be on a home server without Element Call support
2. Want to call someone on a home server with Element Call support
3. Click on Call Icon
4. Element X shows "Calling is not supported"
5. The user on the other home server gets a Call
6. The user on the other home server joins the call
7. Click on "Exit" on the "Calling is not supported" prompt
8. It is now possible to join the call

Outcome

What did you expect?

I don't really know. Maybe a message like "The other person needs to join the call first", maybe that it does not call the other person at all.

What happened instead?

See "Steps to reproduce". I could not create a call, but it called and after the other person joined, I could.

Your phone model

No response

Operating system version

No response

Application version

25.03.8 (156)

Homeserver

Both Synapse 1.127.1

Will you send logs?

No

[pixlwave]

Hey, sorry we weren't loud enough to communicate the upcoming changes on this one. A blog post went up last week with more information: https://element.io/blog/end-to-end-encrypted-voice-and-video-for-self-hosted-community-users/

[strifel]

Hi @pixlwave thanks for your response.

My problem is not with not being able to call (as in opening an Element Call call). I understand why that is and what I need to do to fix it (even though the blog post could communicate more what does not work anymore without an own server).

My problem is with the UX catastrophe this causes for users that do not know it works in the background. They just see that the call failed, the other side got called nonetheless, and then they can join. I feel like in that case at a minimum there should not be a call button at all.

[pixlwave]

Ah ok, understood. I've re-opened this and transferred it to the Element Call project for the right team to see it.

[robintown]

The VoIP team sees an appropriate solution as being: move the sending of the notification event out of the messenger application and into the widget. I was already working on this, incidentally, during my clean-up of the EW call code in https://github.com/element-hq/element-web/issues/29426. However if we want to go with this solution, we will also need to make a similar change in EX.

[toger5]

This (sending notify as part of the widget) has now been implement.

I am closing this issue since this is a potential fix. Feel free to reopen if there are issues with the current solution.