How to avoid unnecessary billing - when only one participant is in the conference?

Description

We have customers reporting that they need a mechanism to determine when only one participant is left in the conference and idling, so that they can destroy the conference and avoid unnecessarily billing. For example, if a user starts a conference and leaves their computer without closing the browser window, the conference will continue to run and incur unnecessary billing costs for the customer. 

Solution:

1. This problem can be avoided by choosing a mechanism in which conferences are created, configurations are specified, and custom app logic is implemented to control the last participant in extending conferences. Below are steps that can be taken to avoid this scenario. 

   1. Create conferences on the server side, not the client side (using REST APIs). This way the conference can be created without any participant being present. Please refer to the  Create REST API documentation for more details. 
   2. Set a max duration in the dolby.io dashboard for the conference, so that the conference does not run for a long time if not intended. 
   3. Set a TTL (time to live), which is the time before a conference is destroyed if no one has joined the new conference or the last participant has left it. Please refer this article for more details. 
   4. Add custom app logic to detect if there is only one participant in the conference and assess the presence of this participant for a set interval. Using this interval, your app can decide if the user is idling and explicitly terminate the conference.
      • From the client, you can monitor the participant count using the participantUpdated event, then programmatically call leave on the solo participant.
      • From the server, you can monitor the participant count using webhook events, then use the Terminate REST API to end the conference.