XMPP protocol extensions already defines a method for initiating peer-to-peer media sessions such as &xep0166; however due to its very nature of being peer-to-peer it does not work very well in scenarios with online meetings. It also does not work alongside offline storage, MUC history and &xep0313;.

Using a web browser to manually request a URL from an HTTP server and sharing the link has been a workaround for this for a long time now. While users have a variety of services to choose from, the downside of this manual approach is that an XMPP client can not automate this process on behalf of the user since these services don’t share a common API.

This XEP defines an approach to request initiation of an online meeting via an HTTP server and receive a URL can be used to join and invite others to the meeting.

• Be as easy to implement as possible. This is grounded on the idea that most programming languages already have HTTP libraries available.
• Usable with Meeting service providers that have no XMPP integration.
• Anyone who knows the URL SHOULD be able to access it.

A client requests an online new meeting to be initiated by sending an IQ-get to the server containing a <query> child element qualified by the 'urn:xmpp:http:online-meetings:invite:0' namespace.

This 'query' MUST include the type attribute specifying the Meeting Service type, which SHOULD be registered as described in the Meeting Service Type Registry section of this document.

If the requesting entity desires to (re)initiate a meeting with a specific identifier, the optional 'id' attribute can be used to specify the identity of the online meeting requested. When the provided value cannot be used, for example when it does not match the format used by a meeting provider, or a meeting with that particular value is already in use, the server SHOULD return an error.

An optional 'desc' child element can be used to assign a human-readable description to the meeting. The server MAY use this value when configuring the online meeting with the service provider, and SHOULD use this value in its response, but otherwise treat this as an opaque value.

The XMPP server responds with one or two child elements: a 'initiate' element that contains a URL to be used to create and configure the meeting, and an 'invite' element that contains a URL suitable to invite others into the meeting.

In the URLs that it returns, the server MAY specify a web-based protocol handler if available and registered by the user. Otherwise, standard HTTPS protocol will be specified. In any case, the fully resolved URL provided by the host MUST provide Transport Layer Security (&rfc5246;). The HTTPS URL MUST adhere to &rfc3986;. Non ASCII characters MUST be percent-encoded.

The XMPP server MAY be tightly integrated with the Meeting Provider and facilitate registration, configuration and association of a web-based protocol handler, but the protocol to implement such integration is out of scope of this document.

If the XMPP server is tightly integrated with the Meeting Provider, and no other data is needed for a meeting to be initiated, the XMPP server MAY initiate a meeting on behalf of the requester and leave out the 'initiate' element from the response. Note that a server SHOULD include a 'initiate' URL in its response if it cannot initiate a meeting on behalf of the requesting entity, even if it knows that no additional data is needed for a meeting to be automatically initiated upon joining the meeting URL. Inclusion of the 'initiate' element signals that the requesting entity may need join the meeting as the first participant, in order to be assigned 'creator' or 'moderator' privileges.

Instead of providing the client with a URL the server MAY respond with an error if the request fails. In addition, the HTTP entity MAY inform the requester about the reason for the failure.

For any other type of error the service SHOULD respond with appropriate error types to indicate temporary or permanent errors.

For temporary errors such as exceeding a personal quota the service MAY include a <retry/> element qualified by the 'urn:xmpp:http:online-meetings:0' namespace as a child of the <error/> element. The retry element MUST include an attribute 'stamp' which indicates the time at which the requesting entity may try again. The format of the timestamp MUST adhere to the date-time format specified in &xep0082; and MUST be expressed in UTC.

After the requesting entity has successfully initiated a meeting, it MAY invite other entities to join the meeting. It does so by sending invitees a message stanza containing an 'invite' child element, qualified by the online-meetings namespace, as was sent by the server in response to the initiation request.

To allow users of clients that do not support this XEP to receive the invitation, a &xep0066; element and/or a 'body' element containing the meeting details MAY be included.

There is no further XMPP communication required between the server and the client for the client to join the meeting. The actual online meeting engagement with the provided URL is out of scope of this document.

The server SHOULD choose an appropriate timeout for the validity of the URL. Since there is no reason for a client to wait between requesting the URL and joining the meeting via the URL before dispatching invitations, relatively low timeout values of around 300s are RECOMMENDED.

This document requires no interaction with the &IANA;